Feeling relaxed, warm and cuddly is hard for an urban male struggling to make his rent, who is so healthy he doesn't drink, eat milk products, or engage in romantic activity (except Fridays, 5-7). So this week I decided to ask myself, "Erich," I asked, "What's your secret for seeming so relaxed?"

Well, "seem" is the operative word. Underneath this calm exterior is a raging torrent of anxiety that shows itself only in tension around the jaw and a tendency to turn around and scream  "WHAT?!!?!?!?" when someone calls my name.

The question I decided to ask myself then was whether it would be possible to tame this wild beast of stress without the benefit of prescribed or un-prescribed mood altering drugs. It turns out there are many teas and herbs out there that can not only relieve anxiety, but give you a vitamin and anti-oxidant boost as well. The world of herbs and their myriad properties has not even been scratched along its bark-like surface by the scientific tools of man.

The first I'd like to discuss is HOPS. This is the plant-derived ingredient that all the beer ads talk about along with barley and malt as being the "finest." Well, finest or not hops isn't particularly great tasting. But it turns out there's some magic to the old hops madness. On its own, non-fermented, hops can be a great non-addictive sedative! You didn't hear it from me, I'm just quoting botanical.com. So if you wind up in the hospital after eating six bags of bad hops stolen from the local barn, it's your fault, not mine.  

It must be reasonably safe, though, as hops can be found at your local herb store, online, or even at health food stores in loose tea form.  Hopsdirect.com is an online web source I found, which proudly states that hops have nervine, diuretic and anodiyne (sic) properties. I looked up anodyne on www.dictionary.com: "Capable of soothing or eliminating pain. Relaxing: anodyne novels about country life."

When down on 1st Ave and 10th Street, stop into Angelica's Herbs. I always judge an herb shop by how mysterious and other-worldly the people working there are, and in this case they score a four out of four. They seem to materialize and rematerialize from moment to moment, as if constantly re-inventing and defining their molecular structure. And they offer good vegetarian cuisine as well! What was their secret, I asked?
 
"Linden," was their stone-faced reply.
Linden? I went there to get passionflower to go with my hops, but the long haired old shaman behind the counter assured me no one used passionflower any more; linden was the way to go. So I took the man at his word and here I am, four days later, through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole, calm and serene as a caterpillar in the center of a spinning mushroom cap.

 You can of course add your own flavoring relaxing herbs to this mix. Lavender, for example, is relaxing just from the smell of it, as is jasmine.

Another great herb for this sort of thing is chamomile. In fact chamomile is so perfect that it relaxes you without you even knowing you've been "relaxed" by chamomile. One might be sitting there in bed, their jaw as clenched as a jaw can be, their fists folded up like dead man's claws, trying to sleep as they imagine their job interview at the corporation from hell tomorrow. So what does one do when they are in this situation? They get up and make a nice chamomile tea and suddenly they're coloring in coloring books and singing little made up songs and then suddenly it's morning and they're so refreshed they decide they don't even want to go to that damned corporate meeting. They're going to fly out to Nova Scotia and raise salmon and live happily ever after.

I like salmon, but I generally avoid chamomile, even if my apartment is cripplingly expensive and I would love the clean Canadian air. Instead I add a splash of sage into my concoction. Why sage? Because according to Mrs. Grieve at herbs.com, it's useful as an emmenagogue. She also adds that "A cup of the strong infusion will be found good to relieve nervous headache."  

Mainly it's because it tastes like sage, and thus clashes rather nicely with the hops. Without some over-riding flavor, the hops can dominate and control the bouquet of this formidable mess of herbs I've now created.

The best way to get a tea out of all this stuff is to use a good medium sized French press, and just make sure the whole bottom is covered. People who really know what they are doing might suggest buying a little scale to measure out your herbs in grams, but, hey don’t even get me started on that. First of all, shouldn't we adjust herbal intakes according to people's body weight and metabolism? People who say "add exactly one gram of wormwood" to a witch's brew, let's say -- what if the wormwood you have is ten times stronger than normal wormwood? What if it's weaker? What if you are addicted to wormwood and worms are flowing like a river out your mouth (which happened to someone in a dream I had Tuesday night)? I am NOT going to let that happen to me, so I eyeball my herbs while using inner forces to guide me towards the perfect amount to add to my herbal mix, usually around 1-2 tbsps of each.

Add some cinnamon and or nutmeg for "heat" if it's winter. Let steep for five minutes or so, then sweeten with a bucket load of honey. Hops is not the sweetest tasting stuff in the world, unless you are a big beer guzzler, and if so, why are you even reading this far?   But like beer, hops is an acquired taste and once you associate the long lasting feeling of alert relaxation to it, you will gradually learn to love the taste as much as your big Harley driving brother in law loves his Budweiser. The trick is, your liver will be happier, and you'll be THIN, and sober, and not in jail.