Drink up, calm down
Bitter-tasting herb kava just might be ‘nature’s Xanax’
L AST year, after a spell of “Airplane! ”style slap-worthy panic attacks, I found myself in a Manhattan psychiatrist’s office pleading for something a bit stronger than Benadryl.
The doctor wrote me a prescription for Xanax. But when I mentioned I was open to natural alternatives, he tossed out another suggestion: “Have you heard of kava?”
Kava, also called kavakava root and, in some academic circles, Piper meth
ysticum, is a South Pacific plant with psychotropic, sedative effects, much like those of Xanax or other benzodiazepines. Historians trace its cultivation back some 3,000 years; traditionally, it was ground down into a powder and mixed with water to make a drink that was sipped during sacred ceremonies. Today, kava, which is legal in the US, is sold in tinctures at health-food stores and served in its traditional tea form in specialty kava bars.
The root’s brain-targeting compounds are called kavalactones, which bind to the same part of the body’s central nervous system that alcohol and benzos do. “It’s relaxing and mood-lifting and euphoric,” says Harding Stowe, founder of Bushwick’s Brooklyn Kava, one of three kava bars in the city. He originally sought kava as a natural treatment for work-related anxiety and was “blown away” by the results. “It doesn’t muddle your mind or create brain fog. It just lifts your mood.”
Per my doctor’s recommendation, I bought a kava tincture from Whole Foods and added several drops to a glass of cold water. The taste was foul — like that of bitter licorice and dirt — but I found the mixture palpably, if subtly, calming. Several months later, I tried the traditional-style kava drink at the East Village’s Kavasutra. The flavor was even worse. “People drink it for the effects, not the taste,” Rich Haskins, manager of the bar, tells me — and the effects were much more pronounced.
While several scientific papers from the past two decades paint kava as a promising potential treatment for anxiety, Dr. Brent Bauer of the Mayo Clinic writes that more studies are needed to prove its efficacy and safety, and recommends that patients “use extra caution and involve your doctor in the decision” to experiment with kava. A 2011 paper published in Drug and Alcohol Review suggests kava can yield a host of unpleasant side effects, from nausea and indigestion to a “scaly skin rash.” My bottle of kava extract warns on the label that “a potential risk of rare but severe liver injury may be associated with kava-containing dietary supplements.” Without a formal regulatory board, dosing is difficult to ascertain. Haskins can have a couple of cups of the pure stuff a day and feel completely fine, but that would be far too much for me.
My tolerance is fairly low. I only drink it about once a month, when I’m feeling especially anxious. It usually does the trick and, with a taste like that, it had sure better.