The Plant That Gives You What Alcohol Promises (Without The Hangover) w/ Cameron George

I got 28 years plant medicine experience. There's levels to the game. And I realized that that's likely the case with kava. >> Kava actually in South Pacific Island culture, it's the water and pressure extracted plant-based elixir from the roots [music] of Piper methysticum. And Piper methysticum literally means intoxicating pepper. It's seen as really a mental and emotional technology and a developer of the mind. It's their most sacred substance [music] in Vanuatu. You just have more access to your emotional framework. You feel more like yourself and therefore [music] there's this emergence of that divinity inside of you. >> There was a trend for a little while where kava bars started to pop up here in the states. I guess the difference is maybe it's just not the best kava. >> There's a spectrum of quality with all these medicines. >> [music] >> Kava relies heavily on the entourage effect in order to get the full spectrum and depth of the [music] experience. So like the more that you process kava, it's kind of like processing a food. It can definitely change its effects profile to where you end up with a small shade that feels like chamomile tea. Cuz I I look at all of these things as organisms. They're organisms with specific characteristics, specific types of intelligence. [music] And I look at bringing a plant medicine into your life as forming a relationship. >> What do you think the essential spiritual nature of kava is and what can it provide from that perspective? [music] >> Kava is best taken as a ritual that starts to build mental, psychological, and emotional health over time. >> I'm very curious about bringing this into particularly the more excitatory kind of psychedelic experiences that you have. [music] Cameron, I got 28 years plant medicine experience. I got 16 years of supplement experience. And if there's one thing I know, it's that there's levels to the game. And what you think you know about a substance of whether it's a supplement or nutraceutical or plant medicine and what the high end of what's possible, there's a vast discrepancy. So much that with something like Wachuma, you can take Wachuma and be like, "Yeah, that was kind of chill and I felt a little something, a little nauseous and whatever." And then you can take like Maestro Elejo's Wachuma, who was just recently on my podcast, and you're like, "Holy [ __ ] This is something else." And I realized that that's likely the case with kava. And so just for a little backstory, I had my first kava when I went to Fiji. >> Mhm. >> And I'm out on an island and there's this old-timer there. He's got like three teeth. He caught a wild caught a wild octopus and grilled it up for us. And after we ate the octopus, sorry for those who love octopuses, but that's just what they did. He like had this I was crazy [ __ ] story, too. I'll just tell the story real quick. He [snorts] got it with his bare hands and the octopus was like slashing on his arm and then like bit some part of his hand and he goes up and shows his hand to the person driving the boat and the person driving the boat must have said in Fijian like, "Don't be a [ __ ] Get the >> Yeah, yeah. >> I'm like, [laughter] "Go down there." So he goes back. >> Yeah, yeah, probably. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So he like goes down there, gets the octopus and then like takes it. He's all proud. It's like trying to rip off his [ __ ] snorkel and then he slaps it down on this little boat that we had and all the women children and some of the men just shrieked cuz there's this like living octopus there. We ate the octopus and then he started making kava. And you know, he's doing it in this kind of big bowl. We have these kind of coconut emptied out coconut husks that we're drinking it out of, but long time just kneading it, spin it. It just looked like this this kind of puddle of mud. I was like, "I'm going to drink this puddle of mud?" And like he was super enthusiastic about it and I was like, "All right, you know, I've drank worse [ __ ] before in my life, so we'll go for it." And I just remember, you know, sipping that on the beach and you know, obviously you kind of down it and I just felt great. And I was like, "This is rad." And then I slowly started to get into kava, but I was never able to really replicate what I did in Fiji. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't order some kava from some different places and then mix it with the soil less than get the cheesecloth. I like tried, and then I even went to some kava bars, but I was like it's not the same. >> Mhm. >> So, all this to say, now I'm finally in front of somebody who really knows what the [ __ ] they're talking about when it comes to kava, and I'm looking to up my kava game and also share with everybody how rad this plant is and can be if you can take it to those levels. >> Dude, yeah. It's fascinating, man. I couldn't agree more. Um there's a spectrum of quality with all these medicines, and in some with with some more than others even. And kava's one of those where where the stuff that you're using like can make all the difference in the world. It can be an absolute like make or break. Not only like how long the plant was grown for, how it's been harvested, how long it set, how it's prepared, and then there's strain selection. So, I mean, just to start off, I mean, kava a lot of people don't even know what it is, haven't heard of it. They may have kind of heard the name, they may have conflated it with some other things that start with K, kratom, and kanna, and some of these other things. >> free to just combine them, so now they're kind of lumped in this suspicious category. Like, I feel good, but I don't know if this is good for me. >> Totally different compounds, totally different composition, totally different effects profile, uh that kind of has some overlapping characteristics, but, you know, you know, kratom is far more um you know, safe for targeted therapeutic use and like medical use and being you know, very conscious about what you're doing. >> slipperier. I got it [ __ ] habituated to that. It was gnarly. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I felt like I was going through a heroin withdrawal when I had to get off it. It was terrible. >> People tell me this all the time. There's there's tons of people that go through it, don't realize that it's going to have that effect, and then they run out, and then all of the sudden they're like, "Dude, what the [ __ ] is wrong with me?" They're like shaking, and they're like asking everyone, they're like, "Dude, were you on those uh you know, those those those kratom shots?" >> cuz I mean, in my mind, I was like, "Plants. Plants good." >> Yeah. >> [laughter] >> You know, like I was like, "This is a plant. Plants are good. Pharma's bad. Like, I'm good." And I was not good. >> Which is a general principle. This is in a lot of cases. >> heuristic that's helpful, but I'm not going to crowd it with other >> very, you know, you know, general perspective. It's like a most most good permanent long-lasting solutions come from nature, but not everything in nature is a solution, right? Cuz I I look at all of these things as organisms. They're organisms with specific characteristics, specific types of intelligence. And I look at bringing a plant medicine into your life as forming a relationship with an another organism. Rather. And you know, just like people in your life, there are people that because their wiring, their adaptations, you know, the way that they've developed as a human and what they bring to the table, they're actually a perfect fit for a long-lasting consistent relationship with you that actually like bears fruit over time, you know? And then some people are not good for you at all. And then other people are good in doses. Like it's therapeutic like to come in, to spend time with them, but if you were to spend every day, your life just doesn't really gel with them and it's not healthy for whatever reason. You know, it doesn't really >> was a bad girlfriend that I got super attached [laughter] to and super codependent. I was like, "Just give me a little more, sweetheart." And then finally I was like, "You're killing me, babe." >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and and kratom is one of those. It's like it's it's a super great medicine for like short-term therapeutic like leverage. Like if you're coming off a synthetic opiate like OxyContin or like heroin or something, it's a great leverage tool to kind of step down to something that's less pernicious, but it needs it's sort of like the tool that's like the scalpel, right? It's like you can easily kill someone with it if you wave it around, but if you can learn how to you know, use it with surgical precision, then it's a good tool, you know? And it's like that. But kava is one of those medicines that not to conflate it, but kava is more of a tonic substance. And kava actually in South Pacific Island culture, it is it's the water and pressure extracted elixir plant-based elixir from the roots of Piper methysticum. And Piper methysticum literally means intoxicating pepper. So it's this intoxicating uh elixir that's made from this plant in the pepper family. So, like black table pepper is Piper nigrum. Um and it was it was discovered over 3,000 years ago in a country called Vanuatu. And not a lot of people have heard of Vanuatu, but most people have heard of Fiji, you know, that's where that's where you had it. And Fiji's got more of like a tourist thing going on. But Vanuatu is more of sort of like a third world situation in a still. So, Vanuatu has 83 islands and it was discovered in Vanuatu and the genetics have been traced back to Vanuatu where its inception was. Uh and then it was carried to Fiji thousands of years ago. And actually, the indigenous islanders went to a lot of trouble and danger to transport it in these little like bamboo looking boats uh that they could only transport a certain amount of weight. And they chose to transport kava which was not even a full food from a calorie standpoint uh just so they could bring it into kind of spread it because of its effects on the mind and on the soul and on the and on the spirit and everything. And, you know, so anyways, it's it it was discovered 3,000 years ago and it has come to shape entire cultures in these South Pacific lineages in these Polynesian countries. So, they use it for everything in Vanuatu and in Fiji. They use it for weddings, funerals, spiritual ceremonies, social gatherings, basically any context where people are coming together to try to relax at the end of the day, loosen up, or get into a what would I would call a healthy state. Obviously, like a healthy introspective, reflective, open, relaxed, but not sedated, open, but not like blown open, right? So, it's not like drastically psychoactive like your classic like tryptamine psychedelics, but it is entheogenic. And that's one thing that's really interesting about it, especially at high dosages if you get the right stuff prepared traditionally and it has that full intelligence of all of the active constituents, the the entourage of constituents. Just like in cannabis, there's an entourage effect. Kava relies heavily on the entourage effect in order to get the full spectrum and depth of the experience. So, like the more that you process kava, it's kind of like processing a food. It can actually change its safety profile slightly. Not too much. Um but it can definitely change its effects profile to where you end up with a small shade that feels like chamomile tea. But kava is mainly known for its relaxing effects. But it's kind of come to be recognized as just like a lot of people, you know, tend to um to uh to just place it in that camp of like a relaxation beverage. But it's way more than that. Because it has these entheogenic qualities, it has these mind-opening qualities. >> So, what do you I mean, what's your definition of entheogenic? So, of course, etymology is your awakening the divine within, right? >> which is the meaning of the term, right? >> Right. >> Yeah, so the divine within. So, it brings out a state of of authenticity, right? There's the sense of I feel more like myself, like on my best day. Um I'm grounded, I'm not I'm I'm I'm activated but I'm not wired, I'm relaxed but I'm not sedated. And also, it has this really amazing integration capacity. Kava is also known in in the South Pacific as an integrator of the mind. So, it it integrates different compartmentalized, uh you know, fragmented parts of the emotional um and the mental system, right? That we cuz you know, whenever we're fractured, whenever we're under lots of trauma and stuff, our consciousness ends up being like fragmented where we kind of like, you know, siphon our self into these little rooms where we are disconnected from other parts of our psyche. You know, where we don't have access to like our full emotional framework. Uh you know, it's it's a protective mechanism and then we can grow to like live in that kind of reactive state. >> Sure. >> And uh and then it can affect the trajectory of your whole life. But kava is it just brings out a state of just open uh authenticity. There's there's four verbs that I use to describe like the traditional kava experiential arc from the time that you start to consume it. And uh you know, to the time that it's actually made like a regular ritual in your life cuz it is one of those things that feeds a cumulative experience and has cumulative therapeutic effects the longer that you use it. But, those four verbs are relax, so it's very grounding. So, it takes you out of that reactive like sympathetic state into the parasympathetic where you open up. And so, the second one is expand. So, you feel as though you can access more of the aspects of your your emotional framework similar to like on psychedelics, whether be micro or macro-dosing where you get that zoom out effect where it's like you can almost like reflectively look at the aspects of your life like aspects of like a schematic, like a blueprint. Where you're not just like in that reactive state where it's like me right in front of you right now and I'm just reacting to what you're doing like, you know, you know, stress consciousness, but you get that sort of background effect where all of a sudden you can connect dots easier, you know? So, then you feel like you have access to the accumulation of experiences that constitute you and your life trajectory and