How Kava Kills Alcohol Cravings — Without Addiction | #181

I was ready to start a religion around it. I'm looking for some sort of off-ramp. If I could just find a way to stabilize my nervous system. I was looking for anything that addressed certain pathways, certain receptors in the brain and nervous system. He just asked me, he's like, well dude, have you tried kava? I'm like, you know, surely you've tried kava, right? Kava has a really super interesting characteristic we call reverse tolerance. Not only does it give you the short-term therapeutic effect, over time it helps in the rehabilitation process. Who do you think these kava are going to help people with stress and anxiety. And so it's actually really good for interrupting the pattern of a lot of addictive behaviors. I've had people use it like for to help them stop scrolling. And whenever people take it into their body, it transfers that adaptability to the human because it's one organism to the next. Really beautiful thing. I was just like, my gosh, it was the perfect thing that I needed. So I ended up in the situation where like serendipitously I was at the crux of this and I got a call from a friend of mine who I had met like 2 years prior when we were traveling around to places. Right. And I just met them. And this person happened to be from Vanuatu. It's in the South Pacific, South Pacific Islands. So it's kind of next to Fiji. So if you think about like where we're at right now in America, it's like almost on the other side of that. Like it's, it's literally like across the world. But he contacted me about something else. So I talked to him. I'm like, I'm looking for some sort of off-ramp. If I could just find a way to stabilize my nervous system to where I wasn't reacting, that I could accept water and accept food, then it's like, there's gotta be a strategy there. I was looking for anything that addressed certain pathways, certain receptors in the brain and nervous system as benzodiazepine drugs, 'cause those helped in the beginning. He just asked me, he's like, well dude, have you tried kava? I'm like, you know, surely you've tried kava, right? I was like, yeah, like I tried what I thought was kava. Kava is a stress-relieving, relaxing, but yet mentally optimizing plant. Plant medicine traditionally prepared like a tea that's produced from the roots of this medicinal plant that grows in that part of the world in South Pacific Island cultures. It grows exclusively there. The indigenous islanders of the South Pacific have been using this medicine for over 3,000 years. And it's a medicine that's produced, like I said, from the roots and what's called the basal stump, which is like the stump that comes just above the ground before it branches off into its stalks, into its stems. And so that part, the basal stump and the roots, have all the medicine in them but without any of the plant defense alkaloids that the plant uses to defend itself. You know, they've been producing this medicine as a drink. It became a core staple of the entire culture, something that was used as a spiritual sacrament that brings peace and stability to the nervous system, that opens the heart. They call it a hope— a heart opener because it induces empathy in a person while they're on it as well. It brings out empathy and kind of expands the mind without putting you into an altered state where you can't function. You're still totally present, but it's a very protective substance as well too. It's protective to the nervous system, and whenever people take it into their body, it transfers that adaptability to the human because it's one organism to the next. Really beautiful thing. It's an organism that's adapted to be very compatible with human biology. There's a relationship there. I think of whenever you take a plant medicine, I kind of think of it as forming a relationship with another organism. Interesting.

You said you had tried something before and it didn't really work for you. Correct.

Correct.

But then this friend has access to something better.

Yes, exactly. And so I had read all about this, and then I tried what I thought was kava. Kava extracts are what you primarily get in the United States because the official definition of kava, as stated by the Vanuatu Act in 2002, is the water and pressure extracted drink or elixir— it's called drink— prepared from exclusively the roots and basal stump of Piper methysticum, which is the plant. Kava is one of those that heavily relies on the entourage effect of its active constituents. The most active constituents are called kavalactones. They're these little lipid-like compounds that whenever you produce and squeeze kava out of a strainer bag, which is kind of how do you, you produce it traditionally, there, there's a suspension where the kavalactones are released and it's a lactone oil complex that kind of comes to the surface. There's 6 major kavalactones. Uh, there's one called kavein, a double bonded version of that called dihydrokavein. There's one called methysticin, one called dihydromethysticin, double bonded, and then there's one called yangonin and one called desmethoxyangonin.

But do you feel that a lot of those compounds were lost in the kava extract?

