The 3,000-Year-Old Plant That Replaces Alcohol, Adderall, and Xanax | #181

I was looking for anything that, that addressed certain pathways, certain receptors, um, in, 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. Alcohol objectively is a metabolic poison. It is a toxin. It goes into the bloodstream and it basically short-circuits the nervous and, you know, creates this kind of like ubiquitous dump of chemistry as kind of like an adaptive response to its presence, right?

Some people may still not buy into the fact that alcohol is really bad for you.

You culturally, we've developed into this state, this collective state where we actually believe that alcohol is, is a necessary catalyst for facilitating a social or recreational environment. Is there a way that you can have your cake and eat it too? That you can get the experience that you want, the feeling that you want, the, the, the mental stability, the function, the energy, the focus, motivation, all that stuff without the side effect profile and without being dependent on an exogenous source of something that constantly steals your attention?

Okay, welcome back to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. So my mission in the world is to elevate the happiness index of the world. And my podcast is one way for me to achieve that. And I invite some amazing guests to help share their wisdom and what they've discovered to make life better for everybody. So today I am so excited to have Cameron George here with us. You're in for a treat because we're going to talk about something that's really fun. And as you can see, We've got some products here as well that I'm so excited. I want to have some in the middle of the show. So Cameron, so good to have you here.

So great to be here. It's going to be fun.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. We've had numerous conversations about kava and about your mission. So I'm just really happy now we can have you here and share with everybody else. So I want to introduce you a little bit. Cameron's the founder of True Kava. And is a leading voice in the movement to redefine how we approach stress, performance, and social connection. And his work focuses on replacing alcohol and synthetic coping mechanisms with nature-based alternatives rooted in both tradition and modern science. He has helped pioneer the modernization of kava into functional beverage category, and he's utilizing research around GABA signaling, neuroprotection, and mental optimization to achieve that. And he has worked closely with physicians and organizations including the Kava Coalition to advance education and research in this space. Uh, his platform has been building a broader movement, what's called nature reintegration, which is a shift toward achieving clarity, resilience, and peak performance without relying on toxic synthetic substances. So I think that's an incredible mission that you're trying to achieve.

Yeah.

With the level of stress that people have been experiencing, not just in the modern world, but in very recent times, I think a lot of people are seeking all kinds of substances. To cope. What do you see as what's going on in the society? Yeah.

Oh yeah, that started off soft, you know. No, I mean, I think that, you know, modern civilization in the West, really all over the world, but, you know, definitely in the West, in large part, has kind of become a trauma-generating machine. You know, we have a lot of things now. I don't want to, you know, broadly, exclusively characterize as that because, you know, it's like You know, we've got chronic disease, we've got disconnection, isolation, loneliness, we've got mental illness, we've got, you know, ridiculous polarization.

So how are we coping?

Yeah, exactly.

People are using, a lot of people do use alcohol. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And even psychedelics. Right. To check out.

Yes. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Caffeine.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah. Um, other forms of addiction, food. Mm-hmm. So, um, And what, but what's interesting is the use of alcohol has actually declined in the younger population.

Yeah.

Right.

No, no, it, it's so fascinating. So you look at this and I, you know, I talk about this a lot. Every culture around the world, both, both modern, ancient, et cetera, like has their altered states of consciousness that they, that they hold up as like the, you know, the, the, you know, the core of like their recreational and like social environments or, that can be used for like weddings, funerals, spiritual ceremonies, or social gatherings, any of those kind of things. But in the West, we got to where we, we embraced alcohol.

Well, apparently the Chinese can hardly reach business decisions without bringing alcohol to the meeting, right? Like, so it's just so much of part of the social fabric. Yeah, at the detriment of their liver and right, every other organ.

Exactly. You know, alcohol, um, You know, alcohol kind of, you know, got its hooks into, you know, civilizations across the world, you know, hundreds of years ago. And, you know, there's reasons for that. I mean, it can be easily produced by anyone. And really, it's a, you know, it's a toxic byproduct of fermentation. And it's something that gives an immediate pleasurable feeling and hits on a few of these basic human needs that most people desire and, you know, and utilize altered states in order to obtain, you know, that's, that's, you know, social lubrication, you know, meaning the ability to kind of loosen up. And then there's also stress relief, right? You know, stress relief, introspection, you know, loneliness, all of those different things. Those are, those are core underlying desires and reasons why people alter their consciousness.