therefore you're just in connection with yourself. >> Right. >> And so, because it's an integrator and it because it gives you this more of this integrated access, there's it it's synonymous with authenticity, right? And it's not just seen as a relaxing tool like it kind of is in the States, especially for those that aren't getting real kava. It's seen as really a mental and emotional technology and a developer of the mind and of the spirit. That's why it's used and it's their most sacred substance in Vanuatu. Uh you know, more so than any other compound or medicine. There's There's actually 20 times as many kava bars in Vanuatu as there are regular bars. In Fiji as well, too, it's about that ratio. And it's just because it's a core part of the culture and it just creates these super authentic recreational atmospheres. Because obviously a collective atmosphere is just um it's just a culmination of all of the the individual units inside of it, right? Obviously. So, like what you bring to it, the state that you're in and the state that I'm in obviously helps to create the collective state of what everybody's in. And it just creates these really, really authentic, heartfelt, it's known as a heart opener, too. >> Right. >> So, you just have more access to your emotional framework, you feel more like yourself, and therefore, there's this emergence of that divinity inside of you to where you're just you just you know, that's why it seems a spiritual sacrament, so >> Why do you think that, you know, there was a trend for a little while where kava bars started to pop up here in the states, but they never really took off, and I went to some and it the it just I guess the difference is maybe it's just not the best kava that we're able to get here. And then it's so because of that, it's kind of like I was saying with Wachuma, like all right, like I I don't like to do just the kind of normal backyard spiritual Wachuma ceremonies cuz I'm like, this is not the Wachuma that I know and love. >> Mhm. >> And it's not really worth it at that point. >> Yeah. So, there's two major factors here that have that that that the two major factors that have kept kava from blowing up in the western and in the developed world outside of its historical context. And the first one you just nailed, right? It's it's function. And because kava is such a a um a complex organism that doesn't just have like one active constituent that's responsible, it's an ecosystem, right? It's a symphony of active molecules that together form this entourage effect that is heavily the experience, the top-tier experience is heavily reliant on that. So, it's so easy to [ __ ] up, in other words, right? >> Mhm. >> It's so [clears throat] easy to take this plant, which is traditionally prepared by harvesting the roots, hopefully of a more aged plant, but there are different strains. There's like around 200 different actively used strains of kava in the South Pacific that are used today. A lot of people don't realize that. Some are more heady, some are more heavy, but they're all anxiolytic and have that experiential arc generally that I described. Um but but anyways, the the traditional prep um is is basically taking the roots of a freshly harvested plant, you know, preferably fresh, but you can also you can also dry the roots and then prepare them traditionally. That's still That's still considered traditional prep cuz they're not You're not using any kind of a solvent to grab certain constituents out of it and leave others, even like ethanol, definitely, or even CO2 using CO2 as a solvent like a lot of people do with extracts in the states, and certainly like acetone or any other, you know, you know, aggressive solvent like that. But, that's what most extracts are made of and that's what a lot of people think is kava and that's been their experience. That was my first experience with kava. But, the traditional prep is using water and pressure only. It's grinding down the roots and then putting them in in a a strainer bag or a cheesecloth, you know, something of that nature. And squeezing them into a bowl of like lukewarm I prefer to use um hot water to kind of bathe it and you can get more of the the active constituents out by doing that. But, it's traditionally more so used with um with lukewarm or even cold water. You can do that. But, you have to squeeze it in a bowl, like you were saying, for about 30 to 45 minutes. And it's kind of like this long tedious process and then you're left with exactly what you said, like this bowl of [ __ ] mud, you know? And so, a lot of people are like, "I don't want to drink that shit." And then they drink it and it's not one of those medicines that whacks you over the head the first time you take it. Like if I take, you know, 5 g of mushrooms or something like that. It's not that kind of an acute bungee jump, very visual experience. It's more I mean, I would describe it as hyper sobriety, right? You feel like more like yourself. Like I said, this euphoria, this calm, relaxed, and feel like more connected, all that stuff. Um but, if you get really good kava, you absolutely do feel it. An intense kava hits you really hard, but it hits you like a pillow, right? It's like being hit and it just It washes over you like this warm internal blanket that's just like this protector. In certain parts of the South Pacific, it's actually called the great protector and the great connector because it has this very sort of almost like maternal component or spirit to it that's very, very protective to the nervous system. It's funny because they've always seen it and they've used language like that to describe it. But then after it's subjected to the scrutiny of the scientific lens, you know, obviously a long time later, which there's more more published research on kava than almost any other plant compound in the in the ethnobotanical literature besides cannabis, ginseng, reishi mushroom, and like a couple others, but there's a lot on kava. Um but but basically when it it held up uh and it hits on almost every single like neuro-immune tissue protective pathway that we know of, right? So, from the GABA system to the reduction glutamate and excitotoxicity to reducing stress hormones and cortisol, but it also helps to train the nervous system and to train up the parasympathetic nervous system with long-term use. We know that it's actually an up regulator of the GABA system. So, it gives you that short-term activation, but because of the intelligence that's biologically compatible with the human body cuz we both come from the same intelligence, obviously. It's not a dead isolated like nature-divorced molecule like a like a benzodiazepine, for example, like Xanax, that down regulates your GABA system. It it basically hacks and overrides the body, plugs into that system, and releases a lot of GABA, this inhibitory molecule. But then the more you use it, the body's basically confuses the body, and the body basically down regulates its own production of that system, which is very dangerous cuz that's what gives you a basically a level of sanity and you know, and a buffering system against stress. >> talking you're talking about like with benzo use, not you're you're not talking about kava. >> Yeah. Yeah, with benzo use. So, benzos [clears throat] do that. Kava has a really interesting phenomena whenever it's prepared traditionally called reverse tolerance. So, it's this fascinating plant pharmacology, and this is just some of the beauty and the magic of like intelligence in plants, is that through its complex chemistry, it's it actually it's binding to GABA receptors. It binds to the GABA-A receptor site, but it's actually able to modulate and to upregulate that system with consistent long-term use. And so, this is why it's been found and we've seen it uh you know, anecdotally, but also just just I've just seen it in the field for years and years, uh be such a profound tool for benzodiazepine withdrawal and alcohol withdrawal. Because obviously, that system is drastically impaired whenever you're coming off of those drugs, and that's why the withdrawals can be so dangerous. Cuz when you damage your your only defense against a sympathetic override or stress, then the body ricochets in the opposite direction. You can have seizures, you can have heart attacks, you can So, going cold turkey off benzos or alcohol are the two compounds that can kill you from the withdrawals. Uh if you were to go cold turkey and it was bad enough. So, if And then even if it doesn't, it's it'll bring you to hell. Like like benzo withdrawal is serious [ __ ] It's it's it's it's [ __ ] terrible. Uh and so is alcohol withdrawal. Um But But anyways, kava is s- been kind of like this amazing safe haven for recovering addicts. Because And that's why like you go to these kava bars that even though the kava quality is not so good, but a lot of these guys kind of become these kava seurs where they like they've they've been on benzos and alcohol, and they've gotten clean, and then they find this sort of safe haven in kava. They've used kava to help get themselves clean, and they learn how to navigate them these strains themselves, and they learn how to order the right ones online or source them or whatnot. And they'll go to some of these kava bars that actually do have good product. Um and they'll they'll it'll be the same people there like every night, you know? But still, the form of it is so crude because it's that mud. That That is the main thing, right? Is the is is the taste and preparation in order to get the real effects by kneading it into that water and getting the full spectrum of active constituents like in that whole food out, which it's like I I look at the the active constituents in uh a plant medicine or a food like instruments in a musical orchestra, right? Is like there are some instruments that play front and center. Like there's always usually a couple of compounds that are the ones that are most studied, like in cannabis, THC, right, for example. It's like that that instrument plays the melody, right? It's like it's like it's front and center, and then it gets most of the press, and then you usually have pharma companies that try to isolate that and patent it, and it doesn't work the same at all because it's not in the entourage of everything. It's when you hear the whole orchestra, it has all this depth behind it, and and the experience is totally different. And that's like the case with kava. Whenever whenever you try to extract and isolate these things, it just ends up this small shade that kind of feels like a chamomile tea, but it loses all of that uh that that kind of more entheogenic quality, that quality that opens up the mind and integrates the mind. It loses that. All those magical effects that that that it's become so sacred for in the South Pacific. It loses that. So, the two options classically in the United States have been basically to get the extracts, which it's not like it's nothing. It's like a regular supplement though. It's like taking It's not much more than taking valerian root or chamomile or something like that. Like it's it's I don't want to say it's nothing, but it's not this. It's not what's become doesn't represent what's become so sacred and what's shaped these cultures and what what's what they've they've grown to regard, you know, as their top-tier medicines. Um but then in the States classically, the only way to get the full kava experience is to somehow come across a kava bar that has a consistent source or a farm they're sourcing from where they're getting the same strain selection every time and they know what they're doing. They're not just ordering from some broker that's a middleman that's getting whatever comes in in the bushels, it's already ground down and mixed up together, so they don't know what strains they're getting. They don't know how long they're aged. They don't know. And because it's so easy to screw up, a lot of times people will go to kava bars and they get a great effect maybe the first time and then they come back next week and they're like, "Wait, like I got stomach upset. I got a side effect, or I just didn't feel the same thing." >> Right. >> Or it was heavy this time, it was heavy the other time. Um so, there's that. There's inconsistency in the function, but then it doesn't for a lot of people up until now, it hasn't It hasn't classically justified drinking that mud that's like very like not tasty, right? It's not like coffee, where coffee is already has a beautiful aroma and it's like people love to taste the coffee just in its natural form. Kava is like peppery mud in its nasty form. Now, I've grown to love that [ __ ] peppery mud because I my nervous system has associated these amazing effects and I grew to like the taste, but there's an on-ramp to that for people to fall in love with it. So, there's just up until now there's been like this group of like kava connoisseurs, which if you dive into it, there's like this online set of forums called the kava forums. Before like social media like blew up to the the degree that it it is today, obviously, and AI and everything, that it it was like this whole community of like insanely passionate people. It's like and I've I've rarely ever seen like whenever people really fall in love with kava, like people that are so obsessed with one compound like that, right? Where people are just going and talking about different kava strains. Where are you getting it? Da da da da this and that and they're rating the effects and they're talking about them and stuff cuz they've they finally sort of cracked this code for them of what works for them, but it's it's but it's just been so difficult to get it in its real form. And if you do get it, then usually you've had to do the preparation every time before you you know, you have to make it yourself. And it's just a lot. Your kitchen gets messy and it's one of those things. And then you're drinking the drinking the muddy water. Um so, those are Well, it's actually three components. So, it's the it's it's the bad taste or the not so good taste in the front end. That's which, you know, it's an earthy taste, but um it's the inconsistency in function. And then there have been some some big-time mis-misrepresentation and confusion around its safety profile. And probably that's probably one of the most important things to understand about kava right out of the gate. It's just like you said, like right out of the gate. It's a perfect way to start the conversation because context matters with plants. You're talking about organisms. It's like if I were to say like describe a person and have that represent all people, you know what I mean? It's just it doesn't make any sense. And with kava, because it can change so much depending on how it's been cultivated, what characteristics have been, you know, selected for, and then how it's been facilitated and processed and kept and and, you know, manufactured after it's been harvested and how it's been prepared and everything. Um it's it's like, you know, when someone asks, well, is kava effective and is kava safe? Well, first of all, what are we talking about, right? Um so, you know, with effectiveness, we already talked about that, but with safety, kava has been used, if you just kind of dial it back, there's been um there's been an emergent narrative that that supposedly correlates kava with a type of hepatotoxicity, which is liver toxicity. And a lot of people first getting into kava will kind of Google it online and they'll they'll start to kind of see remnants of this like, you know, circulating online still, and they just kind of get worried and they can't find it's like kind of ambiguous to a lot of people and they don't know for sure. So, a lot of times they just are like they either are a little bit timid about getting into it or or diving into it like full force or they just stay away from it totally. And then sometimes it gets conflated with kratom and stuff, too. >> We are in unprecedented times. And the first thing that arises is a need for safety. How do I ensure my own safety and sovereignty so I can protect myself and my family and also contribute to a better world. And so, one of the things that I think is really important is to recognize where you are holding your value. And right now, a lot of us are holding our value in cash. What is cash? 