Regulated or restricted

Pacific ceremonial root for social ease and muscle quiet — liver-safe only as traditional aqueous preparations.

Peppery, muddy, and numbing. Traditional water extract is earth, not dessert.

Harvest: 3–5 years in the tropics

A threatened woodland root, bitter and berberine-yellow — not an everyday immune tonic.

Shockingly bitter and yellowing — berberine on the tongue.

Harvest: 5–7 years in a woodland bed

A dioecious annual used as fiber, seed food, and — where legal — as a medicine for pain, nausea, and spasticity.

Where legal: resin, citrus, pine, or spice depending on chemotype. Hemp seed is nutty.

A Southeast Asian coffee-family tree whose leaves act on opioid receptors — used for pain and withdrawal, and capable of dependence.

Bitter green leaf, tea-like and astringent. Extracts taste of chemistry.

A well-known psychoactive woodland and pasture genus, now in clinical trials for depression — still illegal to grow or possess in most places.

Fresh mushrooms are farinaceous (raw-dough); dried are dusty and bitter. Not a culinary species.

A small, spineless desert cactus, sacred in Native American Church ceremony and illegal to possess for almost everyone else.

Intensely bitter, alkaline cactus. Ceremony, not cuisine.

An Andean shrub whose leaf is a traditional altitude chew — and the agricultural source of cocaine.

Traditional leaf is green, tea-like, and slightly numbing. Isolated cocaine is not a food.

A Mazatec ceremonial sage whose diterpene salvinorin A is a brief, intense kappa-opioid hallucinogen — not a recreational party leaf.

Green sage, then a heavy chemical bitterness on the extract.

An Amazonian liana, the MAOI half of a ceremonial brew — listed here so the legal and medical stakes are visible.

The vine decoction is famously bitter, woody, and hard to keep down.

Ma huang — the desert shrub behind ephedrine. A regulated stimulant, not a kitchen tea.

Astringent, pine-desert, and sharply bitter. Not a pleasant cup.

The nightshade that built an industry — a teaching plate for nicotine, addiction, and why 'natural' is not safer.

Cured leaf is sweet-hay, leather, and bitterness. Green leaf is rank and should not be tasted as a curiosity.