Just wanted to give an update on the 'stupefying essence'. I think it's pretty well tweaked.
1. Take some fresh yarrow flower and leaf and chew and pack it in your cheek. This grows wild in many places, at least in the northeast. It's good yarrow if it makes your cheek a little numb (it's probably just because it is very bitter).
2. Chew some milk thistle and add this to your cheek.
3. Suck the juices for about 10 minutes. Eventually they will dissolve enough from your saliva to swallow.
3b. Optionally consume gruit kombucha (this contains the popular gruit herbs, myrica gale, yarrow, marsh rosemary, and heather tips). This seems to help but not be absolutely necessary.
4. After another 10-15 minutes the yarrow will start to make you feel a little funny, this is the time to start consuming homebrew.
5. Now enjoy your homebrew. For some reason it doesn't seem to take much homebrew at all to bring on very positive effects. It's somewhat strange, it's a nice alcohol buzz but there is definitely a clearness and enhancement of mind not present without the yarrow. The milk thistle definitely has an effect also - originally this was added because of its known protective effects on the liver. Additional note, for some reason if the homebrew happens to contain unpeeled fresh ginger root and honey in primary, it seems to be more powerful.
These herbs are not at all bunk, sources such as Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers indicate these herbs were traditionally used for this purpose. Some say the gruit herbs had effect because they actually had ergot on them; that may be correct, I don't notice as big an effect from the gruit herbs -- except for yarrow that is the key player here.