HerbStory of the Week: Cautionary Tale

I have a cautionary tale around use of herbs and use/trust of one's own intuition and strength today.

The more I look for synchronicities, the more I see them. I'm sure that's another tendency that's heightened by undertaking a 100-day Gong.

This cautionary herbal tale turns out to be also a tale about trusting your own strength, and about the relationship between process and product that all creative people dance around continually.

Here we go. Pictured is the green black walnut pecan tincture I made a few weeks ago. After finishing my ten-day parasite cleanse, I had tentatively planned to do a second cleanse ten days later, starting yesterday, Monday (Sunday evening, Jewish-style).

I was feeling so much better from the first round that I wasn't even sure it was necessary to do another round, especially since, without testing, I didn't know whether the major issue was a parasite or a small intestinal bacteria. The latter was almost for sure, but it could have been both.

Well, I was sick on Sunday and took that as a sign to do the second ten-day round.

So there I had my herbs, tinctures, capsules, whole cloves, coffee for enemas, and here's my pecan hull tincture in its pint jar, so I swallowed down a whole tablespoon of it.

As soon as I'd swallowed it and it was too late, I realized the mistake. Waaay too much. The more concentrated the medicine, the more the dosage size matters. 

Now, sure, the fact that it was in a pint jar might have made my eyes bigger than for the little one-ounce jars of store-bought tinctures (cf. eating off of smaller plates). You take two dropperfuls of those things, that's a big dose. That's, like, a half teaspoon... One sixth of a tablespoon.

Honestly , though, I think I was also a bit dismissive of the tincture because I'd made it, at home.

But isn't that the strongest medicine of all? I was intentionally creating a medicine, from material I'd harvested myself, with the intention of internal cleansing. And then I didn't respect what I'd done, with what intention, and I didn't respect the plant wisdom, and I didn't respect my own body.

OoWheee that was a lesson! Let's start by saying I didn't sleep well that night, although I only had to get up three times. Let's add hallucinations more psychedelic and full-body than the run-of-the-mill visions I experience. Add to that three or four prolonged episodes of intense heart palpitations that took me back to a near-death experience and subsequent near-exsanguination and associated galloping heartbeat.

I felt close to the edge, close to another world.

And of course, it was massively purgative. 

From now on, two droppersful.

I'm so grateful for this lesson. Isn't that validation? Validation that I am capable of choosing, selecting, and preparing powerful medicine. Validation that my body responds to the medicine . Validation that both the medicine and my body deserve respect. Reminder to be present.