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I mean, it's it's fairly pervasive because I was curious about exploring this when I was running on it and there was some issues with uh the supplement insurance that we had with actually putting kava in our formulations. Now, a lot of people get around it. There's probably you know, there's definitely insurance providers that you know, Yogi Teas has been doing it forever and there's other people who are doing it, but there's a bit of a stain in the in the industry of people who want to make sure that everything's you know, GRAS generally regarded as safe and like this is something that and I kind of I kind of had my doubts about the about the safety risks. I thought, you know, well, anything excessive or prepared poorly can probably have some burden on the liver, but the it didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me when I dove into the research, but it wasn't a hill that I was willing to kind of kind of die on at that point. >> Yeah, exactly. So, even just to dial it back to um kind of original principles here. The kava has been used in that food form that I described in that traditionally prepared whole food form just like coffee is a food, right? You know, coffee is the the water and pressure extraction from the beans of coffee arabica, right? And kava, the actual definition of kava is the water and pressure extraction from the roots of Piper methysticum and that is the food. You can't take white caffeine anhydrous powder off of Amazon and call it coffee. In fact, you could easily go into the ER by taking like a handful of like a half a canister of that. You almost can't drink enough coffee to go into the ER because it's a full food that has other existing molecules that help to break down and metabolize and there's you know, it's more biologically compatible. It's not like taking one thing and overriding the body with an isolate. And that's true in most medicines. It's like that there's a huge leap from from you know, Erythroxylum coca, which is you know, coca leaves that you can chew in Peru. That's something that's relatively common that has a you know, like like a pretty good safety profile and then obviously you can extract and isolate the active alkaloid in it, which is cocaine and it can ruin your life over the weekend. So, you know, it's a very, very different thing. But but kava has been used in its food form um by like 90% of the population daily in Vanuatu for uh for those 3,000 years. And there there was never an existing narrative correlating it to any kind of long-term devastating health consequences besides if a person had an allergy. There's a type of like derma that can be developed where this you know, it's it's like a um like a rash that some people can get if they over-consume, if they don't filter out the tannins in the root fibers, right? And that's relatively rare. But that was basically the only emerging potential side effect, and these people are drinking it every day, like in higher amounts than we drink coffee. So, it became a narrative in the year 2000 when a pharmaceutical company, I mean, I won't won't name them, but out of Germany created a synthetic isolate-like extract compound that they were trying to patent, kind of it's the it's the classic, you know, drill of trying to find a plant compound and create a patentable extract. Exactly. And you know, just like so much, you know, so often in modern science, right? Whenever you sort of have a lot of lab experience, a lot of cleverness in one sort of isolated area in analyzing something or developing a product or something, like developing a pharmaceutical for example, but you don't kind of have the innate wisdom of understanding the big picture of how certain things fit together, like you don't really study like the the traditional preparation and the traditional wisdom of what the indigenous people who have facilitated and used it experientially for thousands of years have learned about it, right? That we can't necessarily learn from the isolated data that we have on it. So, all they knew is they were trying to get kavalactones out of it. And kavalactones are the main active constituents, of which there are six primary ones, but there's additional lactones and other supportive constituents in that in that full entourage that that I described. But they were trying to get kavalactones, particularly one called kavain. And uh basically they didn't pay homage to any of the classic traditional preparation methodologies, uh meaning what I described in only using the roots of the plant. Uh and they basically ended up sourcing uh hordes of cheap material that included uh that that also weren't limited to leaves and stems stems of kava material and also didn't select for the proper strain selection because there's a class of strains that are daily drinkers that mostly represents what people drink in the South Pacific daily, and they're called noble cultivars. And basically they're domesticated cultivars that have been selected for for thousands of years that are basically like tame enough that have been developed specifically for the human digestive tract to tolerate really well. And there are other forms of kava that are referred to generally as two-day strains, but there's there's other there's one called Isa out of Hawaii as well, too. But they have higher amounts of these chalcone-like like uh compounds even in some of the leaves. >> So so a chalcone is a is an additional molecule that its role in a plant substance is to control cells from from growing out of control, basically. Um and so it's slightly provocative in a sense, but it's it's hormetic actually. And the chalcones in kava, they're called flavokavains, and there's flavokavains A, B, and C are the primary ones in the literature. And um there's there's tons of of research around, you know, looking at anti-mutagenic and apoptotic effects on virtually like every possible form of cancer, which is So that's like where the ex- where a lot of the excitement is in the in the ethnobotanical and scientific community on kava is the sort of the apoptotic effects these chalcones. So they are medicinal, but in super high amounts they can be provocative because you can't adapt to the the slight stress that they provide. But these noble strains have very low amounts of those. Um and so and so they can be drank daily, you don't have to worry about them. So, when you don't pay attention to what strains you're getting, you don't pay attention to what part of the plant you're getting, because even in noble strains, you're only supposed to use, and this is indigenous wisdom, only use the above ground, what they call the stump, which is the lawena, as called in Fiji, and then the waka, which are the which are the underground lateral roots, like the thread-like roots. So, it's the it's it's up to the stump, but then whenever it if, um, well, and you know, just for those of you, kava is like a shrub-like plant that grows like 3 to 6 m above the ground. It has these beautiful heart-shaped leaves, beautiful plant. Takes 5 years minimum to grow a kava plant, a good kava plant that's ready to harvest. It's got good kavalactones, and you can age it well above that. But, uh, it was discovered, obviously, um, you know, millennia ago that whenever you eat the leaves or the stems, then you can easily get stomach upset, and if you eat too many of them, you can get sick, because they have plant defense alkaloids in them. There's one particular [clears throat] molecule called pipermethystine that's only in the leaves and stems, and that actually is a very provocative compound. Just like many plants, you can't just go out in your yard and start eating grass and leaves and expect not to get sick and start eating all kinds of stuff. And and there are lots of plants, like rhubarb, for example, that one part of the plant is toxic or slightly toxic, and another part of the plant you make a pie out of, right? Apple seeds, I mean, you can go you can go down the down the line in a lot of compounds. Um, and kava's like that, too. That's why it's just that's actually part of the definition as laid out by the Vanuatu kava act in 2002, is that's why it's the water and pressure extraction of the roots and the basal stump of pipermethysticum. So, anyways, this pharmaceutical company just just was looking for kavalactones, and they were mono-focused on that, right? So, low-quality plant material, low-quality preparation, and then but even then, whenever you consume, cuz there are parts there are places in Tonga that, uh, But, know, people will actually still consume small amounts of leaves and stems cuz you you they still have kavalactones, they still have an effect. Um and it's not it's not seen to be like overtly dangerous. It's more just provocative and can make you feel sick type of thing. But, the problem is is when you take those plant defense alkaloids and then you super concentrate them by like solvents you you know, using aggressive solvents to to isolate the kavalactones, but you're also concentrating the the plant defense alkaloids. So, now you end up with subs- substance that um is a pharmaceutical just like that caffeine powder is versus the coffee, right? And it's an isolate that's no more kava than cocaine is coca tea, etc. So, by composition you are no longer dealing with kava. So, basically they created a compound and it was involved in just a just a handful of studies that actually there was no they were actually very poorly constructed studies. This was a very bad perfect storm of circumstances that came together. So much so that a lot of people actually believe that there was foul play involved in that that's you know, kava was on the verge of a large market explosion at the time in 1999 and that is a fact. Um and like the benzodiazepine kind of pharmaceutical lobby might have had their hand in it, but I I I can't say that for sure. So, aside from intense >> a lot of large vested industry interests. >> Yes. Whether it's the anxiolytics like the benzos or whether it's antidepressants >> [clears throat] >> or other psychotropics, yeah. >> no, anything uh and also just alcohol. >> Alcohol, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. >> the way that you're describing the the traditional utilization of kava, it's exactly how we handle alcohol. >> Yeah. >> Like every event, a wedding, funeral, whatever else, there's going to be alcohol involved in celebration. >> in the South Pacific of how it's spread and how it's anchored itself in the culture. And there's also proof of concept of just traditionally like it's kind of funny cuz uh you know, I'll I'll joke with Pacific Islanders about this cuz you sort of ask them like why you don't have more regular bars, why so many kava bars more and I know the answer obviously but it's just like well because why would you want a [ __ ] hangover? Like why why you know like it's like you're getting the effects, you're getting the real stuff and it's hitting you and it's like I always say once I discovered kava, kava gave me what I actually wanted from alcohol, you know? Like I just wanted to feel more like myself. I just wanted to open up, to connect with other people, to feel comfortable in my own skin, to have something that I could use at the end of the day to kind of just take that weight off of me. Um but I didn't want all the other [ __ ] too. It's just I thought, you know, if the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem has to look like a nail type of thing and and alcohol is the altered state that nicotine and caffeine are the three altered states that we have upheld and that have kind of shaped our culture in the west, you know, over the last however many years. So but but but, you know, whenever you just look at the situation around kava and what it was teed up to do um and there were a lot of people interested in the industry at trying to take the the crude form that we, you know, and put it into forms like like like we're involved in now that can actually make it widely accessible and to translate the magic of what you get in that traditional experience in a palatable, scalable form that shelf that that anybody can actually taste that and can have those effects. And so there's a lot of people that believe and there's there's a decent amount of evidence that that suggests that there was some foul play in that situation. It's kind of like you know, it's very similar to the situation that happened around uh tryptophan in the early '90s. I don't know if you're aware of this or not. Yeah, yeah. Where it is like Okay, so you know, there was a bad batch >> Tainted batch from Japan. >> Yeah, it's a tainted batch and then it basically taints the entire reputation of that essential amino acid, right? That's