Dear Yak,
I need your advice on a very serious matter. My church group runs a community garden in the inner city and I’m in charge. It’s a lovely little garden. Our dedicated and hardworking volunteers grow vegetables, herbs, perennials and anything that’s pretty, really. It’s about celebrating nature and God’s ever abundant gifts.
Well I’ve just discovered a small bed of opium poppies that someone has planted on the sly. Needless to say I’m completely shocked and outraged. But since they’re already there, can you tell me how I can extract the seeds from the poppies to make opium? I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately.
Yours sincerely,
God’s Abundant Gifts
Dear GAG,
An opium poppy’s alkaloids, such as morphine, codeine and thebaine, come in the form of a congealed milky latex, and can be obtained by superficial incision of the poppy capsules during the period of technical ripeness. But I’m sure you can appreciate that, not having a green hoof myself, I know next to nothing about this self-pollinating herbaceous annual belonging to the somniferum species of the Papaver family. So I probably can’t be of much help.
My advice would be to “just say no” to opium poppies as they can be very powerful. Look how quickly they knocked out the Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
(Although personally, if I’m being completely honest, I have a sneaking suspicion that that wasn’t a real lion, just a man in a lion suit).
There are better, safer, simpler ways to induce sleep rapidly. For example, ask someone to show you their holiday photos. Or, even more rapidly, their new baby photos. That should do the trick.
Hope this helps.
With kind regards,
The Yak
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