Although Wild Lettuce is also known as “Opium” lettuce, it doesn’t contain any opium, but has been inhaled, by some, for hallucinogenic highs.
Wild Lettuce is rich with pain relieving lactones in its milky latex sap, with higher levels in older plants.
It is edible, like spinach, but rather bitter unless cooked. Cooking minimizes the bitter flavour.
Wild Lettuce is highly sedative, so, use with caution. Although sedative and pain relieving, it’s gentler on the stomach than true opium and is not addictive. It helps to reduce inflammation in the bronchial tubes and lungs.
Traditionally it has been used for restlessness, anxiety, sleep, pain, shock, menstrual pain, muscular pain, joint pain, colic, warts, atherosclerosis, whooping cough, asthma, urinary tract problems, cough, insomnia, excitability in children, nymphomania, poor circulation, swollen genitals in men and more.
Another useful and interesting herb we all walk past without seeing, thinking it’s just a lowly weed. It’s a powerful beneficial herb.