Whenever I try to write about wild lettuce (the various Lactuca species) I find myself getting all tangled up in myth-busting. There's a lot of
"Legal opium", they call it. Or they go the other way and call it a "wild edible". It's neither - and yet it's both, if you insist on using it that way. But there are better (legal) ways to get high - wild lettuce is definitely not a 'party drug'. And there are definitely tastier wild edible leafy greens!
In the interests of my sanity (and yours) I think I'll just draw a line under any discussion of its "popular" uses and have a go at telling you about how and why and when I've found it useful over the years. So useful, in fact, that I've come to consider it an essential part of my medicine chest. Remember, this is my experience, yours will probably be different according to metabolism and, as we will see, intention.
wild lettuce for pain relief
All Medicine Plants have a message, and in my experience the message of wild lettuce is "let go, lie down, sleep".
It's classed by the old physicians (from the ancient Greeks to the eclectics of the early 20th century) variously, as a sedative or a soporific/hypnotic, an anodyne, a laxative, a diuretic and even, in some cases, an emetic. It brings sleep and relieves pain, yes, but it does so by first releasing that which we have to let go of. So if pooping, peeing or barfing is what we need to do, then it can help us do that - in a dose dependant manner of course. It would probably take a lot of wild lettuce to make you barf, but that's something I (thankfully!) have no experience of.
Another thing wild lettuce helps us do - and here I think is its greatest benefit for the average person - is let go of the suffering that attends pain.
There is a difference between pain and suffering, although that's a thorny issue in some circles. Still, we've all experienced that sometimes we can be in pain yet our suffering is minimal, we can still work, still laugh .. and other times that same amount of pain will just crush us. It's the degree of suffering we experience that sends us looking for relief. Somehow - don't ask me how - wild lettuce brings the degree of suffering down to a tolerable level. That, in itself, allows us to sleep, and sleep helps us to heal.
That suffering is associated with "tension"; the body is certainly more tense when we're suffering and vice versa. Ditto psychological stress. So it follows that wild lettuce relieves mental stress and physical tension and the attendant suffering. Or maybe reducing the level of suffering relieves the stress and tension. Does it matter which comes first, chicken or egg?
It's particularly good at resolving "low back pain", something that most people suffer from at some point in their lives. Low back pain can either be caused by - or can cause - constipation; wild lettuce can often resolve both at once.
Wild lettuce is classified as a "cold" plant - salad is cooling - and like cures like. Tense muscles are said to be "cold". They can become tense because of a physical chill that settles into the body, but they can also become tense and constricted because of an emotional experience that "leaves us cold". Whether a sudden emotional shock or a long drawn out situation that wears us down, wild lettuce can be an ally for the physical or emotional experience that is beyond what we can cope with, that makes us feel 'stuck' or frozen (there's that association with cold again) in fear ..
Ah, fear, what a restrictive thing fear can be. On the one hand, when we're afraid we wish to be "anywhere but here" yet on the other hand fear either stops us from moving forward or (when we panic) pushes us in the wrong direction. Fear very, very often compounds the tension and constriction, and adds to the suffering we feel when we're in pain.
"Cold" and "heat" can get stuck in the body, and one can trap the other, so that when we have "cold", ie restricted movement in our soft tissues (muscles, ligaments) we can end up with what feels like searing heat in our joints. Anyone with fibromylagia or arthritis can probably relate to what I mean there - when we are stiff, we start to feel as though there are pools of toxic 'yuk' burning away in certain pockets of our bodies, and if we could only "get things moving", we would get some relief. Wild lettuce can, in some cases (although not all) be the right medicine to unlock that which is locked in.
Funnily enough, the notched leaves of some of the Lactuca family members do resemble a key now that I think about it. Hmmm ... there's that Doctrine of Signatures again!
wild lettuce for the skin
Wild lettuce, like burdock, "brings things up".