basically ubiquitous. >> count there's countless stories of that. Even the initial tests on MDMA, it wasn't actually MDMA. It was some form of amphetamine. Yeah. >> And so you get all of this result about the neurotoxicity of MDMA and it just goes super wide. It's on every news station and then they go back and look at it and they're like, "Oh, actually we weren't even testing MDMA. We were testing an amphetamine and it's >> And unfortunately once it's out there then it's it's guilty till proven innocent because now you have a narrative and most people can't can't discern quality good science from bad science. They're not going to read scientific literature. They're looking at a headline. And that's one of those things and that's one of the dangers of um of our obsession our absolute sort of like you know, myopic obsession with the sort of double-blind placebo-controlled or like you know, scientific method as being the only form of evidence that exists for anything. It's not that it's not beautiful. It's great. It's great for for you know, connecting dots. It's great for creating structure and protocol and the scientific lens is an amazing thing but it is one form of evidence. And and that's why and and first of all this whole cuz we all know this they all you know, crazy narrative of like you know, constructing a study one way and I mean one thing that makes it fallible obviously is that you can never account for all variables. You know, and so there's never a perfect study. And so this whole thing of like constructing a narrative on one quote-unquote finding without even really doing a forensic analysis of like what was omitted from the study or how the study was constructed and all this. You see it with you know, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, all kinds of stuff. This same thing has played out and the story has played out many times. You know, but you know, without being able to do that then it can it can totally you know, distort the the narrative around it and that's why like as far as other forms of evidence there's also just experience. >> Yep. >> You know, and that's why I you know, pulling together all forms of evidence when you're trying to like you know, get a second third opinion and trying to assess the credibility of something for yourself and looking what actually is there and what isn't there or what is just a headline and whatnot. Um cuz I mean obviously science can be easily manipulated, but just the idea that like, you know, coming up with one study, getting a verdict from it, no one really assessing credibility or doing an analysis and then kind of making that that declaration that the science is settled, which is like the most anti-science thing you could say, right? >> So, let's let's assume that this for most people, you know, feel free to do your own research analysis, understand it. Let's let's assume that for most people this is settled and we got some of the physiological effects. >> Mhm. >> Let's say that so in one in some of the traditions that I that I work with, particularly the Peruvian Ayahuasca traditions, there's a process called dieting a plant. And when you diet a plant, you get >> [clears throat] >> in deep contact with the spirit of that plant. It was actually described to me as this process of fasting, meditation, and consumption of a plant until the plant takes root in your kind of psyche. >> Mhm. >> And you actually can it becomes an ally, a constant ally that's with you wherever you go. You just kind of adapt it into your psychological, spiritual, psycho-spiritual framework. So, if somebody was going to diet kava, so we're getting more into the spiritual components of it. >> What do you think the essential spiritual nature of kava is and what can it provide from that perspective? >> Interesting. I love that. Now, that's incredible because that's that's one thing that that the indigenous people in Polynesia um and just kava connoisseurs will start to describe that a lot of people can't really understand or have a conversation about um is kava's cumulative effects on the mind and on the spirits, on the body, on everything as it's taken over a period of time cuz kava is best taken as a ritual that starts to build mental, psychological, and emotional health over time. But, I would say that it's main it's main identity, kind of like I alluded to before, it's definitely a protector in the sense of like grounding the nervous system and allowing you to open up and to connect with yourself for sure. It's also an integrator at the same time. Like that's that's why it's A lot of people are starting to make their way towards, you know, using it and even combining it with with other ceremonial like plant medicine strategies like classic psychedelics either on the front end or on the back end during the integration phase. >> I mean, it seems I mean, I'm very curious about you know, bringing this into particularly the more excitatory, you know, kind of psychedelic experiences that you have where you really actually difficult to come down, whether that's MDMA or Wachuma, you know, I mean, I've I've been in hour 14 of a Wachuma journey being like, "Do a good god." >> Yeah. >> You know, like I got I got I learned it. I got the lesson. Like I need to [ __ ] chill out. >> Yeah. >> And so it seems >> in your body is like you're grinding for hours and like you're having like 14-hour LSD. >> Yeah. So, but this seems like something that would be really valuable on the back end of that. >> complimentary ally and let me explain why. I mean, it's well known sort of more in the sort of like recreational recreational-ish side of the psychedelic use community. Like, you know, maybe at, you know, festivals or in you know, at at shows or you know, taken in in any more of an environment where you have young people taking a lot of psychedelics, whether it be, you know, psilocybin, LSD, or DMT, or anything. And a lot of times they may even taken too much or just it's they're they're going for days on end or whatever. And a lot of people will keep benzos around as sort of an emergency lever in case things unravel and start to get too chaotic and they can't handle it. Now, obviously there's a you know, I'm not like recommending that. I'm just saying that that people do it and I've done it in the past, you know, whenever things got really far out of control. Now, there's the whole thing of like, well, but then that numbs the experience and it may actually numb something that is very valuable for you to learn because some of the most valuable experiences that I've had on tryptamine based psychedelics are some of the darkest experiences obviously, you know, cuz that's where like the authentic comes out and you get this whole reframing of everything and you get just uh you know, this this reframing of the significance of the light whenever you've been immersed in the darkness and whatnot and this is do it that's the duality thing. So, I mean, I'm classically have not been a big fan of numbing out an experience which you're on it if you can possibly help it, you know, unless you're just in a situation that becomes physically dangerous or it's going to be like beyond traumatic. But, the reason why it works to do that, I say that because it does work generally. If you were to take a dose of Xanax that it's because it's shutting down the limbic system. So, it's it's it's shutting down that animal part of our brain that is the fight or flight system, you know, the midbrain and the amygdala. And it's producing those catecholamines and that sort of excitotoxic storm that makes things swirl out of control. And as you're either your identity is threatened or some some form of your of your, you know, either those any of those sort of base um you know, those base more primitive aspects of your of of your infrastructure are being threatened by the experience, you know. Um yeah, I mean, definitely your identity and you know, having to confront certain things or it just getting out of control and getting confusing to where you can't process it or whatnot. But, if you take a benzo, it gives you this big dump of the GABA system, right? So, it it's it binds to the benzodiazepine side of the GABA-A receptor and you get this like increase in efficacy across that channel which basically dumps available GABA stores and and it sort of borrows from tomorrow to pay for it today, which is how these these substances and classic substances like alcohol you know, essentially work. But it kind of puts the fire out on it, but it numbs the experience at the same time to a great degree, right? Like within like 30 minutes, you'll probably come back and into more control of the experience and you'll still have somewhat of an experience going on. Uh but it's halfway numbed out cuz you've just taken basically a sedative at the same time. Um so anyways, with kava, what's so interesting is that it has that effect on the GABA system, that activation, but it's more of an intelligent modulator, right? And so it's more that keeps you expanded, but it can change your Okay, so this is actually one of the reasons too why I'm so excited and I've seen this clinically just play out for years. But you know, with our with you know, the organization I'm involved in with the Kava Coalition and others, we're really excited about getting some work on PTSD going with kava because uh it's been observed in South Pacific cultures forever that with long-term use of people with PTSD-like syndromes, uh kava's insanely therapeutic. Um and you know, for this for this uh same reason. So I always say you can't change the past, but you can change how you relate to the past in a sense. And kava, because it strengthens the parasympathetic nervous system and lowers that that sensitivity, that limbic sensitivity, but it doesn't numb you out, it it keeps you integrated and kind of expanded, but it keeps you like almost like the destination of what you're trying to reach through disciplinary practices like meditation where you can become the observer of your past experiences or your current internal framework without the emotional reactivity and the sort of like and being amped up and constant like the sort of like the tired wired exhaustion and the just sort of fighting it type of thing. So um over time, like in PTSD type syndrome um you know, type situations, is that what we see is, you know, you start to by spending and logging lots of time in that state where you are you're associating to your past experiences from a place of limbic safety because kava creates that sense and feeling of safety. It's the protector identity that we just talked about. Um, you start to relate to your past and current circumstances from a different perspective. Obviously, which creates new neurological structures in the brain, which helps to sort of reset some of these patterns, these trigger patterns, and desensitize your reactive response to either something internally that's going on or a past experience, right? And so, it's a way of sort of resetting your perspective on something and looking through through safety goggles instead of those like trauma goggles, you know, um, and it gives you just more control and agency over your own state. That's another aspect of kava that's always been talked about in South Pacific circles, uh, is is is kava is seen, like I said, as a developer of the mind and of the emotional framework more than it is even a physical medicine. It's useful for us as a physical medicine cuz we have all these like trauma-related illnesses that they don't have cuz they like live integrated with nature. They don't have a lot of the chronic [ __ ] that we don't eat the food that we do, for the most part. Um, so we have new age uses for it, but they see it as this, you know, developer of the mind, uh, and and of the emotions, and they see it as something that with consistent regular use it helps to cultivate the opportunity to develop more agency over your state and over your consciousness because you're less emotionally reactive by logging time in that and then your your your brain and your your synapses and you start to develop structures that solidify that over time, just like repeating any experience. It's like shooting a basketball over and over and over. It becomes just like brushing your teeth after a while. Um, when you train in in being in that state of calm, collected, um, sort of self-control and being able to sort of be the observer and sort of sort of like be able to examine like like it has this this capability, especially in high dosages, that it allows you to sort of zoom out and look at the aspects of your internal emotional and and mental framework like the aspects of a blueprint or schematic like you get with a lot of plant medicines. Um but but the fact that it's so grounding and integrating at the same time instead of just shooting you up and expanding you, um it's also a protector in that way. So what I've always noticed is is is you know, whenever I've gone too far or you know, taken or been too aggressive on the tryptamine front for long periods of time, um I start to notice that um you know, it it can pull from the root chakra and blow open the crown chakra in a sense, right? You're out here and you're having all kinds of um well, for my own personal experience, all kinds of amazing revelations and all kinds of amazing visions and all kinds of amazing visionary experiences like psychedelics classically do cuz they're beautiful medicines. Um but because they're as powerful as they are, they don't have that grounding component to it. That's why integration is so important. Like practices post any form of tryptamine psychedelic or so important of regrounding you. But kava has that grounding component built in. And so and this is a lot of people's some people's concern with tryptamine psychedelics and sometimes they'll, in my opinion, possibly go too far with throwing out the bathwater and saying, "Well, I believe that it opens you up to all forces, even the dark forces. Therefore, I think that psychedelics are dangerous, you know?" And I don't believe that. I think that these are >> Well, learn to the learn to dance with the devil then. >> Exactly. >> [ __ ] deal with it. It exists in our world, so >> You can either be like, "I'm afraid. I don't like open the [ __ ] door." >> Well, it's like Dennis uh McKenna said, right? It's like these >> are certain plants with certain pharmacology. There's not a moral aspect to them. The moral dimension comes in with the intent and the usage and how you direct the tool. And you know, the Chinese have a symbol I I I believe that means both danger and opportunity. >> Mhm. >> Right? And it's one of my favorite because they understand that they're in a crisis >> opportunity, but >> Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, crisis and it's a crisis. So, it's yeah. So, it's like a risk opportunity type of thing. And like, you know, anything that acts as a massive amplifier to your consciousness is going to have you're going to enter states in which there are risk and opportunity, right? And so, to blame the compound, uh you know, if if you end up on a trajectory that's degenerative outside of it, I just don't think does anyone any justice to do that, right? >> Which is also why like we can't recommend carte blanche that everybody do psychedelics. This is a personal journey. You have to know like, all right, like what are we going to do? Just like you wouldn't recommend going swimming with sharks. Like if you want to, understand the sharks and, you know, be wise, but they're sharks. And like that's the thing. Like it can be the most profound experience of your life, you know, when you actually surrender to that experience and there's there's dangers. >> It's like any incredible adventure, right? You can't you can't push somebody into like a life-changing life-altering trajectory. >> class five rapids. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Maybe. Yeah, exactly. Like [ __ ] maybe. >> it could make you or it could [ __ ] kill you or break you or whatever. It's like so, yeah, and and that's why it's such a personal decision working with plant medicine and that's why it's just it's one of those things that it's like you know, it can open you up to the absolute beauty >> I mean, it seems like kava though, you know, while I'm obviously personally a huge proponent of psychedelic medicine. I've been talking about it for as long as I had a microphone to talk about it. [laughter] And but, you know, so and I don't recommend it to anybody. I'm not going to say like, hey, everybody go do it. I'm just sharing my own personal experiences, but what I do recommend is hey, everybody, you should ecstatic dance. I don't care who you are, you should do it. And I don't care who you are, you should do breath work. And I don't care who you are, you should meditate. Like these are universal recommendations. And it seems like kava, I mean even with something like cannabis, which usually is fairly chill, like I wouldn't recommend that to somebody. It's a personal choice. But it seems like I would be pretty comfortable, based on my knowledge of kava, to be like, "Yo, have you tried it? Like you should try it." You know, pretty universally. Now again, like everybody has their own personal >> Yeah. >> Everybody's personally sovereign, and I trust that. But it's it's one of those, just like I would also recommend like uh mambe, which is like the ground coca powder, like for sure. Like try it. You going to be okay. You don't like it, you can spit it out. You know, like if you didn't like your, you know, can of kava or your ideally traditionally prepared kava, okay. Like you're going to be fine. You're not going to freak out, you know. And it could have just an asymmetric value in your life when you extrapolate it over time. >> Right. >> Right. And and it you know, I I say that fully knowing that I got really lit up by kava, and I've basically largely set it down. Um and you know, I do I keep these This is your company here, True Kava, and I think they do a great job. And for me it's not quite enough for it to be like a daily and I'm I mean this is my fourth can today cuz I wanted to get lit for our conversation. [laughter] And and I appreciate it, and I every once in a while, you know, I'll have a couple, and but for me the the effect that I'm looking for was the effect I had when the old-timer was squeezing, you know, squeezing the cloth and making the making that. And that to me, if I could replicate that, and then I had a few bad experiences, like I said, where I tried to make it myself, and I got really sick to my stomach. You know, and and there was we read all the forms at the time, and you know, and it was like, all right, well you got to add soy lecithin to this and you got to do all these different things. And like we tried it and it didn't [ __ ] work. >> Yeah, yeah. >> [laughter] >> So, I just kind of laid it down and then I'll have some of these. But I think for me it's like, all right, I want to get this. And again, that feeling, you know, kind of reading between the lines of what you're saying to answer my own question, it seems like this almost soothing maternal energy, but simultaneously this kind of almost like a like the divine father that's so soft that it almost feels feminine. >> Yes. >> like it's some very comforting like you're safe. Like you got this. Now, think clearly. >> Yes. >> and it's not just coddling you with something soothing. Like, here, let's let's don't even worry about that. Let's take it away. It's like, no, no, no, let's see the let's see the inner workings of this from a place of greater safety. >> Right. It's it's a perfect balance of those two energies. And it there's also a component to kava, especially these more cognitively elevating preparations and strains that you you feel very productive and very driven in a way that's that's that's more flow state like than than caffeine in a sense because it's not it's not like stimulating like beta frequency state. It's very very much like a like where where I'm trying to get, you know, through meditation and stuff, right? And it's especially if you choose your strains and dosages and whatnot, there is a very very potent sort of inspired component that elevates to the surface that where you want to do things and you want to it's like you're you're you're relaxed, you're expanded, and now you're like inspired to connect with yourself, to connect with the world around you. You want to connect with people, and then you want to create. And that was that fourth verb is like is like ultimately one of the the ways that kava is described is that it is a it is a an accessor and a sort of builder of a human's creative capacity over time because of that sequence that it goes through. Whenever you're relaxed, you're expanded, you're connected, now you have access to your innate creative capacity by, you know, getting rid of the noise that's kind of in the way. And I'm more I mean, I'm more productive on kava than almost any other plant medicine. Partly because after years of being sick, which is kind of how I got into all this stuff, I'm more sensitive to stuff. So, it doesn't take as much for me in that sweet spot for me of staying like lucid and and productive. And and plus I've done a lot of plant medicine journeys and stuff like that like like heavy-hitting ones. And so, it's not hard for me to reactivate those circuits. And what I've noticed is you you know, using a sort of light entheogenic substance gets me into that frame that I can easily access that state that's been cultivated in those heavier journeys as well, too. >> Mhm. >> Um and so, it's sort of like a way to sort of, you know, catalyze that that's that's not taking any risks that I can take during the day. I can take at work. It's just is is more of I would say kava, too, is has probably the greatest one of the greatest, if not the greatest, therapeutic effect to drawback ratios of of any compound that I've worked with. Because especially whenever you're doing and we can get you there, by the way, as far as you want to get back to that ceremony and stuff. We'll [ __ ] do it. >> [laughter] >> Cuz there there are degrees and there are levels to this, right? What you know, this right here is basically like the functional beverage. Like anybody can tolerate anytime of the day. It's not even distracting. It's more like a great sort of relaxed nootropic type of thing. It's great stuff. And to reach the mass public, that's a great form of it. As you go up in dosage, the experience changes almost completely. Like it's like you get to a place where you're not going anywhere. Like you are sitting and having one of the best conversations of your life, probably. And but it's still very light. And you feel like you're floating, like your whole body is buzzing and pulse setting. It's like being very high on cannabis. But there's not for me any of that same sort of stony, you know, feeling that I get from a lot of cannabis. It's harder for me to hit with cannabis. Cannabis and and me are not easily compatible, right? I can get there, but I really got to like find the right strain amount, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's my sensitivity and whatnot. >> Also very much depends on what else you do. Are you breathing? Are you dancing? Are you doing yoga? Or even like once you start laughing, I think cannabis also evolves, too. Like if you can get to that state of hilarity, then there's something I maybe from what's naturally released in the in the spasmodic expression of joy that we call laughter. >> yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, exactly. But once you get there, whenever you get to that sort of full, you know, kava drunk level or sort of a ceremonial level, yeah. The kava drunk is what it got, yeah. Um it's it's a very It's just It's so comfortable. There's just this internal comfort and you just feel like talking and connecting and it hits you so hard, but it hits you like a pillow, like I was saying. And it can be very euphoric, but the interesting thing is is like it's it can it's the most euphoric I've ever felt without being impaired at all. Like I've no problem driving. And so it it it leaves all of your your finer faculties completely intact, right? So even like smoking too much cannabis, like obviously I can get pretty stoned, you know, and it's it's a different thing. But and and any other substance and of course alcohol, it goes without saying. But kava's one of those that when you really get there with it and it >> And I'm not sure you probably really even that time with the with ceremonial stuff. It's like if you really push the envelope. I'm sure they weren't giving you like the strongest of the strong. >> And once you get to that level, even the smaller dosages of kava hits you more because well, kind of like you were talking about earlier, integrating the integration I mean, kava has an integrative capacity as far as on the mind and on the emotions in the in the context that we've talked about it, integrating your mind is you know, the different aspects of your mind. You can get this hyper-communication accessing more of your emotional framework acutely, integrating after a plant medicine, you know, ceremony, but also it integrates its way into your body over about the first 30 to 60 days of use. And that reverse tolerance phenomenon that I think you and I spoke about before, I can't remember if it was it was it was before we started talking or not. >> Yeah, we talked about it here. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I mean and that's I mean you see that with a lot of different plant medicines. You go to a shaman who's drank ayahuasca 4,000 times. They don't need the same >> that you need. They can just have a little bit and they're blasted. You know, and same with Wachuma and and some of these other ones. It's it's very interesting. Whereas other things, you know, require more and more and more. >> The strongest effect like like alcohol or almost any synthetic molecule that's not part of the body's innate intelligence framework, right? Meaning it's an isolated molecule that's divorced from nature that's basically overriding super physiologically the body in some way to get an acute benefit usually at the cost of of other aspects of the system long term. That's why most pharmaceuticals have a list of side effects and you weigh the pros and cons of what you want to do. But they act as biochemical credit cards like we were talking about. They borrow from tomorrow's, you know, chemistry reserves and resources to pay for today. So, the next cigarette, the next uh you know, drink of alcohol is really created and perpetuated by the last one because you're sort of on this train, um you know, where you're you're basically borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today and it's the dopamine system. And that actually goes with uh with almost almost any form of, you know, dopaminergic stimulation from the exogenous environment. And that's another reason, too, why this identity around kava as an accessor of autonomy and freedom is so interesting because the dopamine system is so interesting. I mean, we all know I mean most people know dopamine as like the pleasure molecule in the body, obviously. But but really what it does, I mean it's energy, it's focus, it's passion, it's motivation. >> So, kava has a dopaminergic quality. >> component, yes. >> So, activates the GABA system, activates the dopamine system. >> Those are the two main ones. Yeah, the two main ones. So, it's a monoamine oxidase B inhibitor, but it also it has some really interesting dopaminergic components that are up-regulatory over a time and that don't desensitize the dopamine system after hitting it, which is why kava has never in any context been shown to be physiologically addictive. Like, you will never find someone who like drank kava consistently for 3 months and then went into withdrawals or they woke up and they needed even to the degree that they need their coffee, right? Um and the reason is is because it helps to satiate that dopaminergic pathway and to rehabilitate it, which you know, under this understanding is actually >> needs to go to rehab for sure. >> Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, if you think about what dopamine does, it's a molecule of energy, of of a motivation, of passion, of all that stuff. But, really what it does is it assigns meaning and importance to things. Where attention goes, it's dopamine. That's why people take psychostimulants like Adderall for temporary lift in attention, right? It's like your attention is fixated on something. So, any company, any government organization, any external agency that's outside of you that's actually trying to in some ways can even become paras- you know, parasitic, which a lot we live in a culture where there's a lot of parasitic components of our external environment that are basically harvesting our energy by hijacking our dopamine systems, which is hijacking our attention. Cuz where your attention goes, your energy flows, right? And