I was talking to my brother and he will hang out with his friends And here's, you know, he's a guy who knows how to be healthy. But he choose to drink quite a bit of alcohol with his friends. He said, I think it's worth it because of the social connection. But I know how bad it is for his health, right? So like even for me, if I go to a place, you know, when there are a lot of people, it gets a little overwhelming. It would be nice to kind of tone that edge down a little bit and be more relaxed. But I'm just not willing to put a toxin in my body, right? So it would be so nice to have something that's an alternative that doesn't hurt me. You know, talking about hurting, like, what are the problems with alcohol? Because a lot of people are saying, oh, moderation, you know. Yeah, that's, you know, it's all about moderation. What are your thoughts on—

well, it's an interesting point too, because we've, we've kind of, you know, culturally we've developed, uh, into this state, this collective state where we actually believe that alcohol is, is a necessary catalyst for facilitating a social or recreational environment. And the reason is, is a lot of us have developed as having that as a crutch, you know, to stimulate the neurochemistry to allow you to do that. And so, so many people haven't developed the skillset to navigate social experiences without that bandaid there, because it is a state and it's sort of like a, it's a biochemical crutch obviously that you can use. I mean, think back, you know, whenever you were a kid, whenever you were 12 years old, you didn't need any artificial stimulation, you know, to feel good. You woke up vibrant, excited.

Yeah.

Go to work.

I got on my bike, just the wind on my face. Exactly.

The wind on your face. Yeah. Like everything was a drug. It's exhilarating. Yes. That neurochemical state. And a lot of that is just because you're so youthful that you have the metabolism in place to create healthy neurochemistry. Metabolically, all that kind of stuff, hormonally, and in different things. And I think that the assumption is we start to— a lot of us start to degenerate a lot faster than we should. And because it becomes so common, it becomes typical, and then it just becomes like, well, that's just how it is being an adult, is that you need some sort of artificial stimulation, some sort of exogenous, you know, lever to pull to get a dopamine spike. But anyways, it's just, it's, you know, there's been this kind of collective belief, you know, just because something is typical doesn't mean that it's normal, right? So there's a difference there, right? And just because it's typical to not only not have like the software skill set to navigate social situations and like the physical like resources to actually feel good, it's become so typical because you have a culture that is largely diseased. There's just a lot of suboptimal function that's going on. I think it's the framing, right? That they kind of think that like, that sobriety is a state of deprivation, right? Of a state of— because in that belief system, you know, comes from the fact that we're so used to having a baseline, like a mood and functionality baseline that's so low. And unfortunately, the more you actually use synthetic substances to artificially stimulate an elevated emotional state, the, the, the lower your baseline actually gets over time generally. And so what they're acting as is basically, I call 'em biochemical credit cards. They borrow from tomorrow's feel-good chemistry to pay for today.

Mm-hmm. Right?

So there's no free lunch with these things. It doesn't give you anything. It just, it's, it releases what you can't even afford to spare. And so the problem with like a credit card is the more that you spend, the more in debt you get with, you your body's own chemistry, which is what leads to tolerance, habituation, you know, dependency, and eventually withdrawal. Culturally, and as far as the world and certainly the West today, a lot of it is due to stress, trauma, and toxicity, right? We're exposed to so many foreign molecules, you know, in our food, in our air, in our water, the things that we breathe, the things that we put in our skin. Oh, it's, it's thousands. It's tens of thousands of chemicals that interfere with the natural intelligence of the body. And the body can adapt to a certain degree, but you start to build these things up over the last 10 to 15 to 20, you know, you know, years and, and multiple decades. Now we have an explosion of illness that's toxin driven, but the framing is incomplete because the question is, it's not like some people can't get away with it. The question is, is it the highest road and the best strategy to take? Right. Is there a way that you can have your cake and eat it too, that you can get the experience that you want, the feeling that you want, the, the, the mental stability, the function, the energy, the focus, motivation, all that stuff, and kind of choose what you want to feel more so, be able to press natural buttons, you know, that help to elevate you naturally without the side effect profile and without being dependent on an exogenous source of something that constantly steals your attention. Your body can't naturally regulate itself. So you never have full autonomy. Your attention is constantly going towards, okay, I gotta get that next fix. I gotta make sure and take my thing to drink my thing, to take my caffeine to drink, you know what I mean? And so it's this kind of thing that mines your attention. And so you don't have full stability and full reign over your own nervous system.

And some people may still not be, still buy into the fact that alcohol is really bad for you. I mean, what, maybe you can lay it out. What, what, what, what, What do alcohol do to the body?

Absolutely. Really? Okay. Okay. So like I said, you know, alcohol, alcohol objectively is a metabolic poison. It is a toxin right now. The degree at which you can adapt to that, right? It varies from person to person. Now, ethyl alcohol, ethanol is not actually psychoactive and it's not responsible for the effect that people know, know it for, right? You know, the euphoria, the relaxation, that release of chemistry. Whenever you ingest alcohol, it actually gets converted into a toxic byproduct called acetaldehyde.

Mm-hmm.

