When I was a kid living in central Kentucky, maybe 1965 or so, I pulled up a huge sassafras root by the side of the road. A couple years ago, almost 50 years later, I put some of this, which is pretty much petrified at his point, into a club project beer. It is cool that the aroma still comes through.
You might not want to drink that. Google "toxicity of sassafras"
http://www.drugs.com/npp/sassafras.html
Of course it's too late now, but I knew of the counter-indications. There was no vomiting, stupor, lowering of body temperature, exhaustion, tachycardia, spasm, hallucinations, paralysis and collapse.
Awe shucks!
Its really a bummer that stuff is so bad for you. My brother has a sassafras tree (I think) growing on his property and we pulled some bark off. It smelled so. frigging. good. I wanted to use it in a beer. So we ground it up with the dremel, and I put some in a simple syrup and added to soda. It was really really really good.
So, while in my head trying to think of what styles it would work well in (saison, belgian pale ale), I googled it, and found a lot of the toxicity stuff. Maybe it was just front of mind, but I did feel pretty dizzy and weird, even if from just a half tsp or so.
I would love to get the extract with the harmful oil removed, but it would have been cool to use it in a beer, just for the 'terroire' effect!