Not sure why, unless you mean benzos. Try Melissa officinalis tea. A little above average does makes you quite sleepy and it's herbal.
Uh-oh. Just because something's herbal doesn't make it a good thing.
In fact most modern medicines have a "herbal" origin.
The trouble with "herbs" is that they contain such a complex array of compounds that the causes of any side-effects are really hard to determine in clinical trials.
Whereas if certain chemicals have been isolated from the herbal origin (and probably synthesized because it's cheaper to do so), then at least you can be confident which chemical is causing the effect.
I'd not heard of melissa being used as a soporific before though. Still, according to my book, it is a kind of sedative so why not?
I just eat the stuff in salads. Quite a nice lemon flavour.
One soporific that I do know works well is Valerian roots. (And they sell it in tablet form in health food shops too). The roots themselves don't have a pleasant taste at all. But it will send you to sleep. It is said to be addictive.
The trouble with these things, though, especially with Valerian, is that they work pretty well the first time but less good on subsequent occasions. As I think the body gets habituated to them very quickly.
And the trouble again with soporifics in general is that they tend to change the quality of the sleep you get. And you also wake up after about 4 hours. Not feeling a lot better for having slept.
But maybe that's just me.
Still, everyone's a free agent, so if you want to take herbal remedies then you're definitely free to do so. But you know that anyway. (I'm going to have to write this sort of comment in every single post I make on CFC from now on I think. Which is a bit of a pain.)
Maybe I'll cook up some generic signature to this effect.