Absolutely, yeah. So that's kind of the point, is that that's kind of like the extracts. At some point in the United States and across the world, whenever it started to be heavily studied, they isolated these 6 major kava lactones, kavaïne being like the number 1. And there were several pharmaceutical companies that tried to create synthetic isolates of kava, which led to a lot of problems. Looking at kava in terms of just those kavalactones is sort of what led to the development of extracts because they're smaller volume, they're easier to deal with, they're cheaper. But, you know, it led to this belief system that just as long as you get the kavalactone dosage high enough, it's equivalent.

So you were— able to get a more traditional form. Yes.

So what I had tried before when I was at that point was extracts. And I tried pretty crappy extracts, like not good extracts. When my friend asked me, my friend from Vanuatu asked me, had I tried kava? I said, yeah, I've tried kava. And he said, well, would you try? And I told him and he kind of laughed. He's like, no, no, kava is this.

So what happened after you took it?

So, yeah. So he sent me some fresh frozen, unprepared kava, taught me how to prepare it traditionally. I started taking it. After about a week and a half of taking it, literally my reactions had reduced by like 80 or 90%, which is crazy.

Reactions to what? Ridiculously.

So all the reactions that I was having, like the—

I see.

To foods, to supplements, those kind of things that were keeping me from being able to eat kind of thing or drink water. It was like actually pretty miraculous because— and not— I didn't expect that at all, that level of anything. I was like, if it can do anything at all, it's like, I'll try it, whatever. And it took a few days. It took about a week and a half, 2 weeks, and I was at that point where I remember even drinking water for the first time and just not reacting to it and just being like, "Oh, wow." [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] [Speaker:DR_AXE] Its primary mechanism that it's most famous for is that kavalactones have a high affinity and interaction with the GABA system. So they bind to GABA-A receptors, specifically interact with the same sort of benzodiazepine sites on the GABA-A receptors. But they don't affect it in the same way. Kava lactones, it's complex plant pharmacology. It's not just one, it's the entourage of these things, but they interfere, they interact with the GABA system in a modulatory and upregulatory way. So we know that to be the case, is that not only is it turning on GABA synthesis and GABA release in the short term, but it also is helping to rehabilitate a system that's been downregulated, which is something that I didn't know or expect. And because of that, kava has a really super interesting characteristic we call reverse tolerance, right? So we talked about the whole credit card analogy before, and so instead of being the credit card, it helps to like infuse capital into the system over a period of time. So not only does it give you the short-term therapeutic effect a lot of times if you take high enough dosages and whatnot and it's the right, right match for you, um, but over time it helps in the rehabilitation process. So what I realized just kind of stumbling over it, was that I was able to get off benzodiazepine drugs within like a month and a half, like 2 months tops. So the fact I was able to get off of it basically symptom-free was nuts to me. And I realized that even whenever I would take kava away cold turkey, even after months of using it and being off the benzos, that not only was— did the seizures and all that not come back, but my baseline, like outside of kava use, was more stable, was way more stable. I was less reactive even without it. At baseline than I was starting.

And is this why you were so passionate about it?

Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's definitely a pain to purpose journey for sure. Right. I mean, it's like, it's because it was so beneficial for that. But then I fell in love with it after that, as anybody would. Right. I was like, you know, I was, I was ready to start a religion around it. No, I mean, I was, I was so amazed. I was just like, my gosh, it was the perfect thing that I needed. It's not like there's no one thing. There's no one pill or powder that's going to like overturn an entire, you know, like there's no magic bullet for these things. It's always systems that get people well. It's a combination of lifestyle things, of changing your habits, changing things. But there are certain leverage tools that can be miraculous for giving you that leverage to allow you to integrate enough things.

So who do you think these kava drinks or the preparations are going to help?

The obvious ones are like, you know, you know, people with stress and anxiety, like that's like its all-star application, right? But it's so much more than that, right? Because obviously, it's also used for productivity. A lot of people, instead of taking like amphetamine-based drugs and stuff, will experiment with kava preparations. But what's so cool about kava is that it's completely non-addictive. And so, it's actually really good for interrupting the pattern of a lot of addictive behaviors because they don't feel that need to self-medicate. So, I've had people use it to help them stop scrolling, you know what I mean? Like the social media. Yeah.

[Speaker:JOY KONG] That's amazing.

[Speaker:JONATHAN HUNSAKER] Just a pattern.