and um you know, and then your resources follow that. So, basically, what they've what what so many what we've done through this process, I mean, I think you know, most of the the elements of today and and the degenerative components of of what we're experiencing in the modern cultural landscape can come down to what I call nature divorcement syndrome, just degrees of separation from the fundamental intelligence that that creates, maintains, and sustains life. Um and then we start to unravel the farther we go. Artificial environments, ultra-processed foods, you know, synthetic isolated molecules, and so on and so forth. >> Preach. >> Yeah. So, so the So, um, you know, partly what, you know, either pharmaceutical companies or food companies have done is they understand this dopamine mechanism really well, and they understand that it that that it assigns meaning to a person's psyche in which, if you can assign meaning, then you have someone's attention, you have their energy, you have their resources, you have their thoughts. Um, and Um, so so what they've done is is that they've engineered things in nature that are supposed to have sustenance, and then a dopamine payoff to assign meaning to it so that you'll be compelled to do them for the expansion of yourself and the expansion of the of the species, like dopamine from food consumption, dopamine from sex, all of those things. But when you process them, they've decoupled the signal the signal that's meant to signal your body to perpetuate that behavior from the sustenance, right? So, in ultra-processed food, high fructose corn syrup, it has no nutritional value essentially. In fact, it's quite toxic and has that credit card effect. Um, but it's to give you the signal to trick your body into thinking that this is meaningful, and so you fixate, and then you buy more, and then you buy more, and then you buy more, and you give it your energy and whatnot. And if it has your energy, it has your thoughts and a percentage of your mental bandwidth, and you're not fully autonomous when you're deeply habituated to something in in any addictive process. That's why, you know, highly addictive processes, you become more fragile internally cuz you don't have full autonomy over your thoughts and behavior. >> Mhm. >> But, um, but yeah, so you know, decoupling those two, um, you know, is is basically like giving someone it's like a mouthful of cotton candy that you get this elated feeling that it just disappears, and you're not fed, you don't feel better afterwards. It gives you the feeling of what natural hearty food actually would give you, or like porn, for example, it's the same thing. It's separating the signal from the sustenance. And so, that is a way that's, you know, in modern culture so much of the fragmentation, the mental illness, I believe, is caused by the fact that we outsource our regulation of our nervous system and of our mind and of our thoughts. Um and it it it In other words, we outsource, you know, the regulation of it. So, um we're not in we're not regulating. We're not self-regulated. We're not very good self-regulators, right? And so, a big portion of like the things that I teach and one of one of my biggest things is more like this larger meta-narrative that that the tools like kava fall into, and it's about state autonomy. Right? It's about practices cuz so many of us, most of us actually don't In fact, I I kind of look at it as a um as kind of the epidemic within the epidemic. We all know that we have vitamin and mineral deficiencies. That's talked a lot about and that there's foreign molecules everywhere in our environment that's causing illness, but I think one of the main deficiencies that's at the crux of everything is the deficiency in healthy human sort of, you know, integrated state. The kind of state that we're talking about cultivating with these types of things where we have agency over our consciousness. Where Because, look, everything comes down to state, right? Because your thoughts are an outgrowth of your state. So, state becomes your thoughts, your thoughts become your behaviors, your behaviors become your identity, and your identity becomes your destiny. And so, if you don't have agency over your state, then you don't have agency over your destiny. And that's why a lot of these disciplinary practices >> I think it's bilateral. I think your thoughts can help can create your state. Also. >> Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah, it's it's definitely >> your state. They both They both, you know, interact with each other, but solving for one >> Yeah. >> it's a lot easier to solve for your state than it is to solve for your thoughts. You know, fighting your thoughts is like taking a tennis racket and trying to fight off a [ __ ] swarm of mosquitoes. >> Or like it's like letting go of your ego with your ego kind of thing. That whole thing that you that's a little But yeah, I think, you know, people talked about this too, you know, recently I've I've heard a lot of um and I've had conversations too. It's just like, you know, pattern interrupts, finding pattern interrupts to like shift your state whenever you're, you know, um you know, that's why a lot of times doing something physical, going out, you know, for a workout or whatever because it's a state shift, you know. But but a lot of it is like I think that we definitely do have we're a lot we're we're experientially malnourished in the types because we we don't have enough of the types of practices that facilitate these sort of healthy expanded, safe, um non-non-reactive or habituated states. And the thing is is like when our when you outsource the regulation of your internal stability, your your feel-good system of just feeling level, like, you know, you trying to hit your baseline of just feeling good enough to operate and to function in culture and society, uh if you outsource that to your environment, and you're not actively building your own states, if you're not actively building your your neurochemical reservoir or have an agency over your own dopamine receptors and such, then basically you open yourself up to becoming parasitized by anybody who sort of wants to use you. >> it kind of feels like this is part of a of a rehab program for just life. And I mean, yes, we talked about how if you're, you know, transitioning from different pharmaceuticals, and again, you have to be really careful with this. And we're not saying like if you're on benzos, just stop and start drinking kava. Like this is a whole process. And so there's the acute version of the kind of rehabilitation that can happen if you've overstressed a system with external exogenous, you know, um inputs, like alcohol or whatever else. But just life, man. Like our disconnected state from nature, you know, like that's and just all of the things that we have to deal with with technology, with the ordinary stressors, with all of these things. And then whatever else we're using to kind of modulate that, to to really go back and just say, all right, we're just going to go roll with kava Yeah. a while and I'm going to get back I'm going to get control over all of these things and then decide from there if you want to lay kava down or not. But fundamentally it seems like a bridge to get us back to like okay, here's something that is going to be truly like a bridge to get me to another state of being. >> Right. >> And I can continue rolling with this. This can be an ally that's with me indefinitely or this could be a temporary ally, but it seems like a pretty exciting tool especially because it's rehabilitating the GABA system, you know, and sounds like the dopamine system as well. So to get back to that state, I mean, pretty [ __ ] cool. >> Well, I I I refer to it as a bridge ritual a lot because it really is kind of like a catalyst for people. I never want to fall into this cuz I was sick for years and it took a multi-therapeutic approach to get me well from chronic illness and it's always a combination of different things, you know, of you know, diet, exercise, sleep, mindset. It's a combination of all the basic things and the ingredients to like if you want to change in your life or grow or or you know, get on a better trajectory and whatnot. But like there are powerful singular tools that can be powerful sort of catalyst or bridge, you know, you know, bridge compounds or practices that can help you interrupt an existing pattern and kind of show you what's possible and then help you build, you know, put you in a state that you can more build the permanent structures of autonomy and self agency and stability and stuff in your life. The um uh you know, what's interesting about the um uh about the you know, I noticed this, you know, cuz you said this to you know, a minute ago. Um being dependent on the external environment for your mental stability of living from dopamine hit to dopamine hit from these exogenous forms of stimulus. Um if you if you just even think about like in a given day, if all of your mental capacity, your thought process, and everything that you can do with this this this mental energy that's that's inside your mind, inside your psyche, if it was represented on a pie graph, and if you're heavily habituated to, you know, 10 different forms of exogenous stimulation, you're constantly chasing just like someone who uses a credit card, right? Who never puts money back in the bank and whatnot. Um you're constantly trying to get your fix throughout the day, and unconsciously you're consciously your your your unconsciously your mind and your attention is going towards trying to maintain that status quo. And it's like, I hit the vape, and then I'm sitting here talking, and I'm functioning, and then I can feel it start to slip again cuz it's going down cuz it's not like it's not like ultimately sustainable. It's it's leaving. Same thing with the caffeine. I got to hit it again, and you don't even realize subconsciously how much of your mental and even emotional bandwidth and attention is going towards just trying to self-regulate and self-soothe instead of like being from a place of like dictating your state and being able to dictate your thoughts. Because at that point, you don't have control over a lot of your thoughts because it's being hijacked by you needing some exogenous, you know, substance or lever of some kind to press. And and then it's like, well, how much time do I actually spend thinking about just getting my fix during a day or or even even trying to fidget to do it instead of like being fully present in the moment and being able to just be in that space where I can safely and freely navigate my thoughts and just be without having to like constantly press this lever just to keep me up or to keep me down or to keep me in a state where I feel clear and all of that, you know? Um >> Yeah, and I think, you know, critics will say, "Well, isn't kava just doing the same thing and I think fair fair critique and at the same time like if you use kava to regulate all of it. >> Yeah. >> And then it's actually that's the different thing though. It's like it's rehabilitating. >> Yes. >> You know, it's that it's it's that thing where you're actually improving your sensitivity to all of these different mental states rather than pushing a button over and over again where the button starts to wear out. >> Well, so that's the thing. I don't mean in the sense of because obviously you're reaching for kava if you're using it in the acute, you know, for an acute level of stress or something like that. But because of the fact that it's you know, I I kind of separate a lot of of of altered states or most ways of altering our consciousness into two separate categories and not to see things in terms of absolutes, but I kind of look at them. There are certain things that are generative states, things that kind of feed into your biochemical bank that allow you to even be stronger and more self-sufficient and feel better at base line over time to where you then have more choice over what you want to use to go even higher or go even lower or what not. And then there are degenerative or borrowed states, borrowed relief states which alcohol, benzodiazepines, these all fall in that category that that the longer that you use them, you inexorably for most people end up in a worse place than you started physiologically because you're doing this borrow from tomorrow, pay for today situation and if you do that inexorably for a long enough period of time >> in debt. >> You get in debt. You get in debt and that's where withdrawal comes from, right? Um because you've depleted your body's chemicals obviously and so then you take the substance away and now you need that press and that lever and then it owns your thoughts and your life starts to organize around whatever owns your nervous system in that state. So kava in the acute, yes, obviously it gives you an acute lift and an acute effect, but over time it improves your baseline. That's that's my main point about it. And it's not just kava. I mean all kinds of practices that you know, this idea of pursuing and and learning um a type of state nourishment or state hygiene, just like people talk about like, you know, sleep hygiene, right? Of learning how to actually press our natural buttons that are linked to our natural like evolutionary creative capacity or things that that endogenously increase our dopamine kind of within. Different forms of creative expression, goal-oriented challenges, right? Are massive dopamine producers. Having goals, right? Produce internal positive emotion. Um health-centric like human connection, like natural human connection with people. Um and obviously things, you know, you know, physiologic things like this um that support generative states that breed more baseline autonomy over one's thoughts and and over their over their behaviors and emotions, just more stability, you know, cuz the more balanced you are and the more control that you have and the less reactive you are at baseline, uh the better you're going to be in every aspect of your life, in your friendships and relationships, and even seeing the world, you know, because the more you're in a state of of constant pressing those levers or addicted or habituated to something to where you actually need it. It's a state of scarcity and you're constantly in this mode and it you kind of live in this state of like pseudo low-grade like fight or flight a lot of times, depending on where you are on that spectrum. And um it's just it's not it's not a place where your your best uh self as far