Happy Sunday, everyone.

Earlier this week I wrote about Blue Lotus on the blog. If you haven't already done so, go ahead and read that before reading on.

I got some of the dried flowers myself to try. After all, I must self-experiment. It doesn't feel right to write about something and never try it myself, or at least explore it further.

First, I tried tea.

Grabbed three large dried flowers and poured a cup and a half of boiling water over them, then covered and left to steep for 10 minutes. Then I strained it, pressing the leaves to get all the liquid out, and drank the tea.

It was slightly bluish, quite lovely, really, and very bitter. These were alkaloids I was extracting, and alkaloids tend to be incredibly bitter to dissuade animals from eating them. In case you're going "But Sisson, you're an animal, too and you probably shouldn't be eating them either," we are animals that have learned to extract beneficial effects from certain otherwise unpleasant plant compounds. I wasn't worried.

I didn't notice too much from the tea. Maybe I was slightly calmer—not that I was stressed out or anything prior to the tea. All in all, not something I'd go out of my way to drink if I was looking for powerful subjective effects. It could very well be the case that the benefits occur under the hood, unbeknownst to the subjective observer. After all, you don't really feel anything from most teas or supplements you take, but they still have effects.

Next, I tried wine. I steeped 20 grams of the dried flowers in the contents of a bottle of Dry Farms wine (a red from France, I believe) for three days in the fridge. Then I strained (pressed it in a French press, actually) it and had a glass with a friend.

Over the course of the evening, we had a glass each and noticed a different "flavor" to our headspace. One glass of 12.5% ABV Dry Farms wine isn't really enough to elicit any powerful effects from the alcohol, so I'm confident the blue lotus was having an effect. It's hard to describe exactly what was going on. It wasn't anything that would get you in trouble. The mood just felt lighter, more elevated. Head was very clear, and, again, there wasn't enough alcohol to do much of anything.

I did end up sitting down afterwards and banging out a few pages on the computer, a mix of journaling and idea generation. I could see an alcohol extract (without the high volume of alcohol) being helpful as a nootropic. 

Anyway, that's what I noticed: the wine extraction was more effective than the hot water extraction. Makes sense, given that wine was the typical mode of ingestion for the Ancient Egyptians.

Now I'm curious to hear from you. Since no one out there has probably been drinking blue lotus wine lately, I'd love to hear about your latest self experiment. How did it go? What happened?

Let me know in the comment section of my Blue Lotus post.

#listentothesisson