She Has Perfect Lab for Testing Potion--Herself

As much as I hated to admit it, the timing was perfect.

For two days, I’d been interviewing people about echinacea and goldenseal, an herbal cold remedy that some called “miraculous.”

Suddenly, 36 hours into my reporting, it hit me. My throat scratched. My eyes itched. It was the moment everyone had told me about--that first hint of sickness, that grim feeling of impending doom--when echinacea and goldenseal was supposed to do its best work. And I had a bottle sitting right on my desk.

I could say that I opened it strictly as a journalistic experiment. But that would be a lie. The truth is, I didn’t want to get sick. I desperately wanted the popular root extract to work its magic on me.

My husband laughed at me for drinking root potion. He was already sick--he had been sneezing for days when I took my first dose. But when I offered to share, he declined. There was no way he was going to let a cold turn him into a sucker, he said, as he poured a shot glass of Nyquil. I was on my own.

No doubt about it, echinacea and goldenseal tasted awful. But somehow, the foul flavoring only made it seem more potent. As one man I interviewed said: “Something that’s this good, what do you expect it to taste like? Peppermint?”

I kept on swallowing, every two hours. And as I swallowed, I could feel something begin to happen. My throat still throbbed and my nose was starting to run. But I was becoming a believer.

It didn’t hurt when a stranger, overhearing my discussion of echinacea and goldenseal in an elevator at work, smiled warmly and announced that he used it too. Or when my next-door neighbor, a no-nonsense person when it comes to her garden and her grandchildren, revealed that she had used it “for years.”

Each night, I went to bed certain that I was turning the corner. Each morning, I awoke hopeful--but a little more wheezy. Maybe, I thought, I’d feel even worse if I wasn’t taking this stuff.

Four days into my cure--with just two-thirds of a bottle left to go--a nasty cough began chipping away at my resolve. Determined to rally, I called the Marina del Rey firm that makes one of the most popular brands of the echinacea and goldenseal combination and confirmed that I would come take a tour the next day.

But by nightfall, breathing was a trial. Sleeping was impossible. Or it would have been, if I hadn’t raided my husband’s supply of Nyquil. I had given up. The next day, I canceled my herbal tour and stayed in bed. I stayed there the next day as well, and the next.

A week and a half later, I’m still coughing. Part of me wonders what would have happened if I had kept with the herbs. Maybe I didn’t stick with it long enough. Maybe mine was some mutant strain of cold virus, resistant to all antidotes. Maybe, the next time, I should give echinacea and goldenseal another try.

After all, as one devotee told me: “With a cold, it’s going to be over one way or another.”