And acetaldehyde is very toxic. It goes into the bloodstream and it basically short circuits the nervous system and, you know, creates this kind of like ubiquitous dump of, of, you know, of, of chemistry as kind of like an adaptive response to its presence. Right. So it's kind of like euphoric response to like the extreme stress that's going on in the nervous system. But it is, it's, it's a, it's a response. It's like an adaptive response to a toxin. And it feels good. You know, it's this numbing, great effect, but obviously we all know what comes with it. So it's not like— I try not to characterize it like this whole Sober Curious movement that I've, you know, really involved with and everything. It's not even— it's, it's exactly that. It's sober, curious. It's, it's really a curiosity and it's an honest exploration of the emerging treatments, therapies, strategies, compounds that are slowly moving the culture away from our sole reliance on alcohol. And synthetic molecules in the form of pharmaceuticals for our elevated emotional states and for our social bonding in recreational environments. That, that doesn't mean that we're getting rid of it totally. It's basically just an exploration of like, what are the technologies that might be more efficient that we can throw into the mix and maybe sometimes use the alcohol, special occasions, layer in the other ones. Or a lot of people are making the conscious decision to just give up alcohol altogether. And so it's one of those things, a lot of people are making the decision just from a performance standpoint.

Yeah.

It's just like, okay, we're exposed to a lot of toxins, a lot of stressors. Are there other technologies that are available that don't add to that toxic stress burden? But, you know, again, it doesn't mean that it's the end of the world and everybody should be able to do exactly what they wanna do. But I just really believe in educated decisions that whenever people are doing things, especially on a regular basis, like, if you're— if you're— if you choose to use a strategy like alcohol regularly to alter your consciousness, to put yourself in a totally different perceptual space, and you're going to log in hours of time per week in that state, like, you should be well educated on, on what the quality of that state is and what the impact of being in that state is, right? And then you can just look at this, you can make a scorecard for yourself and decide if it's worth it. You know what I mean? And so it's just one of those things, right? So that whole truth there, especially because I had some severe challenges, health challenges in my life, I was kind of forced off of synthetic drugs. I mean, I've been down that road. I've been pretty severely addicted to various different drugs and gone down that road, and I was kind of forced off of it and forced into a sort of tangent exploration of the other technologies that were available. In my experience, the best technologies, both whenever you're sick or whenever you just want to perform better, are the ones that actually, that don't contradict or undermine the base intelligence of the body. They feed and amplify it. That's where you get sustainable results. They're not like those credit cards where you're overriding the body with a synthetic molecule, right?

Well, let's talk about how you even got to that point because I didn't know you were actually addicted to certain substance. I know you had severe, devastating health challenges. Was this after you were abusing your body to some degree?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they were intertwined, and it wasn't like my, my addictions actually came in the form of a prescription where I was actually already had a health challenge and then got prescribed drugs and then became an addict because of that. Because it's like, you know, I trusted the medical system and they gave me a bunch of narcotics. So this, it all started in my late teens, like mid to late teens, and probably before that actually, but I just didn't understand that anything was wrong. Where I just had functional issues and I was actually a really high-performing guy at the time. I was a distance runner by heart and in college. And so on paper I was performing, but I just started to get all these different functional deficits. I started to develop biochemical depression that didn't have any environmental catalyst for it. Burnout, depressive symptoms, pretty bad anxiety, but also just like chronic fatigue. Like, and for someone like me who's not in any stretch of the imagination lazy, there were— my family started to notice that it was really difficult for me to like get out of bed to function. It was a real struggle. And I was living on stimulants like crazy. And I mean, I lived on insane amounts of caffeine. What we know now, looking back, is that a situation like mine that kind of starts with these things unraveling like that It's a perfect storm of a lot of different factors. I probably had, you know, genetic susceptibility to environmental stressors and toxins and, you know, metabolic weaknesses or, you know, fragility when it comes to those things. It affects everything about your development. It affects your confidence because you don't feel right and you don't feel stable. But whenever you're a kid, you don't know how to explain that. So what you end up doing unconsciously, because we're adaptive organisms, we start to unconsciously do things to compensate for that, to give us, if we start to do something, like if we start to like binge on snacks or eating food with lots of sugar, we just, we don't even register it, but we feel better afterwards. 'Cause we're at such a deficit, it's like a drug and you get that short-term effect. But then the problem is, is that I call them toxic compensatory strategies, right? It's toxic compensation, right? So you start to do these things without realizing that you're doing it. And then you start to add to your deficit, right? Because then you're just charging, charging, charging, charging. So kids, I was kind of a kid who developed a series of different highly addictive behaviors. People call this an addictive personality. I think sometimes that's a dangerous road to go down because an addictive personality is kind of, it's kind of insinuating that it's just who you are. But almost any pattern can be changed with the right strategy and the right understanding. You might have to go really deep, might be Very difficult. But because it started at such a young age, I was kind of like a kid addict on a lot of things I didn't even realize. So my diet was terrible. I mean, I grew up in a time, most of us did, but I grew up in a time where we were being so heavily marketed to with all the toxic crap and more so than generations previous. But we didn't yet have any of really the knowledge to realize how bad it was. Like the chemical generation of the late '80s and '90s or whatever. Marketing heavily to kids, and then glyphosate came in hardcore, and then the problems with vaccination, all that stuff, you know, it was just this kind of soup. And so I end up in a situation where through the latter part of my childhood, I kind of dug this hole for myself. And then once I ended up at that crossroad when I was like a, you know, probably sophomore in college or so, and that's probably actually why I became a distance runner, was because it actually was a form of self-medication, right? But that, again, I did it so extremely and I already had those susceptibilities, a system that was compromised. All of that training just led to kind of a crash of the system metabolically. So then what happens, I end up with severe chronic fatigue, gut issues, autoimmune issues, all that. So I was in that situation where basically the bottom fell out and I didn't understand why. I'm a young guy, I was functioning at this level and all of a sudden, I just can't do it. I don't have the currency. I can't frickin' do it as much as I want to. I'm not lazy at all. In fact, I would push way past what my body would even, until it just broke, you know? So then I sort of ended up not knowing. I mean, I'm from a part of the country. I'm from a state called Arkansas for those people who don't know that it exists, which is a lot of people.

