Psycho Tropics: Qu'est ce que c'est? (va ka va ka va va va va ka va)

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

To me the most interesting aspects to kava concern nootropic effects and psychotropic effects.

They say that in small quantities kava is nootropic and in larger quantities it is psychotropic, but this kind of hides one interesting effect: kava is also nootropic in larger quantities.

One of the things I'm hard put to explain is how a root you can krunk out on makes you more productive. Certainly it is the case with me. With kava I am more productive at work (whether I am drinking it at work or not, it seems to be a carry-over effect, even if I have not had any kava in two or three days), and more productive when I work at home and more productive even in my play.

Part of it is that kava makes you less vulnerable to being bogged down in distractions (which is mainly what anxiety is, one big distraction concerning the future) so you can focus. It helps you cut to the chase, quickly grasp the essence of things. It also helps me be more pro-active, when I see something that needs doing I do it right away, and that in turn makes it not become a problem which allows me yet more focus on essentials and what needs dealing with. And then once the work is done and we can look back on it proudly, then, as Kavasseur once put it somewhat understatingly, "we take our relaxation very seriously."

It's a different way of life (for me, anyway) a different Gestalt.

Of course, it can be hard at times to separate the primary effects from the secondary effects of kava here. How much is attributable to having a very clear head from getting 8 hours of sleep every night with lots of REM sleep? Or from being properly hydrated (because one is forced to be or suffer horrible consequences? I mean, it's possible people suffer a kind of brain fog from chronic low-level dehydration, just enough to be a problem but not big enough for people to notice it in a way that would lead them to figure out the cause). Or from having zero anxiety? Not to mention, but lets do it anyway, zero alcohol, and having it all weaned out of your system?

OK, this sounds weird, in a discussion of *psychotropic* effects talking about greater mental clarity and operational efficiency, but there it is. I don't get "whacked out of my skull" I get whacked into it, the more krunk I get, the more straight I get. Paradox?

I find kava psychedelic in a way that cannabis or acid or mushrooms or peyote could never even hope to be. It's like your life becomes a trip, and at one with your dream world. Or as I tried to explain to my friend, "even when I'm not krunk on kava, I'm krunk on kava." It's a spirit coursing through my soul, filling it with warmth and beauty and health and joy (oh, and love and sex and sensual and spiritual pleasures).

 

[yiki]

I find kava psychedelic in a way that cannabis or acid or mushrooms or peyote could never even hope to be. It's like your life becomes a trip, and at one with your dream world

Never had anything close to what you are describing. To me, Kava feels more like a enhanced Version of alcohol. Friend of mine also claims that alcohol has a spiritual component and i'm not doubting personal experience. But it is very surprising to have someone say that. As for productivity...maybe with a low dose as relaxation does promote productivity and there seems to be a small dopaminergic effect....

It's good kava does so many good things for you!

 

[chandra]

Kava can make me more productive, but there's a fine line between " I feel like I can focus on my work now" and "I'm too relaxed to worry about it". I do suspect that kava has many effects on our physical, mental, and emotional health that haven't been fully discovered/validated yet.

 

[Poivrier]

There is a very deep spiritual side of kava. I don't know, maybe it depends on the drinker.

 

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

Never had anything close to what you are describing. To me, Kava feels more like a enhanced Version of alcohol. Friend of mine also claims that alcohol has a spiritual component and i'm not doubting personal experience. But it is very surprising to have someone say that. As for productivity...maybe with a low dose as relaxation does promote productivity and there seems to be a small dopaminergic effect....

It's good kava does so many good things for you!

Oh I see swirling colors in moire patterns, twirling hypnagogic images, motion trails, things that move look like they are dancing, objects look happy, stuff like that....

But of course it also makes me very very relaxed and calm, not lazy or lethargic or apathetic or sloppy, just chill.

 

[yiki]

Oh I see swirling colors in moire patterns, twirling hypnagogic images, motion trails, things that move look like they are dancing, objects look happy, stuff like that....

Now im really amazed! Does that happen to you with every kind of kava or only particular strains? What is you dosage if i may ask? Also, might it be, that the kava might remind you of a state you felt while having classic psychedelics? I know that it is quite common for people to complain about cannabis changing its character after their introduction to "proper" psychedelics.

 

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

It's my impression that these " hallucinations" are a normal state, produced by our brains all the time. Psychedelic drugs like LSD simply rob us of our natural abilities to suppress them for a while, which might or might not be a good thing. I' ve found with working on dreaming that one can induce hypnagogic imagery by deliberately entering or keeping yourself in a luminal liminal state, half awake, half asleep, at the beginning or end of sleep or if one awakes in the night. Takes a bit of practice, but it can be done.