[Speaker:JOY KONG] So, great for addiction, for anxiety, for mood. Mood issues.

For mood issues, productivity, you know, you know, mental focus. It's great for recovery because it's so neuro and tissue protective. Tons of people fall in love with it for that because it really improves sleep quality. What we see in the studies increases in deep and REM sleep. And so you can actually get by with less sleep whenever you take kava. Like you do a big kava session where you really load a lot of kava. A lot of times you'll, you'll realize that you wake up sooner than you normally do, and you're like ready to go and you kind of have this afterglow effect.

So when people drink, well, first of all, I want to try this. So you actually produce in different forms, right? So there's the, this is a shot, but you also have a drink. And so when people take this, do they actually, do they feel more alert?

Yes. Yeah. You know, generally, and of course it's dosage dependent, but normally what people expect to feel whenever they first try kava You start with like a baseline dose, which is supposed to be sort of, you know, subtle, runs in the background and give the, you know, the general effects of true traditional kava. Then you can of course dose up, like with our products, we've got these, you know, we've got these sachets or powders that are single serving. We've got the oils, then we've also got shots, and then we've got a ready-to-drink beverage that's really meant for bricks and mortar and retail. So sort of, you know, drink it instead of beer.

We didn't have it here, but I've tried it before and there was It was absolutely delicious.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's great stuff.

Yeah, really, really well done.

Yeah, and what you can expect to feel is a light relaxation. You'll feel a little numbing on the tongue too. It sort of numbs the tongue and gives that sort of numbing effect. But if you don't feel it right away, I always tell people to take the 2 to 4 week, up to 30-day kava challenge and really start loading it. Actually, the first couple times I took kava back when I was in that situation, I didn't feel it. And then after a week and a half, I was like, holy crap, I really feel it. Because it's upregulating, sometimes it takes some upregulation to where it really starts to take house in your system. But a good majority of people feel it the first time they take 1 to 3 dosages of it, you know. So, but yeah, if, you know, whenever you do start to get it, it's that light relaxation in the body, a focused mind. You just feel like calm and present. But I think the best way to describe it is it can be very euphoric in high dosages, but it feels like a natural high, almost like you did a long run or a workout, or like it's— you totally have your existing, like, sober framework. You just— I call it hyper sobriety. It's like it kind of takes you to a peak state of like the upper end of where you're at. If like mechanically you are functioning at your best. And so it's so smooth. And so you kind of just feel like more of yourself is the way that people describe it.

So do you drink it every day?

I mean, pretty much, yeah. I mean, I cycle everything, including, including kava, just because I, I'll cycle things, so maybe take a week off here and that just to reset certain systems in the body.

Definitely. Is there any concern for long-term daily use?

Great question. Yeah, it's a great question. And if you go and Google kava online, then you will find articles making claims about associations with hepatotoxicity. That's the biggest one, right? Okay, so this narrative around hepatotoxicity, just to let people know, it was based on primarily ignorance and misperception, and it was completely incomplete and and actually fraudulent data for the most part. So there's never been any association with acute or long-term devastating health consequences. So there's never been anything documented on that. It was never a thing whatsoever until the early 2000s when one pharmaceutical company in Germany did something similar to what I described before of trying to create a patentable substance and isolate off of one of the components in kava, kavaein, and then a few of the kavalactones. And they also didn't understand, they were trying to using the pharmaceutical model and they just were like, "Well, all kavalactones are the same." So they didn't pay any attention to where they got them from. So it was flushed out later on that they were sourcing low-quality material almost certainly, including like leaves and stems that had those plant defense alkaloids in them and which are mildly toxic. It was one of those things that led to a temporary ban of kava in Germany. They got a lot of press, other countries started banning it. And then, It was completely vetted out. The German administrative course did this long investigation. And then in 2014, the ban was completely overturned because it was seen to be a quality control issue and is basically that whole thing. So, you know, kava in its traditional form is actually really safe. It's really safe medicine that can be used daily, which makes it really unique in that sense, right? So—

[Speaker:DR_LI] Thank you for watching. I really hope you enjoy the episode. If you're intrigued by this plant kava, Please click on the link in the description and use DrJoy10 to get 10% off your purchase.