as making decisions, being there for people, and even analyzing or understanding the world around you because you're looking through a lens that's slightly distorted, like we were talking about safety goggles versus you know, um you know, versus like a sympathetically activated or scarcity goggles, right? Um so, that's why kava is also kind of seen as like a great connector because the state that it cultivates over time, it's not just about like how you feel while you're on kava. That's the point is that it helps to cultivate the conditions um that you're more healthy and balanced at baseline over time physiologically, but also gives you the perspective off of what a generative state actually can feel like. That like when you have that experience, you have it on a regular basis. This is why in Vanuatu and in Fiji, they see this all the time. They see people come there and discover real kava or they start living there for a while, and they'll always say, "Hey, just just start drinking kava for a while, real stuff, real kava." And people a lot of people start to lose their taste for alcohol or at least start to drink more intermittently and less, and kava starts to because they just sort of their body, their mind realizes that oh wow, like I'm I'm putting into a bank. I'm paying into a bank that's cumulative over time, and I feel more like myself and balanced and more just in control over my nervous system, and I can control how to use my emotions better. I'm more emotionally intelligent because this my fight-or-flight system has not been inextricably hijacked. But I I, you know, for that reason, kava is one of those things. And again, I'm interested in all practices that help people cultivate the understanding and the the implementation strategies for generative states, right? Cuz I just am for people being, you know, autonomous, more self-sufficient, and just more themselves, right? On their best on on their best days and and looking at reality that way. But um you know, kava, you know, specifically, there's a reason why in South Pacific cultures that it's it's used as a food. Like we were talking about earlier, it's one of these that it's not the hardest-hitting medicine. I mean, it's pretty hard-hitting in its super strong forms, but it's not compared to your your very visionary type of, you know, plant medicines and stuff. But it is very widely accessible, and it can be tolerated by virtually almost anyone if you get the right stuff and the right form and stuff for you. It's it's you don't have a lot to worry about when it comes to that. And so it's really treated in the South Pacific like a food. And in fact, because I mean, I always sort of argue that because there's this we are kind of in a state deficiency, in a healthy human state deficiency, because our environment is pulling us into these degenerative states constantly in these loops that pull us apart, that fragment us internally, which fragments our culture and whatnot, or helps to to feed into that sort of fragmentation and and you know, disconnection, isolation, polarization, all that stuff. It also makes us more controllable, less you know, free-thinking. Um but yeah, you know, because of that, that's it's um I you know, we're deficient in healthy human state and I actually look at kava as a form of like entheogenic nutrition. So, because it can be taken regularly and daily and you get cumulative benefits instead of it like taxing you like a heavy plant medicine, it's like it's great in the acute and it's great to use discerningly and whatnot, but kava is something that you're paying into that bank and it feeds you and it feeds your state of mind and it feeds the emotions like a nutrient. And the South Pacific Islanders have always known this and talked about this, right? And so, I actually look at it as a different category of nutrition that we're deficient in. And it's not the only way of getting that. You can get it through practices and stuff, too. But it's a type of entheogenic nutrition that helps to cultivate the access to authenticity and self-autonomy and you know, to an optimized state of mind. >> what what God what God wants for you. >> Exactly. >> to be the most yourself, to be the least reliant on external forces, to be the least vulnerable to the like parasitic, vampiric external forces. Like so, entheogen awakening the divine within, you're actually in many ways fulfilling the will of a loving God who wants us to flourish and evolve and be the most ourselves that we can possibly be. >> 100% And you know, and I think what's you know, what's interesting about this, too, is that um I I And and that's why I kind of see it as And even starting true kava and everything, it was never Like I was sick for years. I was on my deathbed, you know, I got into this work because I I want to do my part, you know, and finding real solutions or helping to facilitate knowledge and real solutions that have helped me so much for other people around me and and hopefully give something to the world. Um but the reason why I got cuz I'm involved in a lot of projects, but the reason why I just went so far into kava is because um you know, understanding what it did for me personally and understanding all the language that we're describing about how it's seen in the South Pacific and there was a huge gap. And it hadn't the translation hadn't quite been made because of the form that it was in or because of the misunderstandings on on all these different aspects of it. But the you know, from a cultural standpoint, how it shaped it really has shaped the entire social structure of these cultures in these islands and the entire recreational environment in there. Um Michael Pollan, new I know you've talked to, he was he was on um Rogan experience I think couple years ago. He's coming out with one of his new books and he did a beautiful job articulating how coffee helped to shape the collective productivity-driven mind of Western culture in the early 1900s. Even the advent of coffee breaks was kind of an extension or is it was kind of you know, put into practice to help to create a collective mentality that was a certain form of consciousness. >> from Marshall McLuhan saying that we think that we shape our tools, but really our tools shape us. >> Right. Right. And so a lot of the the the highest value struct or just the value structures and the highest aspirations of any given cultures are are contributed to and shaped by the altered states and psychoactive substances and tools that they uphold most in their cultures, right? And you see that, right? Because in the West a lot of our our values for better and for worse, right? And a lot of maybe some of the the the challenges of the problems that we've run into in part are contributed to by the fact that the altered states that we've chosen, which all cultures around the world use altered states of various times. We're obsessed with altered states like us humans, right? But like um we've up we've ended up in a situation where we've upheld alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. And so the quality of your uh you know, thoughts in those states will, you know, dictate a quality of your perspective cuz you're logging in so much time in those states. >> Sure. >> So the outgrowth of everything, the quality of your thoughts, the quality of your behaviors, the quality of the model of reality, how you see the world and interface with it, right, is going to be an outgrowth of that. So what Polynesians have known and understood and why they they love this particular tool so much is because it is a medicine that is a form of nutrition that people can use nutrition for the mind and the psyche, and it doesn't hit you the hardest right out of the gate. But because it can be widespread in the culture, just like the situation with coffee, when you get millions of people partaking in feeding a particular type of state, in this case what I'm calling a generative state, then it can help to over time make a significant contribution to to the entire all the you know, of of course the recreational environments and what comes out of that, the relationships, the sense of community, and the thoughts and aspirations and even values of the culture, right? Because that's And again, whenever you go to South Pacific, the thing that people talk about the most whenever they go, especially to you know, to Vanuatu, is just how just warm in a deep sense of like of unity and community there is. And they see kava as sort of like the glue, as the great connector, because it puts everyone in this state where they feel more like themselves, and it's this heart opener, and it's like they're doing it so regularly, right? It's the facilitator. In fact, there there's some place in Vanuatu, too, where the you know, the chief still has final say in the in the village. You go into the nakamals or whatever where they do kava ceremony, but if there's a dispute amongst two parties in the village, the chief will force them to sit down and settle over kava, all right? >> Mhm. >> And it's always a peace offering, right? There's endless pictures if you go online of like the royal family or like the Schwarzenegger when he was governor coming down the South Pacific and they do a kava ceremony for them cuz they see it as a connector. >> Yeah. >> As sign of goodwill. >> I mean, when I was in Fiji, I think one of the more remarkable things is just people on the street when they see you, you know, their greeting which is like an aloha type of greeting is bula. >> Yeah. >> It was like bula bula like and they didn't just say it. They it was like they meant it. They were like, "Hey." Like you're like and kind of Costa Rica they have that pura vida, you know, but they really I I felt it. You know, it wasn't just like a habit. It wasn't just like a custom, but it was a a natural expression of and I don't even know what it translates to, but it seemed like "Hey, how are you? Life is good." all at the same time, you know, like there's this kind of acknowledgement of the beauty of life and I think we've lost so much of that. We're so dampened by our thoughts and our substances and all these things that >> and so not present and so all those things. And I think And again, it's like I never want to let the conversation devolve into this like, "Oh, there's this one thing and here's a million reasons why you should take this one thing and it does everything." It's not It's not the point. I I think that the the um whenever I I you know, created True Kava initially, the goal was to create a category in the United States. Not just an another supplement that's in an existing category, but just like coffee is a category. Just like alcohol is a category, kombucha is a category. A whole category of something that could be a commodity that's widely available that you could get you could get a taste of that state that we're talking about that this type of a state. And And also everything that we've been talking about built into the ecos- the ecosystem of the of the um that we're building around like the conversations that we're having and all the media stuff that we do and the educational stuff. It's much much more about just the immediate effects that you feel or of the substance. It's about I've I've always seen it as like um I want it what it symbolizes to be more important than what it is. You know, sort of you remember like years ago whenever they had those crappy little What were they? The little Livestrong bracelets where people were handing them out and stuff, you know, and the and the money was going to places that really probably weren't doing doing a lot of anything for the for cancer research, but there was still it was still a symbolic like sign of like, "Hey, like I'm with this cause. Like I'm with this whole thing, you know?" And it still it got conversations started maybe to people to some degree or whatever. But I've always kind of seen it as that as as like I actually want this to be a conversation starter cuz sometimes we're having a complex conversation that's kind of hard to have with anyone on the street, but if you can distill some core philosophies into something that's so simple that also has an experiential effect to it as well, too, that has a taste of that state that actually all the these things we're talking about are an outgrowth of that. And it's kava already is. I don't even I didn't create that. It already is symbolic of those things in the South Pacific. But I mean, it's just it has so many ingredients and so many ideas and conversation starters. And I just see it as a catalyst for um, you know, the conversation about this whole idea of state hygiene of like understanding and trying to gain autonomy over our states and to from all practices that we use and all tools that are available. And it's just you know, to me it's that's why in the South Pacific also it's kind of seen as a as a as like a pro-freedom substance. Like it's just like, you know, that's like that obviously makes you feel free in the moment in the sense like if you have high amount of it or whatnot, but that that autonomy component to it of just, you know, being able to be more discerning and less reactive and to be able to control where your emotions go over time and all of that stuff and be able to to regulate your nervous system internally more so as you're as you're feeding it with currency like putting an investment into it instead of that credit card kind of thing, building your own currency. Then it gets people and the more you train yourself and a lot of people don't realize that there is a way of being that's like that. They just are living from dopamine hit to dopamine hit trying to make it through every [ __ ] day and a lot of times it's I see it as a catalyst that it kind of when people start using it what a lot of people say is like I just didn't realize that you could alter your consciousness like this, you know? And so then it gets them thinking about it's like an entry point. If if if I mean if you ever seen people like kind of in our world that, you know, have these drastic life trajectory changes that are for the positive, right? And sometimes their entry point is diet or it's like working out or it's exercise or maybe it's like a Joe Rogan podcast or it's it's one of these things but then they end up in the ecosystem of self-betterment, improvement and taking responsibility and all those great Jordan Peterson, you know, values that we all know and love instead of like being a victim or but and it's like you might start from one little lever and sometimes