I love the effects of kava, especially the mood boost/euphoria. However, it is always a little frustrating how short lived What I find are the best effects are. For me they barely last beyond the last shell of a session.
Anyone have any advice for enjoying kava over an extended period, maybe 4 hours+ (without just adding more and more root or diluting the brew hugely)?
I concur exactly with your feelings on this. That is actually the one thing I would "edit" about kava lol! Besides the nausea effect that my own weak digestive sytem is personally prone to, in order to reach the top of my Kava Eiffel tower!
I too, love that initial, kavain rushy euphoria.
I know K@ is fairly scorned upon by the dedicated kava community, for a large part, and in numerous ways, justifiably so. K@ has some specific "per se" negative aspects, as I see it. Namely, physical dependancy and severe withdrawal potential, I learnt frist hand the hard way last September (2019) before I had ever even tried kava, with a cold turkey stop after only 4 weeks daily use, up to 13 grams.
It was an exceptionally unpleasant 4-5 day withdrawal experience.
But what I did particularly anjoy about K@, is the sheer longevity and stability of the positive, euphoric, anxiolytic, mood boosting effects.
Like 4-6 hours without noticeably dropping off.
With kava however, the specific cultivar and chemotype can make a difference.
Certain heavier kavas, like heavy fijian Kadavu or Koro for example, can have a longer lasting, more stable effect.
I always mix my different cultivars up each day too,,creatimg a synergistic effect, both heavy and headies, depending on what I fancy.
But I will often use a top up of instant kava, or a last, remaining strong shell, when my kava effect has dropped off some, mostly when I don't eat for over 1.5 hours after my last shell.
This usually kicks the kava positive mood lift and euphoria back up again nicely. Like, allowing the effect to taper down after a nice session, then a single good shell pumps it back up again before I do eat.
Otherwise, I find you can push the boat a bit with your consumption level, and the effect plateaus out after a longer while, and following the session up with warm, fatty spicy food within a certain time frame can also kick the effects back up I find.
Some cultivars just also last longer, heady or heavy too. So it's worth trying a variety. I found Kavatime's Gourmet Savusavu to have a surprisingly long lasting effect compared to some others.