Oh, I had Bill Clinton.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's great. Oh, he does, yes. That's, well, we got that going for us, yeah. No, but, No, so I'm from Arkansas, which is not, it's definitely not the most progressive, you know, they're kind of behind on a lot of things, right? Especially like health-related in this case, right? So like we had like no functional or integrative medicine. And so it was one of those things that I ended up, I put it off, put it off, put it off, then the bottom fell out. And then I just, I ended up in a psychiatrist's office just because I was like, what is going on? Is this physiological? Is this like, I knew it wasn't psychological, but I'm just like, dude, Like, I'm like, you know, I got to a point where I was like, basically like it was like a breaking point because I was just so dysfunctional. I'm like, I'm a young dude. Like, what is going on here? And that's, that's what sort of taught me this whole process. Going down that road, that crossroad, going down that strategy and what it did, the biochemical credit card thing. I learned that the hard way because I got put on heavy doses of Adderall, benzodiazepines, like, you know, black box warning, like labeled drugs, right? That was the main drug. I was high dosages. So that, that already having addictive personality and then putting a person on amphetamines, it seemed to be a miracle drug at first because at first you feel like everything's better because all of a sudden I'm like out there functioning, getting things done.

Hmm.

Problem is, it shifted my personality pretty drastically and led to a kind of degeneration of a lot of circumstances in my life. Right. I just wasn't myself. I didn't make good decisions whenever I was on it. But also, it just, you know, putting amphetamines in a system that's pretty badly, that already has an energy deficit, that's metabolically compromised, is like putting jet fuel in an engine that's already about to burn out, you know? It's a really bad idea, like it's terrible. It's gonna feel like it's good at first, but then it's like you're severely in debt and then you just charge a bunch more. But it was like the thing that just A-bombed my nervous system and it just, it basically completely broke, and that's what sent me into severe, severe disease circumstances. And that started the odyssey of, basically because I was so fragile, the drugs really damaged my system really, really badly. So neurocognitively, after getting off the drugs, when I realized how bad that they actually were, coming off of them, cognitive deficits and all kinds of metabolic damage was in place. I got a SPECT brain imaging scan, like the Daniel Amen SPECT brain imaging scans, You know, the radiologist, I'll never forget, you know, came back and said like, this scan is pretty comparable to like a lot of 80-year-old patients I have with dementia, you know, and which is like, I was like forgetting things like crazy. I had to like move. I was, I was pretty much completely handicapped at that point. Not, not totally. I got even worse, but I had to like move back in with my parents because I couldn't drive anymore because I was just, I was coming in and out of like cognition and I was like, how the hell? And if I would have known what I know today, back whenever I was 18 years old, where I was at would have been very easily fixable with a few lifestyle changes, lowering inflammation in the body, cleaning up the diet, putting in the right supplements, doing these things, I could have regenerated and balanced myself metabolically like I have today. But I went through hell because that started like—

Your doctors did you a disservice.

Right. Unknowingly, but they still did it, right?

Right. So did you lose your faith? In all these substances you were taking.

Absolutely.

Well, looking elsewhere.

