DOSE:		oral	Lotus/Lily - Nymphaea nouchali var caerulea	(tincture)
		oral	Lotus/Lily - Nymphaea nouchali var caerulea	(tea)
		smoked	Lotus/Lily - Nymphaea nouchali var caerulea	(leaves)
		smoked	Cannabis
		oral	Cannabis	(tincture)

BODY WEIGHT:

140 lb

One thing Chinese supermarkets have going for them is an impressive collection of teas and herbal tea additives. At one store, I found a bag of blue lotus leaves for a remarkably cheap price - about $1 for 30 grams. I've actually been looking for blue lotus for a while. I picked up a bag and, over the following month, carried out a few trials with the leaves.

TEA:

The leaves are sold as a tea additive/alternative, so this was a natural place to start. I steeped the leaves by themselves and in various combination with different green teas, jasmine, orange peel, wolfberry and cannabis. By itself, blue lotus tea has an odd taste vaguely reminiscent of peppermint and leaves a tingling sensation in the mouth for a moment.

The effects of the blue lotus tea vary greatly. Most of the time, the effects are mild to nonexistent, basically no different than drinking a cup of ordinary tea. On a few occasions, though, I've found that the blue lotus tea induces a range of subjective effects which include sedation, lack of focus, mild confusion, giddiness - all very similar to the effects of cannabis. The effects linger for 1-2 hours, followed by strong drowsiness.

I've made dozens of cups of tea with blue lotus leaves and I've never quite figured out what might cause this divergence in effects. The additional additives have no apparent impact. The only somewhat consistent factor is the amount of leaves used - packing a strainer to the brim creates a cup that's more likely to induce sedation.

SMOKING:

I rolled a blunt using an approximately 2:1 cannabis-blue lotus mixture and smoked it over a two day period. Based on the effect profile, I was hoping that there would be some build-on effect. However, the effect of the blend was no different than the effect of cannabis by itself. Not only was there no difference in the subjective effects, there was no appreciable difference in the flavor or aroma of the smoke.

It's possible that I didn't use enough leaves in my blend, and that a ratio of 1:1 or 1:2 would produce a more pronounced effect. That said, given the underwhelming nature of my first blend, I'm not eager to try it again. It's possible that the leaves simply don't have a high enough alkaloid content.

TINCTURE:

Still hoping to find that cannabis-blue lotus synergy, I prepared a small batch of green dragon using the same 2:1 ratio as the blunt. Out of necessity, I had to use a lower strength alcohol (84-proof) as the base. After three weeks, the cannabis buds had sank to the bottom as expected, while almost all of the lotus leaves kept floating on the top.

Initially, I consumed about 25ml of the solution along with food and a glass of red wine. After thirty minutes, I experienced some of the expected effects - time dilation and a moderately strong body load - but no detectable cognitive effects. The overall effect was far more lucid and very muted overall. There were no additional effects from the blue lotus, but rather a diminishing of some of the effects of the cannabis.

A few days later, I tried about 35ml of the solution, this time about 2-3 hours after eating and with no additional mind-affecting substances. This time, the effects were even less pronounced with no body load to speak of. There was no real "peak," the effects increased and decreased over a period of about two hours, but that's not unusual for cannabis tincture.

The blue lotus leaves added no distinct effects to the green dragon , merely suppressing some existing effects. I can't definitely attribute this to the lotus - it's possible that this is the result of increasing tolerance (I've been using green dragon on a semi-regular basis for the past few months) or my use of a weaker base alcohol.

CONCLUSION:

On the one hand, there is no question in my mind that the leaves do contain aporphine and that it is psychoactive. On the other hand, the range of effects is tremendously disappointing and dampens the potential of lotus leaves as an anxiolytic, enhancer or sleep aid.

The main problem is one common to any psychoactive sourced from a plant or fungal source: Chemical composition. The leaves I bought were cultivated for culinary purposes rather than for their mind-altering properties. Even this small bag may contain trimmings from dozens of plants, all of them with different chemical profiles.

Realistically, this means that people looking to use blue lotus should stick with the blossoms as the leaves simply aren't strong enough for a consistent effect.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 112649
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Apr 14, 2019	Views: 3,277
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Lotus/Lily - Nymphaea nouchali var caerulea (105) : Combinations (3), Preparation / Recipes (30), Retrospective / Summary (11), Unknown Context (20)