It's Time to Roll! Spring is Here!
Spring has sprung; tis' the season love and new life! Recipe Inside...
It’s time to pull out your jar of sassafras root bark and make yourself a cup of piping hot sassafras tea to clear all of the stagnation left over from the winter season along with a few drops of CBD or other cannabis oil to loosen up your joints and muscles for the gardening journey that is ahead for the season. The recipe for this comes from my High Tea book which details how to simply infuse and emulsify cannabinoid oils into water based beverages such as herbal or regular tea.
Sassy Canna Tea
Ingredients:
1 heaping tablespoon of sassafras root bark
Your desired dosage of CBD or other cannabinoid oil
1/2 teaspoon of acacia gum (you can use something like Heather’s Tummy Fiber for this)
2 cups of water
1 regular black tea bag (If desired. Some people like the flavor of black tea combined with the sassafras tea as opposed to sassafras tea neat. I like both ways, so whatever your tastebuds desire is the rule for this. Also, black tea gives this a bit of a caffeine boost since sassafras does not contain caffeine.)
Sweeten if desired. I like my sassafras tea without sweetener but you can try it both ways and see what you think!
Instructions:
In a small bowl combine the CBD or other cannabinoid oil in the desired amount with the acacia gum and mash this together until well combined. Add about a tablespoon of boiling water and whisk vigorously until everything has infused together.
Boil the sassafras root bark in the water for 20 minutes. Strain.
Add the acacia gum/cannabinoid oil mixture to the hot sassafras tea and whisk vigorously.
Enjoy while still piping hot!
The story of sassafras
When I was growing up (and I am old, so…) as a child my grandfather introduced me to his favorite kind of tea, sassafras tea. This was a popular herbal tea in the Ohio Appalachia where he was from. Sassafras shrub grows wild and was harvested by scraping the bark from the roots of the plant. This tea was traditionally consumed in the spring time for releasing the stagnation of the winter. It’s a fine herbal tea for relieving the doldrums and creating a cheerful and motivated disposition, which is exactly what you need to get busy on your gardening tasks for the upcoming growing season.
But in the late 70’s and 80’s something darkened and tainted this much loved tradition of Appalachia and that was the “just say no” era of the drug war.
You see, sassafras contains safrole, an essential oil compound that is used to manufacture Ecstasy otherwise known as MDMA, a powerful stimulant type of psychedelic. Even today, if you attempt to purchase pure safrole essential oil you may find a few government agencies at your door.
Then came the FDA who declared that sassafras “causes cancer”. And was “unsafe” for consumption. Sassafras root bark and bagged sassafras tea disappeared from American retail shelves for two decades after this. The only way you could get it was to go out in the wild and forage it yourself.
Around the mid to late 2000s you could find it again, the total ban being lifted, and by about 2015, vendors from the areas where it grows wild started selling it on Etsy. It doesn’t grow where I live on the west coast, but I do order mine from a farmer on Etsy who sells the root bark there.
So what is all of this controversy really about? Does it really cause cancer? Should we all be afraid of catching a giant Ecstasy buzz when we drink it? Are we going to get cancer?
When sassafras tea is prepared by boiling the root bark and consumed in moderation, in the spring time, as the old timers of Appalachia did and still do, sassafras is safe, delicious, and non-intoxicating. You might notice a little extra “spring in your step” when you drink this tea, much like consuming caffeine.
If you’ve added something like a THC containing cannabinoid oil to your sassafras tea, then no, I would not suggest driving or anything requiring strict sobriety. But if you are just drinking the tea plain, or with CBD, you will feel just as sober as you did before you prepared and drank the tea. It’s about as psychoactive as any cup of regular old Lipton tea in my opinion.
The controversy over this plant medicine, just like any other plant medicine that offends the authoritarian sensibilities, was really just another witch hunt. Just the usual busy bodies who are always looking, always seeking, always handwringing over what someone else is doing that is none of their damn business.
Happy Spring!