One more try.

[TrevC]

tldr: Is there something I can do to make sure my stomach/body is processing/working/metabolizing properly?

I've posted before regarding my back and forth with Kava. ie. Whether it's gonna "work" or not.
Gradually I started to realize that just THINGS IN GENERAL weren't "working", or at least something wasn't clicking.
K@ helped me through a pretty rough season and I quit it cold-turkey (5 days of no sleep, RLS, the whole deal - sense of dread out of this world... all the while holding onto HOPE (because that's where people get desperate, and succumb to sad outcomes)).
After getting back to "where I was", I started looking at anti-depressants because it truly felt like something is lacking in me. It's why I turned to K@ to begin with. (Long story short: Sertraline (Zoloft), Wellbutrin, and Effexor did not help. Effexor in particular made me feel weird and "floaty".)

So I started back with K@, this time not approaching the serving amounts (my starting "dose" was around 7g - way too high - 3-5g is a "dose" now).

Kava for me, when things work, is like that warm friend at the end of the day that helps the stress melt away, and gives me that nice feeling of "Oh I'm probably gonna sleep WELL tonight!"

Here's the situation: My stomach/body/system doesn't *SEEM* to be processing things the way it's supposed to.

Not just the Kava, but K@, Delta8, seemingly any substance that qualifies as an anxiolytic or mood lift product.

I keep a journal, and one thing that keeps happening is I'll read "THIS MIGHT BE IT!" (Like after I got more serious about supplementing with L-Tyrosine, Inositol, L-Theanine, etc.) but things swing back around. One time I thought adding MCT Oil was a "THIS MIGHT BE IT!" moment... because for that week or so, K@, Kava, all of it - worked WELL.
(NOTE: One common occurrence is that I can bank on any time I'm feeling this way, motility / bathroom experience will be bad. Like passing gravel. And I don't know which causes the other - if I've managed to NOT drink enough water, for example, and that causes my GI stuff which causes mood disorder / depression stuff.)

The most recent was the addition of a Vitamin B-12 liquid. I began to wonder if I was deficient, based on general absorption/nutrition connections I read related to B12.
So because I was "BACK WORKING RIGHT" again, I was all excited, thinking I had landed on the right supplement combination.
Same thing when I discovered DIGESTIVE ENZYMES... I thought "This seems to really help!"

But no... I'm back to where I've been so many times. I seem to waver between these two places in a cycle, and I really really want to be stable.

My last doctor visit was a colonoscopy, so now I'm looking going the other direction - a stomach scope.

Before doing that, I felt like one last attempt here... grasping for something to CLICK... something that could really help.

 

[The Kap'n]

tldr: Is there something I can do to make sure my stomach/body is processing/working/metabolizing properly?

I've posted before regarding my back and forth with Kava. ie. Whether it's gonna "work" or not.
Gradually I started to realize that just THINGS IN GENERAL weren't "working", or at least something wasn't clicking.
K@ helped me through a pretty rough season and I quit it cold-turkey (5 days of no sleep, RLS, the whole deal - sense of dread out of this world... all the while holding onto HOPE (because that's where people get desperate, and succumb to sad outcomes)).
After getting back to "where I was", I started looking at anti-depressants because it truly felt like something is lacking in me. It's why I turned to K@ to begin with. (Long story short: Sertraline (Zoloft), Wellbutrin, and Effexor did not help. Effexor in particular made me feel weird and "floaty".)

So I started back with K@, this time not approaching the serving amounts (my starting "dose" was around 7g - way too high - 3-5g is a "dose" now).

Kava for me, when things work, is like that warm friend at the end of the day that helps the stress melt away, and gives me that nice feeling of "Oh I'm probably gonna sleep WELL tonight!"

Here's the situation: My stomach/body/system doesn't *SEEM* to be processing things the way it's supposed to.

Not just the Kava, but K@, Delta8, seemingly any substance that qualifies as an anxiolytic or mood lift product.

I keep a journal, and one thing that keeps happening is I'll read "THIS MIGHT BE IT!" (Like after I got more serious about supplementing with L-Tyrosine, Inositol, L-Theanine, etc.) but things swing back around. One time I thought adding MCT Oil was a "THIS MIGHT BE IT!" moment... because for that week or so, K@, Kava, all of it - worked WELL.
(NOTE: One common occurrence is that I can bank on any time I'm feeling this way, motility / bathroom experience will be bad. Like passing gravel. And I don't know which causes the other - if I've managed to NOT drink enough water, for example, and that causes my GI stuff which causes mood disorder / depression stuff.)

The most recent was the addition of a Vitamin B-12 liquid. I began to wonder if I was deficient, based on general absorption/nutrition connections I read related to B12.
So because I was "BACK WORKING RIGHT" again, I was all excited, thinking I had landed on the right supplement combination.
Same thing when I discovered DIGESTIVE ENZYMES... I thought "This seems to really help!"

