It's not a bad thought to think about producing your own medicines. One of the main reasons for people being homesteaders and preppers is to strive to be as autonomous, independent and self-sustaining as possible and not have to be reliant on or expect other agencies to be responsible for our personal, individual well being. That includes trying to be as sensible and responsible as possible for our own health with the foods, medicines and supplements we use. As such, it's a good thing to learn about and practise herbalism from both a medicinal and culinary standpoint.
But growing poppies for medicine is a different kettle of fish from other kinds of herbalism. There are over 800 known species of poppies and not all of them are in the same genera or have the same functions. There is something like 42 different genera (sub-families) of plants in the overall poppy family. Some species are beautiful and may even look like opium poppies but they don't possess much (if any) medicinal properties. And then there are a good sized range of species that possess safe, mild, general purpose medicinal properties suitable for human use, nothing extreme. And then there are other species that have a large variety of medical uses, some of which can be deadly if you don't understand the powerful alkaloids they contain and the mechanisms of what you're working with.
The commonly sold packages of mixed wild flower seeds that have poppy seeds in the mix may have the seeds of 10 or more different species of wild and domesticated poppies present in the mix,
some of which can be helpful medicinally. But in those wild flower seed mixes it will not be a common thing to find the seeds of the opium poppy
Papaver somniferum in the mix. So if anybody is going to grow poppies for the purpose of producing strong medicine to relieve extreme pain they will need to FIRST learn about the plants and learn about what species is best for their purposes, and what poppies might be the most dangerous to one's health to be playing around with.
If you really want to grow poppies for making your own medicines my suggestion for beginning herbalists is to EDUCATE yourself first and start small first with safer and simpler plants such as
California poppies and
Celandine poppies (both of which are often found in the wild flower seed mixes). Become learned and experienced in the growing, preparation and extraction processes and with their medicinal effects on your system. Then with greater experience start working your way up to learning about some of the somewhat bigger guns like
Common Red poppy for example, and thence on to the most potent and biggest gun of them all which is the Opium poppy,
Papaver somniferum. Bearing in mind that Papaver somniferum is also the most addictive and can be the most dangerous and destructive of them all.
Here is some information about just a few of the most popular species of poppies found growing in ornamental gardens in North America.
https://www.americanmeadows.com/content/wildflower-seeds/poppy-seeds/all-about-poppies
My favourites to grow for making safer, not addictive medicines are the California and Celandine poppies because the whole plants - roots, leaves, flowers, seeds and all - can be utilized. The Common Red poppy (
Papaver rhoeas) is my favourite poppy for making stronger pain relieving, relaxing and anti-anxiety tinctures made from the latex obtained from its seed capsules .
.