Thursday, July 18, 2013

[ 28 / 52 ]

Week Twenty-Eight: Sweet Dreams Are Made of This
Week Twenty-Eight

There's a little side street in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland known as Temescal Alley. It is home to maybe a dozen eclectic shops selling everything from plants to clothes to art. My favorite of the lot is a tiny one near the very back of the alley called The Homestead Apothecary, which specializes in dried herbs and teas.

The guy who runs it apparently studied this kind of stuff at a small college somewhere in the northeast (I forget the details). A lot of his jars are full of the usual suspects when it comes to homeopathic remedies, but he also has a number of tea blends that he makes himself. One in particular caught my eye: "Sweet Dreams"

The first time I visited the shop, the description said that it was supposed to give you "vivid dreams". I asked the owner about it and was told that the dreams were the result of mugwort, while other components like lavender, rose and chamomile help you sleep restfully. A quick google search for mugwort showed that it was indeed associated with particularly lucid dreams. Shady as buying an ounce of herbs to give me crazy dreams may sound, I decided to give it a shot and headed back to the store a few weeks later to pick some up. The description had been changed to "For epic sleep time adventures" - I was sold.

I have never been much of a dreamer. Most nights I don't dream at all (or, if I do, I wake up with no recollection of them), which is not very exciting at all. I think this is because I'm a pretty sound sleeper and dreaming usually goes down during lighter sleep cycles. In any case, I was looking forward to finally discovering what wild adventures had been locked up in my subconcious.

 For the past week or so, I've been having a cup of the tea every night before bed and it has been working - sort of. I have definitely been dreaming much more than before and remember far more about them. However, they haven't exactly been all that epic. Usually the dreams reflect something that has been going on in my life (which can make things interesting on nights when I've been watching The Wire right before bed!), but they never get too wild. It's good fun, but I'm thinking of picking up a little extra mugwort next time to see if it will kick things up a notch. Hopefully those epic sleep time adventures await!

1 comment:

  1. Homestar, if you want wacky dreams just get sinus surgery and follow it up with 5 antibiotics atomized into your nose every night. That'll get ya.

    ReplyDelete