Herblore: Another look at valerian

So some of you might remember my not-too-fun experience with valerian the last time I tried it. Well, I know I said I wouldn't touch the stuff again unless I had really serious insomnia, but time heals all wounds, as they say, and when my sleep schedule got a little out of whack from Easter break, I decided to give it another go, just to help me get to sleep early enough.

For the mixture, I used 2 or 3 Ts of chamomile with a good pinch of valerian, steeped it in a cup of boiling water for about 5-10 minutes (or sometimes more if I got distracted), then strained it and added another cup or so of milk as well as honey to taste (lots of honey...valerian is not the most delicious of tastes ever, even at that low a concentration). Then I'd sip the concoction slowly, over at least a half-hour, usually as I lay in bed reading or chatting online or something, with the intent to turn out the lights no more than an hour or an hour and a half after starting to drink the tea. And, when I actually did that, it worked quite well: I fell asleep quickly and slept soundly until morning, then got up and about without too much of the lingering drowsiness that can be a side effect.

However, I only actually did this once. All other times I attempted to follow this routine, I found myself caught up in long conversations with T or W in which I was inexplicably drawn to the heavier topics and the "big questions" that linger in my relationships with each of them. I could definitely feel the sleepiness from the valerian setting in, but also this strange drive to poke and prod and find out the answers to questions I've been not asking for a long time. After some time spent focusing on these and ignoring the urge to sleep, the latter wears off and leaves me fairly energized (or at least not noticeably tired, even into the wee hours) for another several hours. It did lead to some conclusions, but there was also a ridiculous amount of stress involved for all parties, and even after thinking about it I'm still not sure if the stress balanced the satisfaction or not. I can't find any information on this particular effect in lists of general side effects for valerian and have no idea where to start looking for info about it on its own. Any keyword ideas?

As for other effects, I've definitely noticed that my dreams are more vivid. Fortunately there's been nothing like the terrifying nightmare the first time I tried the stuff, but I can tell that my dreams are less foggy and more plot-driven. Also, on a couple of occasions I've been able to stop myself from waking out of the dream much better than I normally can, as well as waking up briefly to look at the clock and turn off my alarm or to speak to someone, and then immediately falling back asleep and resuming the dream from the saved point, so to speak. I have to admit, that part is pretty cool. As well, my cat has been super-affectionate lately, coming up to sit on my lap when I'm at the computer and sleeping next to or on me every night. Valerian is supposed to be similar to catnip for the fuzzy ones, so maybe she can smell it in my sweat or something.

Although I've been drinking this tea for the past week or so every night, I'm going to stop now for at least a week or two - I've read that continued use for more than two weeks can make your body adjust so that the previous dosage loses its effectiveness. That, and as much as I like having things resolved and getting answers to my pressing questions, sometimes it's just not worth the stress.

-N

BODY: Valerian is not to be trifled with

Maybe it's the fact that I took the valerian with no real need for it, just a curiosity about what it did and how it did it. Maybe if I really did have problems with sleeping, it would be a godsend. Maybe if I didn't have to wake up at a specific, rather early time and instead could just sleep till my body wanted to wake up, it would just result in a really good night's (and morning's, and early afternoon's) sleep.

However, as I have no huge problems with falling or staying asleep and I do have to get up at ridiculous hours for work, I think it would be safe to assume that the valerian kinda kicked my ass. I woke up alright, drove to work and clocked in feeling kind of meh...and it went downhill from there. I got a nagging headache that got steadily worse, and I became the Coffee Zombie, making lattes and mochas seemingly only by muscle memory, barely aware enough to mutter "skim or whole milk with that, sir?" and the occasional "I need drugs in my braaaaaaaaain." After a couple hours of this, my coworkers feared for their lives and sent me home (no but seriously, they're awesome dudes and told me to go home and sleep).

When I got home I stumbled up to bed and slept soundly for the next 4ish hours, with some very strange dreams. The only detail I can remember is that at one point I was sitting in the kitchen with my mother, and across the table from us was my grandmother, her mother, who is dead. She was a ghost, having some kind of trouble manifesting, so all I could see of her was her bathrobe (which has passed into my possession and which I wear to bed every night) in the shape that it would be on her body but empty. For some reason it was very dangerous/bad to touch her, and so I was crying into my mother's shoulder and trying to hide, and my mother was telling her not to touch me and to go away, and she didn't understand why. It's still kind of creeping me out.

Anyways: bottom line, I think, is do not take valerian unless you actually have a need for it. If I do have real trouble with sleeping at some point in the future, I'll give it another try, but until then, I'm not touching it.

-N

BODY: The quickest update ever

Oh dear gods. Valerian, when brewed on its own for a good amount of time, is VILE. I had a milk chaser and brushed my teeth and tongue with baking soda and I can still taste it a little. All I can say is, this damn well better work - if nothing else, at least it'll help me remember to brush my teeth at night. Glah.

-N

SPIRIT/BODY: Acceptance (and valerian)

When I did my primary research on this topic (that is, googled "acceptance" and looked at what came up), the results mostly seemed to fit one of two topics. The first is a positive look at the word and what it connotes: acceptance is, basically, learning not to sweat the small stuff and the so-called "unchangeable" everyday problems that plague us, as well as learning to love oneself just how one is. There's a basic problem here, at least for me: right now, I do not especially like where I am or what I am. Even though my life is by no means a bad or uncomfortable one, there are aspects about it that I do not like and that I wish to change. If I worked hard to love where I am right now, I would have no reason to continue to work towards the goals of changing my situation and myself. One of the sites I found says otherwise, that in fact "[a]cceptance allows change":

"Think of acceptance of yourself like being okay with where you live now. You may want a bigger house one day. You may dream about that new home. But there ARE advantages to living in a smaller home if you only took the time to think about it. It is possible to be happy with the home you're in now, while still dreaming and working to make your new home a reality."

The inherent problem with this as I see it is that if you truly are completely happy with your life, you will have no desire to change it. If there remains the desire to change it to something "better," then by definition your life is not as good as it could be and thus you yourself are not as happy as you could be. This type of acceptance seems to be either an excuse to stay in the (not quite ideal) circumstances of the present, or else a sort of temporary, false acceptance until the circumstances you really want are achieved.

The second topic is nearly the same thing, but with a key difference: the things one learns to accept are neither good nor unchangeable. Here, acceptance is used to mean the mental process that an abused spouse might go through - convincing themselves that "it's not really that bad, this is just life, I just have to learn to live with this."This is part of the mentality that Christianity has used to keep the downtrodden down for centuries, as well as something I've seen in my own friends, and I abhor it to the core. Nothing more need be said there.

There might be a third type of acceptance as well - that which helps us realise that a friend who has died is in fact not coming back to us, or that the choices we have made in the past cannot be rethought and changed, that they are what they are and all we can do is live with the world that results from them - that is, the past is in the past and is truly unchangeable. This type of acceptance might be best defined as the opposite of regret, and is as I see it the only definition worth giving more thought to. Acceptance in this form may make it into the final list -we'll see.

In other news, I bought a handful of valerian this evening, and some tea made of a teaspoon of that and a pinch each of chamomile and mint is steeping right now. I'm assuming I'll need to have some kind of a chaser - everything I've heard about valerian says it is rather vile, and the whiff I got when measuring it out certainly seems to back that up. I'll post the results of that experiment tomorrow. Goodnight!

-N