Poppy Tea - Preparation and Consumption

Preparation and Consumption

There are many different preparations of poppy tea. Most methods call for the "poppy straw" material (the seedpod and sometimes the stem) only to be used. Most methods call for the straw to be ground into a fine powder. A fine powder is needed because most of the opium latex is located within the cell walls of the pod. The seeds are discarded most of the time because they do not contain a high enough alkaloid content. However, there are dozens of poppy seed tea recipes. A quick and efficient method is to use a stovetop espresso maker. This results in a fairly concentrated beverage and does not appear to destroy the alkaloids despite involving steam passing through the poppy straw.

There is much debate on the best preparations of poppy tea. Many claim that boiling rapidly is the best, others insist on strictly cold water, and even more stand behind steeping in hot water. Some methods call for citric acid or acetic acid (vinegar) to be used during extraction. The purpose of the addition of citric and/or acetic acid is to lower the pH level of the neutral water (pH7) down to a slightly acidic pH of 6-6.5, which is optimal for morphine extraction, although it is disputed between varying studies.

When the tea is drunk, its effects begin after about 30 minutes, lasting up to 12 hours. It is intensely bitter and some users add other flavorings to the tea to mask the bitterness. It is wise for the user to be careful with the amount they consume if the tea comes out to be very bitter and very dark. Grapefruit juice and/or cimetidine or hydroxyzine may also inhibit liver enzyme activation, thus increasing the strength and duration of the opiate effects.

Decoctions of poppy straw using alcohol as the solvent, such as vodka, slivovitz, gin, grain alcohol, or reagent-grade anhydrous ethanol can extract alkaloids over a period of hours without heating; the resulting liquid can be used as is or the liquid evaporated over low heat or in a pan to produce a liquid concentrate with less alcohol (heating to 80 °C to effect fractional distillation by selectively boiling off the alcohol) or a solid which can be processed further into a material similar to Concentrate of Poppy Straw or processed by other methods to be used in a manner similar to opium derived from latex, e.g. processed into smoking opium or used to create medicinal products or extract alkaloids. Quite often home users will produce a product similar to laudanum, paregoric, or Black Drop (non-alcoholic laudanum) from published recipes with the concentrate from poppy straw decoctions, and if the initial liquid is to be completely dried, isopropyl or methyl alcohol can be used, as can other suitable organic solvents. Processing of the dry extract to isolate morphine is also possible, although the amount resulting from low to moderate to reasonably large numbers of heads can be barely visible to the naked eye. While the quantity can vary vastly depending on strain, cultivar, growing conditions, harvesting and drying and many other factors, large poppy heads can contain up to 80 mg of anhydrous morphine base equivalent, with the actual percentage extracted also being over a huge range. The production of black tar heroin starting from poppy straw decoctions is of course also possible.

Seeds may also be used in large quantities to produce a decoction by agitating them in a solution of slightly acidified water. There are also reports of using plain tap water in the process of making poppy tea with seeds. This consists of washing the seeds of opium residue that has coated the outer part of the seeds during processing from the pod. Processing includes crushing the fresh pod, to release the seeds thus causing some opium from the pod to come into contact with the seeds. Untreated poppy seeds may contain upwards of 330–515 mg of morphine and 75–200 mg of codeine per kilo of seeds, whereas most seeds available commercially have been washed which cuts the alkaloid content by 50 per cent or more; this adds even more to the batch-to-batch variability in content, as noted below with respect to the California overdose case.

An urban legend asserts that commercially available seeds are deliberately sprayed with dilute solutions of pesticides, particularly organophosphates and carbamates, or other powerful laxative agents at quantities which become clinically significant if a large quantity of seeds or the washings thereof are consumed. Diarrhoea which comes in the hour after consumption of tea is more likely the result of the interaction of other alkaloids present such as papaverine, noscapine, narceine or others. In the case of tea made from the straw, even more likely to cause this is the fact that the pods contain significant quantities of dietary fiber.