Making Medicine - St. John's Wort

It’s high summer and many weeds aka medicinal plants are at their prime. I’ve been collecting St. John’s Wort flowers for a couple weeks and leaving them to dry. Yesterday I put them in a jar and infused them in 40% vodka. I’ll press out the medicine in about 2 weeks and I’ll have me some fresh, high potency, local St. John’s Wort to ease my nervous system when it gets a bit overwhelmed. I make some of my own herbal extracts because much of the herbal stuff out there is overpriced and low quality/low potency. I’ve had my suspicions that some of the pharmaceutical companies are actually associated with some of the major herbal brands and they intentionally produce supplements that are subpar, then people buy the supplements, they don’t work well, and then they lose interest in herbal medicine thinking it’s hogwash.

Ive been making my own herbal medicine from local “weeds” and purchased bulk dried herbs from certain reputable gardens. I control the potency and make far superior extracts, not because I’m awesome, but because I’m in it for the quality, not the profit.

It’s the same thing with food. You can get a cheap egg and it’s … an egg. Then you get an “organic, free range” egg and it’s like, a good egg. Then you get an egg from your neighbor that has chickens that roam around all day and eat grubs and grasses and you’re like, wtf?

Making Herbal tinctures is quite a beautiful process. I collected these St. John’s Wort flowers a couple weeks ago and let them dry.

Plants have thousands of different “chemical constituents”. It’s the combination of these different chemicals that really makes the medicine. Alcohol is often more effective than hot water at teasing out the phytochemicals (healing stuff). But with some plants hot water tea (infusion) is the best way to go.