But no... I'm back to where I've been so many times. I seem to waver between these two places in a cycle, and I really really want to be stable.

My last doctor visit was a colonoscopy, so now I'm looking going the other direction - a stomach scope.

Before doing that, I felt like one last attempt here... grasping for something to CLICK... something that could really help.

Sorry to the people who support this plant, but it's likely the K@. The active alkaloids in K@ act as atypical opioids. While they're "atypical" in structure, they activate similar regions of the brain as classical opioids and opiates and cause similar side effects. This is causing your motility issues. The other issues could be related as well, but without knowing you very well it would be hard to say.

 

[TrevC]

Sorry to the people who support this plant, but it's likely the K@. The active alkaloids in K@ act as atypical opioids. While they're "atypical" in structure, they activate similar regions of the brain as classical opioids and opiates and cause similar side effects. This is causing your motility issues. The other issues could be related as well, but without knowing you very well it would be hard to say.

Kap’m, thank you for the feedback.
K@ binding to the mu receptor (I believe) in particular is for sure a cause of constipation.
The fact that I ALSO drink Kava (a diuretic, as you well know) means I usually am guzzling water all day. It’s the having *GOOD DAYS* then going back to not feeling anything that I wish I knew the answer to.

But despite using K@, I am with you 100% on the feeling towards it. And I hate it for all the folks who bought into it initially believing it actually is as easy to quit as coffee. Ugh. :/

Thank you, as always, for your replies here. I am grateful! And this does have me looking harder at how much h2o I should be diligent in drinking.

 

[scaryjarri]

Hey,


This sounds a bit like me. Ive gone through a lot to find what makes me able to exist and have a very a typical albeit i think rational approach to the mental health conundrum you are in.

I take K@ every 4 hours for over 7 years people think thats nuts but some of us are broken. Actually were all broken, only some us know it and very few admit it. There is a lot of stigma attached and a lot of people "speaking out of turn" meaning they dont know what theyre talking about. Its villainized and unstudied so anecdotes and experimetation is where I lived. I used to drink alcohol , thanks to K@ for sure, I havent touched a drop in 4-5 years. I have it in my house still, dont care about it. I took wellbutrin, zoloft, lamotragine, lithium. I was diagniosed as Bipolar, totla BS ears later. Zoloft made me suicidal.

Right now Im considered autistic/asperger due to who I am. I dont know if I am really. I pass pretty well for neurotypical but Ive pretty much never been full of shit, wrong yes but, I dont team with anyone, I see lots of lies, narcisisim, and the dysfunction of society. According to me, were in dystopia, smack in the middle of a pre truth era. Everyone else is waiting for it to come with cognitive dissonance being the poor frog in boiling water. Nothing to do but accept our shitty fates and from there maybe something.

In the years of trying to figure out why I was depressed but hyper functional,- alcohol and caffeine can show as bipolar oppoisites, up and down but people try to put people who are/nt broken in a box vs understanding them or validating their pain. If you live a toxicly positive life where you always have to appear sunshiny and more happy than the rest but you see the shittyness in the world for what it is, youre in a double bind, at conflict with yourself and the world. WTF is wrong with me? Also as a tell, i ate boatloads of LSD 25-30 years ago for a few years and later partook in mescaline and ayhuasca. I pretty mcuh cant put the toxic sunshiny glasses back on, my eyes burn hole through them. But I realize Im not fucked up, the world is, the world is the collective of humans and almost none of us are telling the truth, let alone living anything close to it. I realize that can sound grandiose but thats the for those who are narcks and try and pin you down with a word and invalidate everything you have to say. Were trying to be accepted and not osctarcized by immmoral people generally. It doesnt mean everyone is a malicious narcissist obviously but we all have a lot of narcisisim in us as its rewarded and championed in our society and very little empathy, we act like we have it but its almost pandering empathy, its not real. Socially useful empathy is all that is allowed. Were attacked for showing our empathy, "how dare you be vegan and have to tell everyone there are sentient creatures here with us, not below us". Speaking of myself. Not saying you have it or dont.

I found in my lief and my partners that getting outside the constant cognitive dissonance is what helped us both. Its hard as hell, you have to have means in many ways or be ok going it alone. There are a lot of toxic people in our space and I think that we blame too much on what we consume. While it clearly has importance and some people cant take certain shit, a lot of it I think our bodies dictate the response..

Kava, ive been drinking it for maybe 12-14 years off and on. Im on now, thats why Im on here. I have an atypical response for the most part. I get a lot of Neurotransmitters that help me get my work done, I get numbed out physically to a certain degree tha allows me to push through pain, I get very forgetfull if I session too much. So now we drink for only a week or 2 at a time and take a few months off. Its like magic potion that helsp me get trhough tough shit with what the world is, its kinda needed more often than not. But it wreaks havoc on my gut. I feel like I drink too much but 2 of us only 5-7 TBSP all together. Thats like 1 drink for people on here. By the time Im done with a day session, Im krunk as shit, wobbly eyes, nargjie, dry, etc. Its synergistic with K@ so that could be it. When I start sessioning, it helps me sleep for a few days, then it shits all over my sleep. People on kava formus tell you its the K@ and vice versa. I like both. I have a lot of chaos in my life right now and I dont see the roses, im not negative, i just see the shit and feel the pain of the world. A lot of empathy, a lot of disdain for narcisisists and bullshitters.