And the good thing about this whole thing is it brought me to a breaking point where— so once I got through all of that and the drug use and all that kind of stuff, I was, I was only like 22 years old. And so at 22 years old, it sort of recalibrated my entire viewpoint on life and life around me. You know, not everything that happens to a person is their fault. I didn't have the information, it wasn't totally my fault, but it is my responsibility. So, because I'm the only one that can shift it, and now I'm in this situation, and yeah, it looks like my life is basically over, 'cause things got, I started deteriorating really rapidly after that, because my system was so vulnerable metabolically and all that, and it got way worse, but that started when I was basically had to move back in with my parents, all that kind of stuff, that started basically a decades-long odyssey where I did nothing for the next about 8 years, but just I was so dysfunctional that is all I did like all day every day was just scour medical and scientific literature, call around, make contact with people outside of the standard medical framework with like the standard like menu of options, and I just had this sort of intuition or this understanding that there has to be something outside of this. Like this model is incomplete at best and it's highly flawed. I trusted this model. I did exactly what it told me to do. To do, and I ended up here. I didn't take responsibility for my health. I outsourced the decision-making to someone in a white coat with a name tag, and they looked like they were authority figure. Yeah. So, so once I started that process, I basically had to go back to like first principles of like, okay, what is health? Like, what is biology? And how the hell did I get here? Right? Like, because I didn't— I never had that framework before. It was all sort of like, Well, health is just like the absence of disease symptoms, of like dying disease symptoms, right? And so I sort of took it from base, okay, like I had to figure out like what happened to me first of all. And so it just led into this kind of, at the time, it was kind of an adolescent or early stage kind of emerging network of people that were out there. Now it's great. We've got all kinds of access and we've even got AI to help us in a positive way to find things. But at the time, like, good information was really hard to come by.

You're saying this was, what, 8 years ago?

Oh, no, no, this was like 15.

So what did you find?

You know, you know, once I got in there, I first found, okay, like, how do I clean up my diet? But then I knew I need more than that because now I had like severe damage that I was working with. So I was like, okay, like, I have to have a strategy, like, to actually like regenerate, you know. I found out, you know, pretty early on that if you wanted to figure out like where, where the where the technology incubator is of like biotechnologies that actually work, you know, you use modeling, you look at people that are actually doing it and, you know, demonstrating it in areas that they're allowed to. And then you like model that. And that's a good place to start looking. Okay.

So you started utilizing a lot of these modalities.

Yes. The problem was it took a long time. This is a long time of slowly like finding these things individually. So I went towards the detoxification side of things and met a lot of people in the industry that's got a lot of really great education on comprehensive medical protocols for actually reducing your tissue and cellular toxic burden.

So you started doing detox with him, right?

Yes, absolutely.

And did things start to get better?

Well, first they get worse because whenever you first start doing something that actually works with detox, it's a good sign that it gets worse because it's coming out of you, right? So you get what's called a Herxheimer response, right? So anyone who's in this world knows what that is, but it's basically like if you do something that is making you heal, the body starts to shed the interference that's in the way for it, 'cause the body becomes more efficient, it starts to shed the interference, starts to shed these molecules. They start to come out in the lymphatic system into the bloodstream. They build up in the liver if you do it too fast. It's like whenever you approach detoxification, it's kind of like working out. You push and it stresses the body and then you step back to recover and now you've lowered your toxic burden slightly and so you recover a little bit better, a little bit better. But you have to push and pull and push and pull. There's a time to push, there's a time to like recover and like reintegrate. And so I was doing that and for a number of months, in a few months of doing that, and this was years into the process when I finally arrived at this, I started to get better and better and better and better and better. And after about 2 years of doing an aggressive detoxification process, plus optimizing the diet and lowering inflammation and getting all of the— replacing all my cell membranes with good fats, which takes a while. So it's basically like, what I really learned was through this whole process is that really all healing and optimization comes down to out with the bad, in with the good. Right? It's really that simple. Now it gets complex in like how you, you know, like carry that out in any given situation.

Well, I would really want to hear the part how you even got to kava.

Yeah. So I was in the middle of— that happened when I was in the middle of this process, actually right before I was able to start the aggressive detox. And I was at this crux with my health that I finally got to this place, and I had actually met met Dan, so he's a big part of this story, and he and I started working together, and I got to this place where I felt great about the strategy, and I kind of knew that this was actually like the way of thinking about it that's gonna eventually get me well. It's still gonna take time, but I'm gonna do this. The problem was that whenever we first got started together, my autoimmune condition, I had deteriorated so much, and I had gotten so bad that I developed like, all these crazy autoimmune, like, sensitivity syndromes, which is a byproduct of, like, people in these really toxic situations where you're just reacting to, like, everything you're coming in contact with. It's basically a severe form of PTSD and neurotoxic illness. So I was— I was at a point where I had lost pretty much all of my foods, and I was kind of forced into this, like, extended fast. It's just not sustainable past a certain point.

You couldn't tolerate—

Correct.

Any of the—

Meaning that I would eat a food and my throat would close up.

I see.

Or I would go into a seizure. Right. So it was either nervous system or immunological or a combination of the two. And sometimes it'd be different. But either one, when I go into a seizure, usually my throat would close up too. So it was— so I was having— there was at a point where I was having like 10 grand mal seizures a day. So then that was accelerating my deterioration because those—

probably thought you were dying.

