BY NICOLA GROBE
March 2013: My husband likes it cold in the house and I need it warm, this causes a constant struggle. It had been around 50 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 degrees Celsius for the first months of 2013 in our house and I was constantly on the verge of a bladder infection. One night it got really bad again with intensive pain that I screamed for hours. I drank my Juniper Berry drink made with Juniper Berry oil in water and the pain dissolved. I picked Cedar, Spruce and Grand Fir and made tea with it to heal the bladder infection and the bladder infection was almost healed after a few days. I went outside into the garden again and cut off a few small plant twigs with my pruner. This time I picked up a twig of Pieris Japonica, at that time I thought it was either Blueberry or Bleeding Heart which are safe to make tea with. The flowers of Pieris Japonica are very similar to those of the Blueberry and Bleeding Heart, they are small bubble formed flowers in light pink and they smell like bubble gum. But the leaves are very different, they are elongated like Rhododendron and Oleander, I should have known not to be quick to categorize the plant into the non toxic group. But something deep inside of me wanted to play the Russian Roulette, it felt like “whatever happens”.
Someone who lived here before us planted those next to different Blueberry brushes. Pieris Japonica looks lovely. I brought my greenery into the kitchen and made tea with it. After the first cup of tea I felt really good, I felt less depressed, more relaxed, my body movements became slower, I thought nothing about it. After the second cup of tea I began to sweat out something that felt like menthol or a form of menthol, I thought that I was just detoxifying and I laughed a lot while I was washing dishes. After I drank the third cup of tea my body movements became more like in a slow motion movie, I became very relaxed, my heart rate slowed down and I felt a bit tipsy, but again thought nothing of it, however that in itself was part of the plant’s effect, it all felt normal. After washing the dishes I sat down on my chair at the table to do some sewing and I began to see light reflexes in my visual cortex, I saw a large sun surrounded by black flickering energy, the sun widened and moved. I thought, oh, nice and again it appeared all normal.
But then my prefrontal cortex figured out that I was not supposed to see a glowing sun on a rainy day and when it was already dark outside. That’s when I realized that something was wrong. I was very relaxed and my relaxation collided with my newly aroused fear in a weird internal struggle. I liked looking at the light images of the flickering sun and other fractal shaped things that glowed so beautifully. I kept looking and looking, leaning back and forth on my chair, my head hanging lower and lower over the table. Suddenly there was a small eye in the middle of the large sun. The eye was shaped like the eye of my self painted Blue God, rectangular with a square pupil in the middle and the eye of the Blue God stared relentlessly at me with a very grave expression as if it wanted to tell me something that was very serious like “You know what you have to do, you know that only you can take the responsibility, you know that you alone only have to make this next step”. I stared at the eye for a long time, I lost track of how long. I realized that the plant was not Blueberry or Bleeding Heart.
I realized that it was a mind altering plant, possibly Oleander, and that I had to get up in order to avoid falling on the ground. I got slowly up and staggeringly walked to the refrigerator where I was about to sink down. I said “Paul I think I am going to pass out”. He came out of his office and led me over to the recliner chair where I sank down, leaned back and became unconscious. Paul kept shaking my shoulder to wake me up. He said that I should not fall asleep because that can cause a cardiac arrest. He got mad at me insinuating that I was just faking this behavior. My heart rate was very slow at that moment. After a while, maybe a few seconds, I sat back up and felt very nauseated.
I told Paul to give me Dr. Schulze’s Intestinal Formula Number 2, the charcoal and bentonite clay capsules, with water. I took those but not long afterwards I had to wobble over to the kitchen sink to spit them out again except for a few that probably had already been dissolved in the stomach and which possibly saved my life. Sometimes charcoal and clay, even just a small amount can make the difference between dying and living. I made it to my bathroom where I vomited and had diarrhea at the same time. I was terrified and thought that I might die.
I told Paul to call the ambulance. They picked me up with a stretcher because I could not walk any longer. They monitored my heart rate and were worried about the slow vital signs. In the ambulance I was not nauseated any longer but still very dizzy and my body was ice cold. I was freezing even though it was warm in the ambulance. The paramedics should wrap electric heating blankets around patients who have very slow vital signs. Almost every time a patient is sick or injured she should be heated up because the body is in that moment not able to provide its own heat due to the decreased blood flow.
Same happened in the ER. They did not have electric heating blankets for me and I froze the whole time I was there until I sat up after about an hour. Paul and our dog, Kenny, were there waiting for me and I signed myself out releasing the ER from liability.
We drove back home and I was so glad to be alive and feeling much better. That same night I studied plants on the Internet to find out what the name of this plant was. The only approximate identification I could make was that to Oleander because the leaves and the symptoms are similar to those of Pieris Japonica. I made a video of the plant and showed it on YouTube and someone from Germany told me that it was Pieris Japonica. I saw several videos of Pieris Japonica and was glad to have found the name of my plant.
Over the next days and weeks I felt a strong connection to Pieris Japonica. Every day I went outside to touch this beautiful plant and smell on the light pink bubble gum smelling bubble flowers. I wondered whether drinking a tea of a plant even if its a poisonous plant causes an energy connection through the mixing of the two species’ molecules, the flower’s and mine. Yes, it sounds new agey to a skeptic, but it is a strong sensation for me even though I am a very scientific person. I noticed that the plant has medicinal properties as well as nerve toxins. It made my skin smoother, some wrinkles are gone, my hands used to be rough and are smooth now, my pores in my face used to be larger and they are barely visible now. The plant blocked the bacteria that caused my bladder infection because one or 2 hours of freezing would otherwise have flared up the bladder infection hugely. I became more calm even days after the event and still am calmer than before the event. My heart rate has generally calmed down. I became even more philosophical than ever before after I had this experience with the plant. I have eternally many questions now.
Why did I see the eye of my Blue God? Was it a hallucination? Did my brain create this image due to stored memories? Why did it put the eye into the middle of the sun? Why did the sun and the eye feel so alive and conscious? What did they want to tell me?
