You don’t have to travel far to find magic. On the corner of seventh street and Hearst Avenue is a place where magical things happen if you are curious enough to walk in. With the door usually ajar, Alembique Apothecary has been supplying Berkeley with awe, wonder, and medicine for the past eleven years. Walking in, you feel like you’ve entered someone’s private home, their living room waiting for you to come and stay for a while. That’s how shop owner, or better yet, shop wizard Bee describes the space. You might not be able to tell what exactly the space is for, piled jars everywhere with mysterious dried herbs, intricately placed trinkets that seem to have grown directly out of the floorboards, the smell of spice and oils filling the room. “A theater of sensations” as Bee would put it. A large, round, wooden table lives in the middle of the room, covered by Bee's laboratory of creation. In the corner is the Golden Chair, thick arms and cushions waiting to be sat on and relaxed into. You won’t get the answer to the mystery you’re experiencing just by asking, but stick around long enough and you’ll learn. Alembique Apothecary is a place to heal, to discover, and to grow if you’re willing and open to the magic it has to offer.

As a society we’ve become reliant on a panacea in the form of a diagnosis followed by a prescription. But we all have problems that a doctor or a pill bottle can’t solve. Answers to the questions that plague us: our aches, our bruises, our needs are hard to understand and hard to identify. Maybe what you need is a cup of tea, a tincture, and being at the right place at the right time. People seem to have forgotten that the human body is deeply connected to plants through the physical elements of their make-up and their power to heal human bodies should not be underestimated. Bee’s mission is to provide care. Plain and simple. He describes his process of going through the “duties of care”: creating a space to welcome people in the living room, deeply and intently listening, and finally, facilitating healing. Quietly greeting you as you walk in, Bee takes the time to make you feel seen. Even if you don’t know what you're looking for, or why you walked into his store in the first place, there is an energy that invites you to stay. After hearing about your needs, your desires, your ailments, he begins the process of discovering your medicine. Roaming around the space, opening jars, talking, smelling, thinking. He takes just the right amount of thought and attention to find what is best for you and only you. Sometimes sending you home with a goodie bag, or if he needs more time to ponder your situation, an invitation to come back.

Alembique lives on through the spoken words of Bee’s loyal customers. You just have to be lucky enough to find it, and if you do, it’s probably because the universe sent you there, or in other words, magic.

Berkeley native, Deborah Cohan, patron and friend of Bee, has been going to Alembique for about ten years now. Deborah was introduced to Alembique through her best friend, who struggled with recurrent breast cancer and turned to Alembique for the herbs and approaches to healing. A cancer survivor herself, Deborah would often accompany her to talk with Bee, buy herbs and spend time together. It was a ritual between friends, and it was the essence of the place that was their medicine. “It became sort of a healing for her”, Deborah attested. She recalled a time she was there alone, sitting in the Golden Chair, listening to Bee concoct a custom blend of herbs for her while she reclined, eyes closed. He would bring her different essential oils to smell before putting them into the blend. As she leaned over to smell the final product, a profound feeling of familiarity washed over her. “I knew the smell, and it had brought me back to a forest I knew I had lived in at some point.” After her friend passed away, she continued to frequent Alembique, bringing along her two young children and it became a sanctuary for the three of them. “All three of us would pile into the golden chair, and it was magical”. The apothecary was more than just a sanctuary, but a home in which she healed, where she was met with humility and attention and eye contact. A place where her children had formative experiences reminiscent of the taste of licorice that Bee gave to them in their younger years. Deborah spoke about Alembique with the care and love of a family member.

Andrew, another Berkeley local and store regular, was introduced to the shop when his then therapist recommended he try using herbs as an alternative form of healing. Andrew had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and he recognized this as something that needed to be addressed not just through his mental health but also his nervous system, an integrative approach. Being from Berkeley, Andrew had passed by Alembique many times before, but when he finally ventured in, he realized that he had uncovered a hidden gem, a secret hideaway in plain sight. Intrigued by the store with all of its jars and dainty decorations, it was at that moment that he fell in love with herbalism and has been practicing utilizing their healing methods ever since. “He keeps the space so alive”, is how Andrew lovingly described Bee’s way with Alembique. Andrew found his medicine with Bee and is now able to sustain his mental health without extensive use of pharmaceuticals, a goal that he very much desired. There’s a sense of community Andrew feels every time he’s in the store, always interesting characters coming through the door, everyone welcomed and themselves, “a non-judgmental kind of space”. An essential ingredient to the perfect blend of herbal remedies that Bee stocks is the energy brought in by the people you meet there. He described what he often found there as a “spontaneous, synchronistic connection” with the people who wandered in during his visits, completing the impact of his times there. Somehow always giving him what he needed, it was “a magical doorway into this other world”.

Jars of herbs and spices at the apothecary.

Herbal remedies and healing methods are ancient practices woven into many cultures around the world. Walk into any average apothecary shop and you’ll be able to find whatever supplement or essential oil trending on TikTok. Is that really any different from the quick fix solutions that society has been programmed to seek out with western medicine? We’ve become a society of fads, exposed to a never-ending supply of “knowing”. But where is that getting us? At Alembique, Bee worries about the path we’re on today, but to truly understand where he’s coming from, you’ll have to go there for yourself, and until then, here’s a taste of his wisdom.

“Actually, I care about your generation more than any because you've been cheated most. Should I worry? I'm angry on your behalf. More than almost anyone else. But I think that given where we are on the eleventh hour of this planet and all the stuff that's happening, the more you folks find your radical hearts and minds and nurture it, the more you will be empowered. Even though it's a bit punk and naughty, don’t be compliant and obedient rather than live in fear. Live with a sense of outrage, feel outrage because you've been robbed. Your future has been taken from you…The air, the soil, the water has been poisoned and don't accept it, that’s the first radical thing is you don't accept it. There is no place where you will be free of everything. But don't accept what you've been given…Find your radical heart and nourish it…Most ancient cultures tell you that if you're not connected to the Earth, nothing else will follow you. The mother is the earth. So the plants are part of that. So are the animals or the insects. So are the microorganisms. And so are we, that's the connection here, through plants.”

So you see, Bee wants you to know that there’s still magic in this world, you just have to take the time to listen, come together, and see it.
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