I was, yeah, 100%. I was in ICU and all that kind of stuff, right, where I was because I was You know, big-time malnutrition, couldn't tolerate anything, having seizures all day long. It's very traumatic to the body. And I'd already been— I'd already been through like 8 years of like daily, like the conditions, like deterioration brewing. And once I got to the point I lost water because I was even started reacting to water, which was crazy. So I didn't know that was possible. But it was like where I put a drop of water on my tongue, I go into this crazy reaction. It's insane. And so I was at this point where I couldn't tolerate anything. But, but I had a good strategy if I could somehow get through this process. I was also— the only thing that I was on were heavy drugs to even keep the convulsions at bay to the point that I could tolerate anything. And then eventually I started reacting to the drugs too, but I couldn't stop using the drugs because they were like benzodiazepines. And benzos can already kill you if you go off them cold turkey in some cases, and they can certainly just be hell. They're hardest drugs to get off of. Normally take like a year and a half to taper safely off those drugs.

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So I ended up in this 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 got to be a strategy there. I was looking for anything that, 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, surely you've tried kava, right? I was like, yeah, I tried what I thought was kava. Kava is a stress-relieving, relaxing, but yet mentally optimizing 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. 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, 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 is 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, too. 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. 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. So you said you had tried something before, and it didn't really work for you.

Correct, correct.

But then this friend had access to something else.

Yes, yeah, exactly. 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— let's call it 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 you, you produce it traditionally, they're, it'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 desmethoxyyangonin.

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

Absolutely, yeah. So that's the 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 kavalactones, kavaïne being like the number 1. And there were several pharmaceutical companies that tried to create synthetic isolates of kavaïne, 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 it led to this belief system that just was, 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? I told him and he kind of laughed. He's like, no, no, kava is this.

So what happened after you took it?

So, 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, you know. But— 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, you know, you know, drinking water for the first time and just not reacting to it and just being like, oh wow.

So what do you think is in kava that was able to—

yeah, so 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 receptors, specifically interact with the same sort of benzodiazepine sites on the GABA receptors, but they don't, they don't affect it in the same way. But so, so kava, you know, kavalactones, it's, 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, 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 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 are so passionate?

—about Bulletproof Kava. —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 ready to start a religion around it. No, I mean, 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, 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.

So who do you think, um, 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, it's also used for, you know, 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 like, I've had people use it like for to help them stop scrolling, you know what I mean? Like for social media. Yeah, just a pattern. So great for addiction, for anxiety, for 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 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.

[Speaker:JOY KONG] 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 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 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, that 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, like 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, like this, 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. But yeah, whenever you do start to get it, it's that light relaxation in the body, a focused mind. You just feel calm and present. 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. You totally have your existing sober framework. 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. 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, you know, I'll cycle things. So maybe, you know, take a week off, you know, here and that just to like, you know, to reset certain systems in the body.

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

[Speaker:DR_AXE] 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 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, it was, 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 are the people in Vanuatu, are they super happy people? I mean, if they're taking something that's really good for their brain, help them connect and make them healthier. They're in more of a flow state. Yes. What kind of people?

So I was actually, I was actually in a podcast yesterday with another, you know, another guy in our circuit, and he just got back from Fiji. And what he noticed, he was like, you know, there was just a general sense of like ease, and there wasn't that sort of— there wasn't that feeling of everybody sort of being on edge, and everybody seemed to be super nice and charitable and all this kind of stuff. And He just kind of went into a few different descriptions of it. And, and I was like, yes, I mean, that, that 100% checks out because just the general mentality in South Pacific Island culture and life, especially in Vanuatu, that's, that's, that's more untouched even by, by other civilizations. It's, you know, from a mental health standpoint, their mental health statistics are incredible. They've always seen it as a medicine that helps to develop a person mentally and emotionally. And make them more sophisticated in, in that sense. And so they're actually a very, very mentally healthy people. So much so that like kava's like, it's called even like the drink of peace, right? Or the great connector. Because anyone who comes in, you can go online and look, there's like endless pictures of like big celebrities, like the royal family or like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was governor, going to like Fiji or Vanuatu and they greet them with a kava ceremony. 'Cause it's a peace offering.

So, so they have kava bars, right? Absolutely. Yeah. They still have alcohol, like regular bars, or they don't?

They do, but it's mainly for tourists, you know, because they just, they're, you know, but then a lot of tourists end up like, you know, finding kava whenever they go there. You know, Vanuatu has far less tourists obviously than Fiji. Fiji has a lot of that, but like, like, like in Vanuatu and Fiji, there's like 20 times as many kava bars as there are regular bars because the indigenous islanders, they prefer it. They're like, why would I drink this thing that I feel like crap the next day, you know? And it's like, they— it forms the— it's— it forms the foundation of their entire social structure. It is the glue that like generates all of their social environments. And so that was one thing that just like blew my mind early on in like the larger vision of what we're trying to accomplish with the Kava Coalition, which is a nonprofit that I'm involved with where we're getting a lot of research published and doing advocacy work. And then Tru Kava is just trying to create the product the authentic product that like lives up to that standard.

