Hey everyone,
Just some thoughts from a newbie about this RT business I read about. Seems some think it’s real, others do not.
I tried kava about 2 years ago, and the effects were extremely subtle, borderline not worth the money for me at the time. Important to note is that I had very little exposure to GABA-ergic drugs, including alcohol (was a stoner in college, not a drinker!)
A year or so late I developed a slight drinking problem (few shots of gin every night), due to work stress. I decided 2 weeks ago to say fuck it to alcohol and go back to kava... and my god the effects are so much stronger than they were back then, it’s like I finally get it, even though I had not used kava for over a year.
This makes me think... does reverse tolerance happen to those who are relatively GABA-naive? It just seems odd that after abusing alcohol I now get the full fledged kava effects, even after not consuming for over a year.
Curious on your experience? Did you have RT to break through? If yes, what is your experience with alcohol, benzos, and other GABA drugs?
For me, I went through a period of 2 ish years where I would buy about 50g of kava every couple months or so, go through it all in a night or two, then not use it for a while (since each time it would do nothing, jo matter how the prep).
One time I bought some kava and the forgot about it. A few days later, I had just finished a 2 hour meditation session (I meditate daily for 40 mins, 20 mins in morning and night, but about once a month I will go for 2-3 hours to really get deep into it). After coming out of my trance I decided to clean my room, and found the kava.
I made it up normal, not changing anything from how I had prepped the last 5 or 10 times I had tried it (just a warm-water traditional knead prep in a shirt.)
Wow - it hit me like nothing else. And I believe the reason was because I had just come out of 2 hours of intense concentration. When I meditate, I try to bring awareness to the breath to start, but then over time expand that awareness to my entire body, and entire mind. So I was very in tune with my body, and more importantly any changes in body and mind.
Ever since then I get full effects from kava, even if leaving off for months.
I believe for most people reverse tolerance is like this... kava is, in a lot of ways, a very subtle ally. If you're focused on other things it can be very easy to miss the changes. And what's more, in the moment you don't know what you would feel like if you hadn't taken kava. So there's a chance someone new might take kava, and then feel fairly nornal... but if all variables remained the same
except kava hadn't been taken, maybe they would be feeling anxiety. There are a lot of ways that kava is very regulatory, and so the body being brought to a state of harmony doesn't always feel "psychoactive" to people who are used to substances that are a little bit more forward with altering oerception.
It's worth noting that while kava does seem to be somewhat GABAergic, I'm not actually convinced very much of its total effects are mediated through GABA pathways. I'm a previous hardcore benzos addict, and in fact I have to be very careful with kava because it isn't anxiolytic in a traditional GABA sense. The muscle relaxation is more likely mediated through the inhibition of electrolyte channels (reduction of sodium/calcium signalling) and the psychoactive effects also involve norepinephrine reuptake inhibition, cannabinoid receptor 1 activation, monoamine oxidase inhibition, and possibly dopamine agonism. The effects on kava seem to be less acute and rather that there is a little bit of evidence that over time kava use may upregulate GABAa receptors. I've never seen a source that actually goes beyond speculation and is backed by studies meeting basic criteria to be considered authoritative.
The other aspect of reverse tolerance is that over time, preparation technique often will get better. Depending on the prep this can be a minor contributing factor, but still possibly a factor.
Overall I think it just takes one experience where your set and setting is primed to really receive and notice the effects of kava. After that, it becomes as if your brain cannot "unsee" - thus is backed up, imo, by the fact that a TON of people have similar stories where suddenly kava works for them during a session, and from then on in perpetuity they have their "kava legs."
