This post to CureZone is not to give people ideas of how to get high.

This post is a WARNING to those looking for natural alternatives to pharmaceuticals and stimulants etc... and to help recognize abuse of poppy seeds in ourselves and others because it can ruin a life and can kill.

Poppy seeds contain the opiates opium, morphine, and codeine. They come from the same poppy plant that supply morphine and codeine to pharmaceutical companies. It is widely known that a poppy seed bagel can give a false positive reading on a drug test from trace amounts of these substances.

I tried consuming poppy seeds in bulk without knowing exactly what the active ingredient was. I knew that poppy seeds were natural, inexpensive, widely available, and had some sort of effect on mood. No, I did not connect poppy seeds with the "illegal poppy plant" and hard drugs because I assumed that something that is purchased off the spice rack at the grocery store is not a source of a hard illegal substance that will put people in prison for selling or distributing, and get people hooked as addicts, and possibly kill. Possession of poppy seeds is as simple as going to the grocery store, but possession of the poppy plant that produced those seeds will land you in prison - they both contain the same substances, just in different amounts.

I consumed the poppy seeds and they worked. They made me feel good and took the edge off, and the effect lasted a day or so. I tried taking more and the effect was the same but more pronounced. Overall I consumed them twice over a period of four days of so.

I then researched the poppy seed to see what exactly it was in them that produced this effect on me. I was shocked that I was getting high off opiates, morphine and codeine, and that ended my short lived innocent experiment with bulk poppy seeds. I am old enough to know what drugs like morphine and codeine do to people - any benefit or high is paid back at some point in the future with an equal but opposite low. Tolerance builds until you need to take more and more to get the same high, and eventually you need the drug just to feel neutral like you did before consuming the drug. No thanks.

I found out that people make "poppy seed tea" from store-bought poppy seeds, and they end up getting seriously addicted. The concentration of opiates in poppy seeds varies from source to source and batch to batch which can lead to lethal overdoses. A few kids are killing themselves because they consume enough poppy seed tea to stop the heart. Others become shut-ins at home, their lives deteriorating into a downward spiral of addiction, looking forward only to the next delivery of bulk poppy seeds in the mail.