Wienerschnitzel
Newbie
Hi all! As the title says, I’d really appreciate some insight (and perhaps some reassurance). I had a huge post prepared, but I’ve pared it down so as not to take up too much of your time. It’ll probably still run long, so thanks in advance to those good Samaritans willing to brave the wall of text.
Long story short, I quit alcohol for good in April and returned to the root, so to speak. I’ve ridden the alcohol rollercoaster since my early twenties, getting off for longish stretches because of the obvious reasons and then back on because of life stresses and the desire to just get out of my head and relax like a normal person. Being on the spectrum, stress is a constant part of my life. I need something to it, but I don’t want that something to be pharmaceuticals and I know now that it can’t be alcohol either. Alcohol is the drug that *clicks* for me. A few people here will probably understand immediately why that’s a big red flag.
Anyway, I’ve used kava during dry jaunts in the past and liked it a lot, except for some nasty gut issues. Now I have a better strainer and those issues are resolved. I’ve really been getting more enjoyment out of the noble root and it’s helped me break out of a long destructive cycle before it got a chance to break me. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that, really.
That said, I have some concerns. I use kava three times a week, around 50 grams a session in 1,2 L of water. Traditional prep, kneading with lukewarm water. I use Kava Europe’s Pacific Elixir and Bir Kar, which I understand to be sourced from The Kava Society in NZ.
I got a liver panel done a few weeks after quitting alcohol and taking up kava. Everything was fine. Main goal there was to see if my liver was okay after about a year of heavy drinking. I didn’t want to risk taxing it with kava if it wasn’t. To my relief, it was all good. I stayed the course, leaning into kava at first to carry me away from alcohol’s siren-sung shores, then easing back a bit once I was in a better place.
My concerns are twofold. Firstly, kava seems to have begun interfering with my sleep. In April, it wasn’t a problem at all. Enjoyed kava at night, dropped into bed and sailed into dreamland. Now, it seems to keep me up. I take 600 mg of L-theanine on kava nights only, just to make getting to sleep a bit easier. That helps a bit, but I still find it weird that I’d suddenly develop insomnia without changing anything about my kava ritual. If anybody has some guidance on this, I’d love to hear it. I’m a night owl and like staying up late with kava, but I also want to be able to get to sleep when I turn in. Never been a issue before so I’m confused as to why it’s cropping up now.
Secondly and most importantly, my body just seems... off... somehow. Muscle aches, joint pain, weakness, tremors, weird skin sensations that feel almost like burning. Had no problem with this at first, but it's started to creep in over the past two months. I've also noticed during exercise that my strength seems to be sagging a bit. I really wanted to have some kava tonight, got a fresh delivery just yesterday, but I can’t shake the feeling that these symptoms might be connected. And now my eternally suspicious subconscious is starting to give kava the side-eye. I haven’t had any since last Friday, so I figure everything should be cleared right out of my system by now. But still, the weird aches and pains persist, albeit at a lower level than I might get the day or second day after kava.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t use any other substances. My daily vitamin regimen consists of a B complex without B6, a large dose of D3 because of natural deficiency, magnesium citrate and milk thistle. I do drink strong tea in the evenings, but that’s about as exciting as things get outside of kava.
Can anybody shine a light on this? Share some sources, offer perspective, talk some gentle sense into a worried mind? I know from experience that I can spend years sober, but I also know that if I don’t use something else to unwind and take a breather, I simply spend those years marinating in cortisol.
Long story short, I quit alcohol for good in April and returned to the root, so to speak. I’ve ridden the alcohol rollercoaster since my early twenties, getting off for longish stretches because of the obvious reasons and then back on because of life stresses and the desire to just get out of my head and relax like a normal person. Being on the spectrum, stress is a constant part of my life. I need something to it, but I don’t want that something to be pharmaceuticals and I know now that it can’t be alcohol either. Alcohol is the drug that *clicks* for me. A few people here will probably understand immediately why that’s a big red flag.
Anyway, I’ve used kava during dry jaunts in the past and liked it a lot, except for some nasty gut issues. Now I have a better strainer and those issues are resolved. I’ve really been getting more enjoyment out of the noble root and it’s helped me break out of a long destructive cycle before it got a chance to break me. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for that, really.
That said, I have some concerns. I use kava three times a week, around 50 grams a session in 1,2 L of water. Traditional prep, kneading with lukewarm water. I use Kava Europe’s Pacific Elixir and Bir Kar, which I understand to be sourced from The Kava Society in NZ.
I got a liver panel done a few weeks after quitting alcohol and taking up kava. Everything was fine. Main goal there was to see if my liver was okay after about a year of heavy drinking. I didn’t want to risk taxing it with kava if it wasn’t. To my relief, it was all good. I stayed the course, leaning into kava at first to carry me away from alcohol’s siren-sung shores, then easing back a bit once I was in a better place.
My concerns are twofold. Firstly, kava seems to have begun interfering with my sleep. In April, it wasn’t a problem at all. Enjoyed kava at night, dropped into bed and sailed into dreamland. Now, it seems to keep me up. I take 600 mg of L-theanine on kava nights only, just to make getting to sleep a bit easier. That helps a bit, but I still find it weird that I’d suddenly develop insomnia without changing anything about my kava ritual. If anybody has some guidance on this, I’d love to hear it. I’m a night owl and like staying up late with kava, but I also want to be able to get to sleep when I turn in. Never been a issue before so I’m confused as to why it’s cropping up now.
Secondly and most importantly, my body just seems... off... somehow. Muscle aches, joint pain, weakness, tremors, weird skin sensations that feel almost like burning. Had no problem with this at first, but it's started to creep in over the past two months. I've also noticed during exercise that my strength seems to be sagging a bit. I really wanted to have some kava tonight, got a fresh delivery just yesterday, but I can’t shake the feeling that these symptoms might be connected. And now my eternally suspicious subconscious is starting to give kava the side-eye. I haven’t had any since last Friday, so I figure everything should be cleared right out of my system by now. But still, the weird aches and pains persist, albeit at a lower level than I might get the day or second day after kava.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t use any other substances. My daily vitamin regimen consists of a B complex without B6, a large dose of D3 because of natural deficiency, magnesium citrate and milk thistle. I do drink strong tea in the evenings, but that’s about as exciting as things get outside of kava.
Can anybody shine a light on this? Share some sources, offer perspective, talk some gentle sense into a worried mind? I know from experience that I can spend years sober, but I also know that if I don’t use something else to unwind and take a breather, I simply spend those years marinating in cortisol.