With kava, and yes it takes a krunk dose (for me 4 tbs wake in 3/4 cup liquid) or oddly enough 6 ginger mint candies, it gives me an element of control. I allow the visual play to happen by easing up on the choke, that part of my brain that suppresses them, with psychedelic drugs, you have no control, the drug rips the joystick out of your hands and you take what you get willy nilly. Kava gives you they joystick and kisses you on the forehead and says have fun if you like, or not.

I will say though, that last night in my backyard I had some very pleasant minutes watching a colourful display of northern lights that I know was not there. I have lived in the arctic and seen many such displays, and after some puzzling decided that kava allowed me to roll a film out of memory, a sort of greatest hits, but also combined with some of the other visuals kava allows.

I know none of this makes sense, but it kind of does. Yes, I think memory is a part of this, which gets us back to the beginning of this thread, the question of nootropic effects with higher doses. I intend to have fun exploring this wonderful sandbox kava has opened up for me, this dlc expansion pack with new mods and skins.

 

[SelfBiasResistor]

Wow. At lower doses, I would agree with the nootropic abilities, the stress reduction and mood lift can allow you to focus and be satisfied with whatever situation you are in but at my normal (high doses), I get very unproductive and only want to relax. Very sensitive to visuals and sounds at that point.

 

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

Well, there's work doses and relax doses, and there's work/health preps and there's krunk preps. There's an interesting array.

I've pretty much finished conducting my experiments on "appropriateness" of kava consumption and found that by playing around with the doses and preps along the Health/Joy axis I could theoretically, if I wanted, drink kava every day and all the time. With the proper prep and dose I can drink it all day at work and be more productive than ever, doing better work, without any fatigue. Similarly, as my back discovered this holiday weekend, I can work like a dog, and also play athletically like a dog, on kava and perform better than ever and enjoy it even more. It is also possible, when the time is right, at the end of a day's honest labour and play, to get a little relaxed, a lot relaxed, extremely relaxed and then so relaxed we're going to have to develop new words to describe it. And of course, much depends on the variety or blend of kavas and the array of kavalactones in the kava and how they are prepped. There is a rich and complex depth and subtlely to all this, even some delicate delicious nuances, or, even when needed, some powerful sledgehammers we might summon.

So, for me at least, it isn't a question "Kava makes me feel X, and so I adapt to that by blah blah blah" but rather, "with kava I have the option, should I want or need, of feeling a or b or c or d or e or blah blah blah depending on the type or blend and prep or dosage." And this is so even with "high doses" as long as one adjusts the prep. e.g. I can drink a litre of grog at work during an 8 hour day without ever even remotely getting krunk if it's 6 TBS waka or a very health 3 TBS lawena + 3 TBS waka done in the Manoa prep, and I simply have the occasional 4 oz shot of it, basically spacing them out (heh-heh, spacing them out, hehe-heh) at one per hour. It's great, I am totally sober, straight, whatever one wants to call it, and hyper-productive, because joyful, unstressed and focused. It does, however, feel like floating through the day, even with intense, productive intellectual work, or repetitive detail-oriented work, or boring shitwork and maintenance duties.

I can do a similar thing with a high dose "strong" Manoan prep, as when Saturday night my wife and I had two litres of Dua Na Bilo made with 8 TBS to the litre each and we finished it all off in one evening but without ever getting what we know of as "krunk." Oh, we drank strong grog in a strong prep for sure, and felt it. It was remarkably like sitting there and binge watching Netflix while drinking beer, but without the beer and without any negative effects of beer. But it had all the good qualities we used to enjoy of sitting there drinking beer after beer while watching show after show. And yeah, we felt relaxed and didn't feel like doing any hard work, although I have the strong feeling I could have mentally willed myself out of that state and "straightened up" almost instantly should the need have arisen, something other drugs like alcohol never afford you. I think kava offers us a great deal of optional control over our experiences with it, if we experiment with it a bit.

 

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

Well, there's work doses and relax doses, and there's work/health preps and there's krunk preps. There's an interesting array.

Of course, as with other beneficial effects of kava, it can be tricky to distinguish which of the nootropic effects I experience, e.g. better memory (and fewer "senior moments"), more focused perception and cognition, more rational thinking, less getting bogged down by distractions and non-essentials, less "walking the dog," are primary direct effects that come directly from the kava itself or secondary effects from other things the kava has accomplished: 8 hours of solid sleep every night with REM sleep maxed out, proper hydration (ironic beauty: by dehydrating us it forces us to be properly hydrated, or else!), no alcohol, diminished or eliminated anxiety and stress, etc....

Also, not being addicted to anything, anything at all, my mind is free of the dance of tension and release and constant obsession which any addiction can preoccupy your mind with, which frees up a lot of space up there for more productive work.

 

[Krunkaroo]

For me, If I drink Kava and really chill by laying on the floor in corpse pose, the body starts to destress and release tightly held energies. I end up feeling very light and much more sensitive to spiritual subtle energies.