| DOSE: |
3500 mg |
oral |
Kava
|
(extract) |
I tried kava a lot of different ways (pills, liquid extract, powdered root shipped from Fiji etc) before actually getting any effect. Why? Just stubborn, I guess. My first worthwhile kava experience was with the Kava product from a popular vendor. A glance at the ingredients shows why: their product contains approx 900 mg of kavalactones per capsule (they recommend 1-3 capsules), compared to an average dose of 30-60 mg for the drug store standardized extract tabs. I've since duplicated the effect by taking an entire bottle of a relatively high-grade (90 mg kavalactones per tablet) health-food-store brand.
Kava at sufficient levels will definitely produce results, in my case a pleasant relaxed buzz with attendant loss of coordination that lasted a couple of hours. Two problems, though: tolerance increases very rapidly, and after a while I started to notice strange internal pains the next day or so, pains which started raising questions in my mind about liver damage. I've stopped doing kava. If I'm diagnosed someday with liver problems I'll post a followup.