So what sets this apart to the— there are many products out there using kava. So, um, what makes this different?

Yeah, so we've gone over a few of them, right? So, you know, um, it's traditionally prepared kava, so no extracts in this. And again, it's not that extracts are totally bad, but they're just a very mild thing. So you don't just powder— is it this? It's traditional, but it's a true traditionally prepared kava instant powder, which is different than an extract. An extract you'll find in powders, but an extract is going to come in a smaller volume usually because they use a solvent and then they spray dry it down or use some type of drying methodology. This, we actually prepare kava traditionally. What we've done is basically reinvented kava but facilitated and created a a new modernized form of traditional kava. But we've, we've developed, you know, and, you know, engineered the, the equipment and the methodology to commercialize that process, which I think I kind of explained it, you know, naturally how they prepare traditionally is they put the dried root that's ground down. If it's fresh, it's the most potent. And that's what our instant kava is made out of is fresh. They call it green kava. But, you know, they put it in a strainer bag. and then they put it into a bowl of water and they squeeze it out for like 45 minutes. It's this long process. And then in some parts of the South Pacific, they chew it and spit it, and then other people drink it, which is— we don't want to do that. But yeah, so what we've done is we've commercialized it, basically mimicking that process using a certain type of hydraulic pressure and a certain type of applied heat, basically to make kava in these large tanks, these large vats. And so what we have is actually traditional kava. What they do for extracts is they basically just put it— they just run kava through a cookie-cutter method of running it through ethanol, and ethanol grabs certain components and not others. I see. Right? Okay. So, you get the entire matrix of the full food. So then, we have to take that for the instant powder, and we've got to turn it into a powder without losing activity or minimizing the loss. And so, we use this very specific drying methodology that dries quick where you get minimal loss. It's a lot of trial and error with that to get that right. That's a big science there. And then, a special filtration method to filter out a lot of the tannins and the root fibers that make it so thick and muddy. And then, we flavor it. And so, we're still developing flavors, but it's a task flavoring kava. We want to have a hint of the natural kava flavor in there but build good profiles around it that are actually appeasing and tolerable to people. It's the first of its kind. We didn't just like use a cookie cutter method and like run it through a Western extraction process and like, here it is, or just source it from someone. We have our own supply chain, our own methodology of production, manufacturing, and we developed and invented this. And it's done, you know, here in the United States, or the instant powder is done primarily in the islands, but the rest are done in the United States, the drinks.

Yes. And you want to bring the full glory of what helps heal you.

So it's true traditional kava. In ready-to-use formats that are palatable and that you can use, you know, kind of anywhere on the go. And so that's— so everything that we just described there, the entourage effect and everything, was something that was put in there. But culturally, the goal of the Kava Coalition, True Kava, was always to, to integrate kava into modern, modernized, and Western culture in the same way that exists in these South Pacific Island cultures. And we already have the proof of concept actually there of how it acts. And we believe that it can make a really positive net impact on the culture whenever you have millions of people that are using it. And we too also believe that as a primary commodity in the future, you'll be able to walk in. It's not just another product in an existing category, just another supplement. It actually will be a commodity just like coffee is its own category, right? There will be coffee, there will be, you know, kombucha, there will be yerba mate, and kava will be its own thing that has its own usage and stuff. And people just fall in love with it because it's just— it has probably the best therapeutic effect to drawback ratio of any psychoactive that I've always worked with. Every medicine has their own applications. They all have their own uses and not one is necessarily better than the other in a lot of ways. But, kava, it gives you such an upside with an immediate effect that you don't really get from regular adaptogens. That's more of a long type of a thing with Chinese herbs and stuff. but then that also has just such a low side effect profile, uh, for most people and super tolerated.

So is US the, the, the most, has the most adoption of this drink, um, outside of, of the Pacific Islands?

Yes. Right now. Yeah. For the most part. Of course we have initiatives. We, you know, you plan on really, really expanding into, into, um, you know, you know, Canada, UK, obviously Australia, a lot of these, these countries that, uh, previously had bans on kava and they're kind of recently lifted in the recent years after everything sort of came out. And now it's sort of like rebuilding that culture and fighting against this stigma that's on it. It's sort of completely unfairly, you know.

Well, before we end, I have to ask you, what is your long-term vision for this drink? You know, as a drink, like, do you have, like, what do you envision?

