Heidu,

SJW by itself doesn't make me sleepy. I'm not sure if it did when I started taking it or not - I was really a mess at that point and couldn't really say what was what. I was tired a lot, but I was not sleeping much at night and was just barely recovering from a bad depressive episode that had lasted at least 2 months. Anyway, now it doesn't make me sleepy. I take it in the morning most of the time.

I haven't been very consistent on which brand I use, largely because my grocery store hasn't been very consistent on what they have available - particularly with the teas. Now the grocery store has not restocked any of the three brands of SJW teas they used to have in several weeks. I ordered some on the internet, and it's another different brand (Alvita). This new one has SJW as the only ingredient listed, but doesn't say how much. I need to try to get a hold of the company and ask them. The one with all SJW smells like it would taste bad all by itself, so I use one SJW tea bag and one of a flavor I like (peppermint, or a fruit flavor or something), and then it's okay. The other brands all had other ingredients to make it palatable and they all tasted good to me. What I used included Celestial Seasonings Mood Mender (which is 800 mg and is peppermint flavored) and Yogi Tea - I think it was just called St John's Wort tea, but I'm not sure and I don't have any left to go check (850 mg of SJW and a cinnamony, spicy kind of flavor). Traditional Medicinals also has one, called St. John's Good Mood, and I don't remember if I tried it - it was only 200 mg of SJW per bag, so you would have to drink at least 3 cups of it per day to do much.

I don't sweeten my herb teas - most people like them better sweetened. I've gotten used to the bitterness that almost any herb tea seems to have I guess. Oh, the directions on the boxes say to drink 3-4 cups per day for like 3 months. That's too much for the ones with around 800 mg - I tried it and that's when I went hypomanic. The recommended dosages I have found say 600-900 mg per day. I also have gel-caps and they are 300 mg each, and most of the SJW pills of whatever form seem to be 300 mg. I switch back and forth between the tea and the pills, but I like the tea better and think it probably works better, probably mostly because it seems to me that they can get more of the plant into a tea bag than into a pill, and also that an infusion (which tea is) would release the medicinal substances (okay, drugs) from the plant and make it more usable, and it just seems to me that it would work better than just swallowing a bunch of leaves. But that is just how it seems to me - I don't know if there is any truth in it.

The Alvita brand has 24 bags and the total for the box says 41 g, but I don't know if it all should count for comparing the dosage. That would make each bag 1708 mg, right? I just don't know what is supposed to count. I really ought to write to them and ask.

Cam, thanks again for all the information. I appreciate it very much. I wouldn't have thought that the lecture on herbs being drugs was directed at me, and I am aware that I am using herbs as drugs. There are several that I use from time to time for various purposes. I like herbs because they generally seem to be milder than conventional drugs (for example, I can get to sleep with chamamile and valerian and not feel drugged the next morning, while if I take Tylenol PM it also puts me to sleep, but not any faster, and it takes at least 10 hours to wear off and I stay groggy all morning), and also because I like being able to have control over what I am using. I could even grow it in my garden. In fact, I have grown SJW and chamomile also, but never tried to put them in teas though. SJW is also a good dye plant, and that is what I grew it for when I did.

Well, it's past my bedtime and I think I'm starting to ramble now. We can all be wordy, right? Well, thanks for this great discussion. There was something else I was going to say, but now I can't remember it. Oh well. Maybe I will later.

Wendy


<font color=green>"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible" Carl Jung</font color=green>