I feel like my receptors were "heightened in sensitivity" perhgaps fom all the lsd, like several hunderd hits, not all once and losing my shit on mecaline when I didnt know thats what may happen. Pretty much died, had to give in. I dabble in CBD, vaping flower, making mct, CBN, CBg, CBD, etc. Sometimes cbn helps me sleep. I tried racetams before I found K@ mostly shit imo. I also didnt like K@ first time I had it. Now Ive literally been drinking it for 7 years consistently and IM defeinately depenednt but holy shit. Ive been dependednt on psch meds, on xanax for 8 freakin years prescribed, prescibed opiates off and on for years and drinking for 25.

I come to realize that most of what I was doing was self medicating. I do none of those things now for many years. Have to ability to but ive never needed to be high really, its been to fill up the void probably w dopamine and other nts that I seem to require and my body seems to effiiciently work with.

kava always wrecks my gut after 2-3 days of drinking. It starts affecting my morning ritual. K@ may if I stoped but I wont and that ritual is good. Ive been vegan for a long time and eat healthy so no issues. Prior to both kava and K@ I went to the hospital with gastritus. I thought my pancreas was falling out and I was gonna die. It was due to drinking. I get bloods every 6 months and litrally just got them. Im almost 50 and healthy as far as those go, kinda gets better the further from booze I get.

K@ is stigmatized and self limiting in some ways so I take 3-4.5g every 4 hours. I get no stomach issues or anything from it but i have had moments where I got some early on. Drinking wrecked my stomach and probably my gaba. I have great partner whos definately on the spectrum and very similar to me. More genius level in certain aspects than me but almost totally disfunctional in others that Im good at. I tell the people the truth and I dont care if they dont like me. Its been like that for a long time. i dont care for dishonest people, even if wearing a minor mask. I connect with animals. or i appreciate them and their innocence. Something happened to humanity, especialliy in the develop[ed countries 50+ years ago that cemented narcisisim in our lives as a value and people like to say things like my morals are different. No morals are morals, we all agree but we reverse engineer what that is instead of being literal nerds.

I think psychological trauma is something we all have pretty hard, most wont acknowledge it, they posture strength, some us die, carrying that heavy mask. Not saying your autistic clearly, no idea, just wanting to chime in before nmy ext kava because psychology is my favorite past time.

You will become dependednt on K@, noone understands what it is, especially those talking about it who dont take it. Its disingenuous. From my perspective its a magical plant and some us need our receptors gently massaged to exist. We dont need to stuff our feelings and then wonder why were failing and so sick. Its helped me to be me and to stand up to the narciusisiists. If I were you, Id explore every avenue but especially the psychological one. We over simplify and go weird diet, trying to get rid of one food to cure our ibs or eat one in excess when its our very powerful but rarely used brains and the neurotransmitters in the gut. K@ needs to be dialed in.

IM an athiest so no cosmic shit, just powerful mild chemicals to remedy the sickness of society. Yes I dont have time to spell check so if you tell me off becasue you dont like to read, then youre definailty a a narcisisist. Joke, or maybe its not. Good luck dont beleive humans all lie allmost all of the time.

 

[TrevC]

@scaryjarri, thank you for laying that out there. I was saddened to read about all the prior things you went through (ie. alcohol, meds) and am glad you have gotten to a place where you feel, for the most part it seems, happier. At least compared to before.
I've quit K@ cold-turkey before and am very acquainted with WDs (no sleep for 5 days, but the sense of dread was the worst part for me... then during "PAWS", it seems to drag on where you can't feel happiness, even when things are going extremely well). My family are very supportive, and I constantly have to consider what I *KNOW* vs how I *FEEL*. Having those constants in life is powerful. I held to, and hold to, my faith in God. This is laughable to some of the world, but during my darkest times I have seen evidence of Love when I seek after it.
It's incredible that I even considered utilizing K@ again, based on that experience, but I thought "If I use it responsibly." (ie. No more 7-8 gram servings... no more heaping tablespoons.) I'm around where you are - 3.5 to 4g servings. Morning, pre-lunch, and pre-dinner. (I hate that I got so hung up on having an empty stomach to take it. I read that you have to take it that way and I have stuck with it. But I sometimes wonder if taking K@ WITH food is somehow more advisable in the long run.)

You are a deep thinker, and I imagine we could have some interesting conversations.
Thank you again for taking time to share.