DOSE:

oral

Kava

(liquid)

Here's how I do it: The Best Way to Prepare Kava Kava

I have done quite a bit of experimentation with Kava, and these two methods seem to work best.

Method #1) Ingredients: 1 cup Kava powder, four cups water, 6 tablespoons vegetable oil (I've used olive or canola), and two tablespoons liquid lecithin. Blend at top speed for five minutes. The liquid will be 'coffee-and-cream' colored. Strain through a fiber filter. I usually use an old cloth diaper. You want something pretty loose, like t-shirt fabric or cheesecloth. Straining can take a while and takes some patience. Eventually, all the liquid is out and you have the solids in a ball in your strainer/cloth, and a bowl of suspicious smelling liquid. You can throw away the solid mass.

Drink!

Method #2) Loosely wrap a cup of Kava powder in a loose piece of cloth. Holding it loosely above the ball of Kava, plunge it up and down in 4 cups of water. Occasionally stop to squeeze out the kava ball. Keep plunging it up and down until the water is the 'coffee-and-cream' color. This should take 5-15 minutes.

Drink!

Method #3) buy some kava tincture and drink that. This method does not produce very good effects, just sedative-like, but is QUITE a bit easier than the other two methods which DO produce very good effects.

---

Kava is a very nice, pleasant, relaxed, and slightly narcotic way to spend an evening. I have seen it listed as a minor hallucinogen, but I think that's putting it too strongly. The effects are not hallucinogenic, but very calm and slightly stoned. I have found that smoking a bit of marijuana with it pleasantly increases the effects. One's mind is not fogged, but the spirit is at rest. Very Relaxed. It also seems to act as a muscle relaxant. At higher doses, one may be inclined to lay down and not move a muscle. Walking may be unsteady, driving is not recommended. Kava also gives me great and very vivid dreams coupled with an extremely restful deep sleep. Definitely something to do in the evening, several hours before bedtime. I have found that while both methods are nice and relaxing, method #1 gives me the vivid interesting dreams, and method #2 doesn't. However, method #1 is a bigger pain to prepare. I think the way it works, is that there's a couple types of resins in the root, some of which are going to be extracted in method #2, using just water. I know that there are some which are NOT water soluble and need to be emulsified, so hence the oil and lecithin extraction procedure.

I find I like to use Kava about twice a month.

Lastly, it tastes really, incredibly, phenomenally, STRONGLY GROSS! It makes me shudder just to think about the taste. You want to slam a cup then immediately rinse your mouth with water. Wait about 10 minutes and do another. Keep at this until you've drank all four cups. You DO get used to it and, for me anyway, it's worth the super-unpleasant taste to get the effect. I've found that kava greatly varies in potency. You'll know how good your kava is by how much it makes your mouth and tongue numb. Really good Kava is quite noticable. Bad kava doesn't numb out your mouth at all.

Best of all, Kava Kava(piper methysticum) is LEGAL. Any herb supplier, or health food store should either have it or be able to order it for you.

Exp Year: 1994	ExpID: 1956
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 19, 2000	Views: 135,290
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Kava (30) : Preparation / Recipes (30), Retrospective / Summary (11), General (1), Unknown Context (20)