This is what I find baffling about the article. They acknowledge that no evidence of long term liver damage is found among Aborigines, yet they don’t consider that there may be an important difference between traditionally prepared kava vs capsules or extracts.
They also don’t mention if these people had pre-existing liver problems or were taking other meds. There is a segment on drug interactions which I thought was good enough. After all, people on certain meds have to avoid grapefruit juice but there is no hysteria over grapefruit juice for the general population.
Everything has its risks. There are allergies or adverse or idiosyncratic reactions to anything that people consume. This is where I look for standards of comparison.
The article does mention that people are looking to kava as an alternative to alcohol or benzos but it does not compare the relative risks. I value transparency and I think it’s good to be cautious and thorough but at a certain point I see prejudice masquerading as empirical rigor. Kava is foreign so the risks are exaggerated while the risks of familiar things are ignored. Getting krunk sucks. The ataxia, double vision, and nausea are miserable, but it’s a far cry from the consequences of blacking out on benzos or alcohol. No waking up next to a stranger in bed or domestic violence with kava. Not even with the roughest tudei.
I have a broken collar bone from drinking 28g BKH Nambawan micro followed by another 26g probably about an hour after. I just waited for the double vision to go away and didn’t look at the clock. I’m very well acquainted with that risk but I suffer chronic illness, so I go after it harder than most. I don’t think I’ve ever read of anyone here ever going that far. All the same, I would wager that the injuries from accidents related to excess alcohol and benzos are far more common.
If our society supports methadone and suboxone as safer replacements for heroin, then why can’t we at least recognize kava as comparable in that respect? Can’t we say that at worst it is by
Of course, methadone and suboxone both have known lethal doses. I haven’t heard of any such thing so far with kava. Sometimes I wonder if these articles are written by people who own stock in pharmaceuticals.
I think something similar is at play regarding methadone/suboxone vs ibogaine/Iboga. Ibogaine/Iboga can be lethal, but even when administered in a clandestine fashion without a proper lab or trained staff, there are still fewer deaths from ibogaine than m/s, even though m/s are legal and dispensed by licensed clinics.
I say follow the money trail. IB only needs to be administered for one week at a time four times a year and people are staying clean for years after. M/s are taken daily for life—a LOT more profit there. Here we have greed dressed up like some concern for public safety.
A friend recently told me an off duty pilot tried to crash a plane while he was on mushrooms. I read the article and it turns out the guy ate mushrooms 48hours before the flight and hadn’t slept at all. Maybe mushrooms have some kind of hangover that is not related to he fact that many people take them at night and lose sleep, but I haven’t heard of anything with a hangover that lasts 40hours, except maybe the worst tudei. The guy had also recently lost a friend and had been suffering depression. Depression, grief and two days no sleep can warp anybody’s mind mushrooms or no mushrooms, but the article still emphasizes the mushrooms probably for click bait. Greed trumps journalistic integrity every time. Mushrooms have risks, to be sure, but airports serve alcohol and drinks are also served during flights. There is no rational way to equate the risks of even the most reckless use of mushrooms with alcohol. Alcohol is more likely to cause problems that are orders of magnitude worse. I’m not suggesting that airports should start serving mushrooms, but once again I want a reasonable standard of comparison for relative risks, but here again is a prejudice against something unusual and in favor of what is familiar.
It’s too bad that public policy is so heavily influenced by public perception which is so deeply uneducated and prejudiced while the media is driven by ratings and professionals who pose as caring experts are really just looking after their dividends.
The result is a lot of hoops to jump through and senseless restrictions or worse, injustices for people who could safely enjoy or may have legitimate medical needs for medicines that are unfairly stigmatized.
As much as it can help me to vent here, I do want to move toward the steadfast, yet relaxed kava vibes. There is no way to avoid the need for patience and tolerance. Kava doesn’t need me to be some kind of vigilante. People are clinically incapable of reason and empathy when they are scared so might as well relax and save my breath because no one will hear me anyway until they can calm down and I demonstrate that I am safe so we can have a supportive, educated dialogue rather than the brawls that spread like wildfire on social media stoking extremist polarization.
I’m still waiting for things to settle down enough to have a reasonable discussion about the events of the past few years. People have to be relaxed to integrate new facts especially if those facts challenge prevailing beliefs. It’s a shame, but I don’t see any way to catalyze this process.
supplements.selfdecode.com
