This speaks to one of my pet peeves, that lots of brands of herbal teas (e.g. Traditional Medicinals, Yogi Tea) put licorice in most of their tea blends. They do this because it tastes great, makes the tea taste naturally sweet and warming + counters the bitter flavor of the other herbs in the blend without actually adding sugar. Unfortunately that's not ideal when you're drinking several cups of Throat Coat tea cause of a sore throat, or their stress reducer/sleepytime teas before bed because it raises cortisol and BP.

Some folks go off the deep end and try to self-medicate everything with herbs, not realizing that they can have adverse effects as severe and long-lasting as any pharmaceutical, or that in many (most?) cases pharmaceuticals are safer. Other folks discount them completely, and assume they have zero physiological effects whatsoever, as though cannabis and coffee don't exist, which I think is also mistaken. Nothing boils my blood more though than amateur herbalists reading an intro book or a few wiki articles or watching a few videos on TikTok and thinking they're qualified to tell people to take shit like gotu kola or ginko biloba for memory, nevermind that these things probably don't help much with that, and worse can thin the blood and lower blood pressure to dangerous levels.

Anyway, I think brands of tea like TM and Yogi contribute to this (admittedly in a small way) with their irresponsible formulations

Thx for reading my rant