I first heard of using wild lettuce to clear up cystic acne from Matthew Wood, and I can attest from personal experience that it works. Wood's theory is that the wild lettuce is acting on the hormones; here I'm not so sure he's correct. I'm no teenager, I'm pushing 60. The cysts, in my case, began in my 30's and have continued past menopause, so I don't see the hormonal connection applying. They were behind my ears and only broke out occasionally, under stress or when I ate bad chocolate, but I could always feel them under the skin, dormant. Now they are virtually gone. However it's worked, here's the pattern as he writes it, and it's essentially how I experienced it (except for the pulse, not something I have paid attention to):
(source)
I wasn't taking the wild lettuce with the aim of getting rid of that ghastly, if intermittent issue, I was taking it at night to help me sleep during a particularly bad round of fibro-like pain. I am extremely pleased that it happened, but I would imagine that others might call such an experience a 'nasty side effect'!
It's really important to learn as much as we can, from as many sources as we can, the effects of any plant we're thinking of using. There are no one trick ponies in the green world; they all reach deeper than we might think.
how much, and when
I use extremely small amounts. I'll take at most 3 or 4 drops of the tincture at night which gives me an uninterrupted, solid night's sleep with good dreaming - any more than that and I'm a bit groggy in the morning. If I need its help during the day I take one drop, combined with 3 drops of agrimony (the tension relieving herb). Even taking it during the day I always lie down for 10 minutes or so. Initially, there is an aggravation - I feel slightly more pain - but that subsides quickly. I used it a fair bit all summer long for fibromyalgia-type pain (gawd I hate humid summers!) and for a sacroiliac joint that tends to slip, which in turn sets off the fibro pain. For the joint, I combined it with mullein root tincture, which has the damn near miraculous ability to help joints (and spines) slide back into place.
But then, I always use very, very small doses of any herb I'm taking. Experience tells me that if I have the right remedy, tiny amounts work very well, and if I have the wrong remedy, taking more won't make it any more right.
As is generally the case, I make my own tincture so it may be stronger - or weaker - than commercial versions, I don't know, so if you buy yours, it may take some time to find the correct dosage. Start low, always. I harvest the plant before it comes into flower and tincture the uppermost leaves and the most tender part of the stem. You can make tincture when the plant is flowering or even going to seed, but it seems to have the most "oomph" before flowering.
sourcing it
You're likely to find wild lettuce growing near human habitation more often than in the wilderness. It likes parking lots, of all places, and driveways. I don't see it in my yard every year, but when I do, it comes up at the foundation of our house. The batch I have right now came up in my son's (unkempt) flower bed in the city. There are several varieties, some with jagged leaves, some with prickles and some without, so consult a field guide or an experienced wildcrafter to find out which grows near you.
There are several ways of preparing wild lettuce to be used medicinally, some of them quite complicated, like slitting the stem, collecting & drying the white, latex-like sap that oozes out; this is one of the reasons it's sometimes called lettuce opium, not because it is an opiate, but because collection methods are similar to those used on the opium poppy. Prepared this way wild lettuce becomes more of a drug than an herbal remedy, so I'm not inclined to go that route; I just chop it up, put it in a jar, steep it in vodka for 6 weeks and call it done.
It's the freshness and simplicity of the medicine plants that I'm looking to experience; if I wanted a drug, I'd go to the pharmacy and get a drug!
If you decide to use a commercial source, you'd be wise to choose one that can tell you how it was prepared. And for goodness' sake, don't rely on the dosage guides on the bottle (this holds true with all commercial tinctures). The standard "15 to 30 drops" written there is just .. wrong..
adventures in consciousness
Wild lettuce can certainly get you "high", and if that's your thing then please be aware that it's an hypnotic. You may feel fine to drive but you're not. The somewhat goofy feeling wild lettuce can induce is fun, yes, but it also means your brain isn't quite "here". Just lie down and listen to some trippy music, okay?
In fact, lying down and listening to music is exactly what wild lettuce is good for, and I highly recommend it. It's not for formal meditation, this is something other than that .. wild lettuce is one of the plants with its roots in the "imaginal realm".
I'm not advocating habitual use. But I will say that for those who seek their muse, wild lettuce can be an ally. Again, only a small amount is needed, what is key here is the intention. Carving out time to "go within" is essential, for some of us. There is peace there, and discoveries to be made, and deeper understanding to be brought back.
So I leave you with a piece of music that I think suits wild lettuce's message of "let go, lie down, sleep" quite well.
I just made a tincture yesterday... first tincture I've ever made. I've had intention of making this for two years now so really looking forward to experiencing what it can do for arthritis pain relief.
ReplyDeleteOh, nice! It would be great if you could report back and share your experiences.
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