Yeah, it's kind of like, well, In addition to kind of what I just laid out as far as like the cultural impact, that's, that's a big thing, right? Is like, you want kava bars to be everywhere. Yes. Okay, so the original goal, the, the, the, the very abrupt, very clear statement I've always made is the, the original goal was to make kava as common as a cup of coffee, right? That was it. Because, and people said that's stupid, like you couldn't do that. But look, you, you, you go to Vanuatu, it's more common than coffee. Like it's everywhere. Like you get it like anywhere. And it's everywhere. It does. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Especially because there are different strains. We didn't really touch on this, but there's like 200 strains of kava. Wow. And some of them, just like cannabis, some are more daytime strains, some are more nighttime. Ours, because we are wanting to not create decision fatigue and confusion when we're trying to say this is kava, we have a proprietary blend that's kind of right in the middle. That's the best of all. But we're going to eventually create more specialized products that are more just exclusively heady, more exclusively sleep and heavy. But But you know, the ones right in the middle and towards the heady side, that's the thing is that like, like in Fiji, they like their kava kind of lighter and they drink it throughout the entire day. Hmm. And you, you know, in Vanuatu, they like it strong and like heavy and they drink it usually like late afternoon and start getting going at that time. But like, especially if it's the right mix for you, it can actually be great to drink. A lot of people will use it as a coffee alternative or they stack it with coffee cuz they do potentiate each other and they suppress appetite and it helps with fasting and different things. But a lot of people will use it, like people who are sensitive to stimulants or trying to get off of coffee will use it as an alternative because it has that dopaminergic effect, but they feel like more creative and not as like stimulated and reactive and sympathetic, you know? Mm-hmm. So a lot of people are moving towards kava, you know, real kava stuff instead of coffee. And then some people are combining the two. Yeah. You know? Amazing.

And so where can people get true kava at this point?

So right now you can get it at TruKava.com. That's T-R-U-K-A-V-A, not T-R-U-E. So you can find all the information, links to everything there and through the social media and all that stuff. And then you can also get the powders on Amazon right now. And in the next few months, we're going to be releasing the rest of the products. They'll all be available on Amazon and we're going to be doing an aggressive retail push here going into this next year. So you'll be able to get it at health food stores in the not too distant future as well, too. That's amazing. And eventually, and eventually we'll have it everywhere. So We're out. It's, it's, you know, that's the mission is to, you know, establish kava as common as a cup of coffee and to, and to transform culture and to give people access to, to more of their humanity in their altered states and to provide a cultural shifting and cultural shaping ritual and substance. Not just a substance, it's a substance that facilitates a state of mind and a ritual. I've always kind of said this to what we're building in the brand and what we're building in the coalition and everything to I've always said this: what it's going to symbolize is more important than what it is. And that means it's like sometimes anchoring a mentality or a mindset or a lot of symbolism into a simple substance that you can share with anybody oftentimes can be really impactful because it's the simplicity that anybody can take it and feel it. But it also signifies like a— it signalized I mean, signifies, you know, transformation, but also a way of approaching human connection and altering your consciousness and being good to yourself. This idea of like coping healthy, right? There's a whole mentality that's around that that's just so positive that bleeds into a lot of other different, you know, behaviors and lifestyle changes and stuff. So we have a lot of people will start with kava and they're like, they just feel healthier and it inspires them to kind of clean up other things.

I hope in all these cocktail parties, not only they will have the alcohol bar, they have the kava bar so people can, you know, have a chance to pick the healthier option.

Well, we always joke too. A big joke is like, you'll never see a fight break out at a kava bar, right? Because it's just like, they, it will never induce aggression. So it just, it, it just creates these amazing atmospheres when you get lots of it going. People just have amazing, deep, authentic conversations. No one's acting stupid in any of that stuff. Yeah. It's just good. It's great for them, you know, all environments, you know.

So yeah, well, the very first time I heard about kava actually was from US veteran when I was working at the VA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. PTSD, Gulf War veteran. So that was, uh, what, 2000, I think, 6, around that time.

And then he, he was dealing with a lot of anxiety, trauma, you know, same thing that would— with me, it downregulates the sensitivity of the limbic system, which is overprimed in PTSD. And it's like it does. They didn't even know how to describe it a lot of times. It's like, I drink this regularly and it just— it's like it's resetting and it's like it's— it comes in as like it has this like maternal energy to it. The organism on one side of it has this performance component to it too. It's kind of this— people— the guy I was talking to yesterday was asking me, is it more yin or is it more yang? You know, kind of thing. And I'm like, it's kind of a hybrid of the two, but like it definitely has this nourishing, protective, restorative. It's like a warm blanket around you that comes in like when you have trauma and stuff. So people, yeah, I mean veterans, it's, I love experiences with it.

And I'm gonna start using this, putting it in into my smoothie. I think it would be, you know, with all its benefits and, and, you know, and neurocognitive benefits. Oh, sure. I love to add this on. So yeah, anyhow, so people wanna know more about kava, the science of kava, where should they go?

Yeah, so I would just go to truekava.com and hit up our Instagram, or you can go to kavacoalition.org and we have an archive of all the major studies that are published on kava.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and your deep knowledge in this amazing plant. So I really hope you reshape the culture and elevate humanity in a way that, you know, our previous social lubricant can't.

Right. Yeah. I'm excited. You can see I'm passionate about it. Yes. Yes.

Thank you so much, Cameron. Absolutely. Anytime. 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.