Dr. Joy Kong explains kava's reverse tolerance: unlike alcohol and drugs, it gets more effective over time by restoring neuroreceptor function instead of depleting it. She used kava to quit benzodiazepines in six weeks without seizures or prolonged tapering.
Kava has a really super interesting characteristic we call reverse tolerance. The reason why people get tolerance to drugs or to alcohol, it's you get the most prominent effect the first time you drink, first time you take a drug, and then tolerance ensues, and then it gets less and less. Then you need more of the same substance to get the same effect, and it down— what we call downregulates receptors. So the receptors kind of shrink and you become more resistant, almost like insulin resistance. I mean, kava, a lot of people, it's an alternative to alcohol, but really it's kind of the equal opposite because it helps to upregulate and restore those systems. So not only does it give you the short-term therapeutic effect, 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, and which is like miraculous for where I was, because these drugs, a lot of times people have to like slowly taper over a year and a half, and even then they're hard to get off of. It's a high seizure risk. Yes. So the fact I was able to get off of it basically symptom-free was nuts to me.
