Anyone else have a weird response to nepeta?

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Griff
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18 Nov 2007, 7:52 pm

This stuff is really awesome. I'm going to try making an icecream out of it. You guys gotta try this. It's not just for cats, I tell you!

My response was to suddenly become rather excessively happy and begin singing in a loud voice. I also developed a slight flush and got a tingly numbness in the tongue for the first few minutes of its effects. What about y'all? I'm speaking of catnip, by the way (there are other types of nepeta, and I'm not sure if they all have any effect at all on cats OR humans).



riverotter
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18 Nov 2007, 8:21 pm

Tea made from the classic "catnip" nepeta is a wonderful soporific, for me.
Don't ingest if you are or may be pregnant.
Finches like the seeds, so I let a few of the plants grow wild for them. Never noticed whether they have any behavior changes after eating the catnip seeds...



frankwah
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18 Nov 2007, 8:30 pm

So you make tea with it? Or do you just eat the leaves or part of the plant?

It's honestly never occurred to me to eat or ingest catnip. I just thought it only affected cats. It sounds as good as E.



riverotter
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18 Nov 2007, 8:50 pm

To make the tea, I dry the leaves (in a cool, dry place) and then use a tea ball to infuse...don't know what Griff is doing to get high with it.



Griff
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19 Nov 2007, 10:26 am

riverotter wrote:
To make the tea, I dry the leaves (in a cool, dry place) and then use a tea ball to infuse...don't know what Griff is doing to get high with it.
Having jackin' weird chemistry. I was even getting this nice after-image. I've tried cannabis, and all it really does is make me feel like I've had cotton stuffed into my brain, don't like it at all. I actually found the effects of this stuff a lot more pleasurable. Sedatives have always had a weirdly stimulatory effect on me. No, that's not it...the thing is, I have a lot of internalized anxiety, and there's really no practical reason for any of it. I really don't like it when I end up on a hypomanic high for a while and then proceed into a melancholic episode following it. I have the intelligence to deal with it effectively during the daytime, but 1) I hate being yanked awake two hours before I'm supposed to wake up several nights in a row, and 2) it's always unnerving to have your weight drop by ten pounds in just a few weeks. Forget its effects on my moods: that's a side-issue. The thing that bothers me more in the long-run are these hypomanic episodes. I can get pretty floridly manic, even start experiencing mild delusions. It annoys me in the extreme. I'm basically trying to find a mild sedative to help me concentrate during the day. It's resulting in attention deficit issues like crazy. Too much input, too much mental activity, too much circulating energy and no time for me to handle it all. There has to be SOMETHING out there that works better than caffeine (although it helps with the attention issues, it gets me jittery). The catnip seemed to slow things down enough for me to get on top of things for a while, though, and I'm going to try it again tonight and see if I get the same effect. I might try taking it in lower dosage prior to class and see how it affects me in that setting.



monty
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19 Nov 2007, 12:54 pm

Amazingly little research on catnip. Some studies showed it has analgesic activity through the opioid receptors. Long used as a mild sedative in peole, it may also affect the oxytocin receptors, as it causes uterine contractions.