Kava Kava General

What's it supposed to do? I never felt much from drinking it

>kava
kratom master race

>>39570164
Enjoy liver dmg

Cbd master race

>>39570299

http://www.aafp.org/afp/2007/0815/p549.html

>Researchers concluded that liver toxicity is rare and idiosyncratic, with the majority of reported cases resulting from the combination of kava with other hepatoactive agents; the benefits of kava seem to outweigh its risks10

>Cases of liver toxicity have been reported, some requiring organ transplants; kava preparations withdrawn from the market in many countries; the FDA issued an advisory11; later, research suggested that nonstandard inclusion of the kava plant's bark in kava preparations increased toxicity level12

The problem is tainted product with leaves, bark, and stems, or mixing Kava with alcohol or other drugs. Islanders don't use those in Kava preparations and traditionally it was not mixed with alcohol either (although that practice is probably more common after contact with the west).

If you ate potato, tomato, and eggplant green salad, you'd probably fuck up your liver too. Those are toxic parts of the plant. But the fruits (or rather in the case of the potato, the tuber) are perfectly safe.

>>39570396
What does kava do? Is it like acid?

>>39570206

You might have gotten an inferior product with fillers or just crappy quality kava. Good Kava makes you relax. The buzz is pleasant and lasts a couple hours.

It's kind of like alcohol but without such strong effects on coordination. It won't make you slur your words--at least, that never happened to me.

>>39570426

No, nothing like acid. It's a very mild relaxant herb. Well, I say "herb" but it's a root. The leaves are poisonous and should not be consumed. Only the root is consumed traditionally. Shady companies sell kava with leaves and bark as fillers, but this leads to a vastly inferior product that can make you sick.

>>39570223

Why do you prefer kratom over kava? I've never tried kratom.

I drank some kava but I didn't like the way it made me feel. It made my mouth go numb and I felt like I had just drank a glass of lidocaine. My tongue felt numb for the rest of the day.

I didn't really like it that much.

>>39570567
Kratom helped me through heroin withdrawals but MAN does it taste bad

>>39570628

You might have gotten crappy quality kava. There are two main types--noble kava and tudei kava.

The tudei strains are very cheap because they're hardy and grow fast, but they are known to cause side effects like hangovers, and to not give much in the way of pleasant effects. A numb tongue, I believe, can be caused by either tudei or noble strains, but I'm not sure. I'm just getting into kava again after like 7 years.

The noble strains are known for mildly euphoric effects, relaxation, and no hangover. They are hard to grow and grow slowly, so they're choice strains. They cost more and are harder to find--you have to find a reputable source that sells noble-only preparations.

Where are these reputable sources? Is it like this one site I found years back which was selling it for like 100 dollars a bag?

I got 10 grams of powder that's supposed to be 50% kavalactones by weight. So i tried putting 300mg (the average dose adjusted for concentration, according to what I could research about the ratio of kavalactones to root weight etc) and swallowed it but didn't notice shit

I'm thinking about just mixing a gram into some tea and drinking it slowly till I notice something. I'm worried it's the shitty kind of kava, it probably is.

>>39570206
This guy reporting in, I checked the ingredients list on my "kava tea" and it's a bunch of other things with kava root extract added. Is that normal?

>>39570855

The other ingredients are basically fillers to reduce cost. There probably isn't much actual kava in there.

Top quality kava doesn't have fillers--it's straight up kava root.

>>39570845

Unless that was a big bag of top quality kava, as in several pounds of a noble strain, that price was a massive ripoff.

There's an organization called True Kava. I think they just started 2-3 years ago. The best Kava vendors apparently are associated with that group and have submitted their product for testing and have received favorable results.

Like I said, I haven't drunk kava in years. Back then there was no such organization and the quality control wasn't as good as it apparently is today.

I decided to take the plunge and place an order from one of these vendors (I don't want to say which because I don't want people to think I'm a shill).

In a few days I'll make another thread and give a review, once the root arrives and I've gotten to try it. Even then I'm not sure I'll say exactly what vendor I used but it's one of the ones associated with True Kava. I'll at least mention the strain.

Alright I made my crappy extract tea double strength and drank it.

It has a definite effect, I'm definitely relaxed. No euphoria or anything, just relaxed.

>>39571159

See if you develop hangover symptoms a few hours later (if you do, they'll be mild--like a feeling you'd get after having just one or two beers too many).

If not then you may actually have a noble strain (or at least a blend of primarily noble strain with just some tudei filler).

Noble strains apparently give no hangovers. When I used to drink kava back in 2009 or thereabouts, there just wasn't much quality control so I don't know the quality of strains I was getting, but sometimes I would get mild hangovers if I drank several cups in a night.

The strain I ordered is supposed to be 100% noble. I'm actually pretty excited about giving it a go.

>>39571512
you can probably get hangovers from noble if you drink enough or if your specific metabolism is just so

>>39571579

Yeah, I suppose it's possible. I'm no expert on kava, but I reckon consume too much of anything and you might not feel so hot afterward. But the reviews on certified noble preparations are very good and a lot of them mention specifically no hangover even after quite a few strong cups.