like simple levers like this that can be a shift and it's like, yeah, there is something to some of this natural stuff, you know, or maybe there's a different way of thinking about altering my consciousness. Right, don't have to be on this loop and fully habituated all day or maybe I can do those things but use them more discerningly and have more autonomy and control of where my attention my thoughts go and then I free up my bandwidth to to be able to give it to my friends, my family, to my aspirations, to the things I want to do to contribute to the world, you know? >> Yeah, I mean one of Jordan Peterson's great quotes is you should be a monster and learn to control it and I think he's talking about cultivating that sense of sovereignty, that sense of ferocity that can come from knowing who you are and also the resilience to so many elements of it but in a way we always are a monster. Like we always are. Like we have a we're living inside of a beast. We're living inside of a primate that has survived famines, floods, wars, you know, all of these different things. And the primate, if you don't have a loving and connected, but also stern mastery over it. I mean, this is a chapter in my upcoming book that I'm doing the final edit on. And it's, you know, become the beast master. Like, you're living you have a beast as a body. And that beast needs to be listened to, paid attention to. It needs to be lunged like a horse when it's not exercising. And it's And you have to you have to keep the reins tight. You know, because it will lead you down a whole bunch of different paths, and you'll be fighting against the beast >> Yep. >> all the time instead of working with it. And when you work with it, you become the dragon rider, not just the one who's subject to the dragon's fire or its discomfort or distemper. >> And I think in like the last decade, too, part of the cultural conversations we've started to kind of turn the view inwards and started to look at some of the more pathological potential expressions of our our animalistic framework, right? It's, you know, that's what partly has helped to feed into the rise of letting the pendulum swing into maybe the extreme side of wokeism and things like that where we're so hypersensitive to things. And I think there's this knee-jerk reaction whenever you see a problem and you're traumatized by it and you don't have this sort of like this this calm, you know, grounded lens to look through where you're saying like, "Okay, we may or may not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater where it's sort of like, well, we just have to suppress or get rid of the animal inside of us." You know? And I just don't think it's about that at all because the animal plays such a crucial role. I mean, that animal is what's That's where your desire to for, you know, you know, for survival comes from. That's where your desire your your desire to procreate comes from. That's where That's where your drive, like, you couldn't have built on it, right? If you didn't have your animal side. There's no [ __ ] way. Yeah, like, there's no [ __ ] way. Obviously. I think that it's more about We have the opportunity as higher primates or humans, right? We have this prefrontal cortex and we've developed this capacity, whether it's through the use of altering our consciousness, maybe stoned ape theory or, you know, whether it happened through that methodology, which I think it's perfectly plausible to me. But however it occurred, we have the opportunity. It's like that risk opportunity thing. We have a whole another muscle that we can access. And it doesn't mean that we have to get rid of the animal drives inside of us. It just means that we have to build that human muscle. >> Right. >> And that human muscle that allows us, because with great power comes great responsibility. And we have we have this animal thing. And this kind of comes back to the sort of the, you know, you know, the cleverness, wisdom type of thing or whatever. I think that what we need so much in this world right now is we need um states, practices, and um you know, >> [clears throat] >> any type of education possible, anything we can put out into the world that helps to cultivate actual wisdom. And how I, you know, instead of just isolated myopic cleverness. We know we're talking earlier about, you know, how scientists a lot of times they can be brilliant in one myopic isolated area. And that's how I differentiate cleverness or analytical intelligence from wisdom. A lot of people say, "Oh, this person, this entrepreneur, this tech guy is is super intelligent. He must be I must trust him on everything, right?" Well, it's like >> Yeah, and then then give him a hug and see if he gets all weird. >> Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> [laughter] >> But but but I see, you know, I see cleverness is like, you know, cleverness is like it's it's optimized analytical capacity or even manipulative capacity in an isolated area usually. An area of specialty is is usually what you see with a lot of like hyper hyper intellectual sometimes. Um but sometimes if it's hyper that, but there's a lack of sort of integration and sort of full emotional intelligence and what I call wisdom, cuz wisdom is, to me, it's the capacity to take those pieces and have to some viewpoint of the whole of how things fit together, right, in the long term. So, for example, it's like the Manhattan Project, right? You know, Oppenheimer is like very, very clever to build, design a fission bomb or hydrogen bomb. It's not very wise, right? Developing, you know, chemical pesticides, nitrogen-based fertilizers, it's basically a drug for the organism that is the Earth. You get what you Just like taking Adderall today, I get to focus today, but I'm twice as depleted tomorrow, and now I'm on this train where I've depleted my body. You know, you know, some things like fertilizers or pesticides, they all have their role in acute circumstances. Not to say there's never any time to use these tools, but they all come from the same core mentality that's that's not It's kind of like it's It's in It's in an early stage of development where it's a kind of a dirty technology that's based on isolated cleverness, on manipulating something to get a short-term effect, but not seeing how that affects the whole organism as a whole. It's like a cancer cell is clever, right? It devours nutrients. It can build blood vessels. It can It can eat. It can grow. It can expand. >> Yeah, you can be so [ __ ] >> Or you can be [ __ ] >> Well, exactly. It doesn't But it has no It It has no understanding, obviously, at its level of consciousness that it's destroying the host that's keeping it alive. So, it's like it's gone rogue in the same way that I believe whenever that that whole nature divorcement syndrome thing, it's a pathology. You know, the more disconnected that we get from that core intelligence that is sanity because we can see the whole that what's good for me is good for you and that we're all one collective thing, and I can't I can't hurt you without hurting myself, or I can't work against nature without working against myself because we are [ __ ] nature. Like everything that lives around us is nature. It's not just trees are nature. It's not just, you know, lakes are nature and stuff, you know? And so, but this this thing of like that that whole intelligence wisdom thing, I mean, is it big, and I think that I you know, states and practices and things that allow us to reconnect more into the intelligence of nature allow us to zoom out more and more and start to build the mental framework that allows us to access more of the macro picture, which makes us more wise because there's a lot of people that are disproportionately very developed in one isolated place, but they don't understand what it could do if it's not It's like the scalpel. They develop a myopic tool. You're just like developing drugs or like we were talking about or bombs or anything like that or obviously we have AI now, you know, like more than ever it is [ __ ] imperative that we because I mean AI essentially from my standpoint or you know, from my viewpoint is it's it's it's like a mirror to us. These large language models are like unimaginably um and you know, complex um you know, pattern recognition mechanisms, right? Just like our brains are pattern recognition mechanisms and they can be amplifiers and they can reflect back to us what we are collectively. And I I I just wonder cuz a lot of people are terrified and there's reason to be terrified. If you're not terrified, I think it's foolish. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to go to those horrible outcomes. I think that we we are our decisions in the frame of consciousness that we um are in from here on out or that we choose to cultivate going forward, it all starts with the with perspective of the individual cuz we're the ones that are feeding this thing and if we train these large language models on a larger, more inclusive macro perspective um that's more in alignment with like a wisdom perspective. If they're more trained on wisdom, you know, then I think that's going to be very different than if they're hyper than all these inputs are myopic inputs that are meant to optimize one metric at the cost of all of these others cuz I think if you zoom out far enough, what's good for me and it's good for you is actually good for all of us, you know? And that's it when we talk about what really like the goal of what we really all want, which is fulfillment. It's not these pleasure loops. It's not the signal decoupled from the sustenance in all these different areas, these nature divorcement. When you go back to nature, it's the fusion of the signal and the sustenance in most places in the form of physical nutrition, in the form of human connection. Sex is unprocessed. Well, you know, you know, you know, regular sex is unprocessed, you know, you know, versus porn, obviously, is like a processed food, right? And it's that decoupling type of a thing. And I think the more that we like become back in alignment with that collective intelligence, call it whatever the [ __ ] you want to call it, God, universe, source, Gaia, it is there. I cut my arm and it [ __ ] heals by itself, right? That intelligence is there and it is all of us and you are it and everybody is it. >> And it's always going to be smarter than you are. >> Always. >> Like what? [laughter] Is it just the hubris to think that we can outsmart >> Well, as above, so below, right? We're the microcosm of the macrocosm. If the if if a like we're like an individual neuron in the neural network of Gaia, right? And so is is the individual cell ever smarter than the whole, right? It exists in the whole. It can't be separated from the whole. The minute that it shifts into a state of consciousness that's egoic where it it starts to identify with its ego on some level and it believes that it's separate, then it goes rogue, then it becomes that cancerous trajectory, right? You know, and whenever it realizes that it is an extension of the whole from that sort of Alan Watts core philosophy that we're like apples extension of a tree, like we didn't come into this world, we came out of it type of a thing, you know. You know, you can't like then you start to form into that con- just like cells in the body, right? It's like, you know, health, we default to a state of health, that's what we actually are. That's how we came into existence. Like, you know, you look in the mirror and it's like, you know, you think you're an individual, right? You think there's this one guy and his name is Aubrey, his name is Cameron or whatever, you know, but you're really a community of 70 trillion cells that are flying like a flock of birds in perfect in perfect synchronicity and they're doing that because they're collect they're jacked into a Wi-Fi intelligence field that its default state is to move towards state of order into balance. Now, where that comes from that's a whole another conversation, but but it still is the fact and that's why the default state in the body is health, is balance, is abundance, is expansion, you know? And that's why you cut your arm unless I'm not healthy enough because of interference in my body or some sort of interference that's in the way or in the body doesn't have what it need it's trying to default to a state of healing. I don't have to tell my arm to heal, you know? >> Yep. >> And it's just one of those things that's like I really think that getting access to wisdom is reintegrating with nature and like all these practices today even with like and that's the reason why in my opinion that this whole nature divorcement syndrome thing people don't call it that they don't consciously think about it in those terms not having conversations like we're having right now for the most part but if you see the explosion of what's been happening in the culture of the last number of years and all of these adjacent movements maha rise of regenerative medicine biohacking da da da da da all these organic foods you know you know Amazon purchases whole foods because organic foods there's there's a yearning inside of us for nature reintegration because we know that we're sort of like lost at sea and there's an internal lighthouse that I think some of us can sense better because of our life circumstances or whatnot but people are sensing it and it's like the hundredth monkey thing it's starting to like become more and more and more and um and all these different things you know you know you know the four molecular particles the form of toxins you know that you know the ultra processed foods the artificial environments the you know the fragmented you know decoupling like I was talking about in the forms of sex and pornography all all all these different types of things that we have too much of that are decoupling us from nature which is like decoupling us from wisdom or sanity or whatnot we have a hunger for nature reintegration I think and it comes not just from one strategy by any means there are symbolic catalyst strategies that I think could lead to a perspective shift. That's why I like Kava so much. Um, but all these practices, anything that has actually permanently changed my life or giving me permanent resolution or you know, on on any fronts, you know, physical, mental, emotional, has been something that falls under that nature reintegration principle. It's usually about getting back in real foods with the most intelligence as humanly possible that at least divorce is possible. Real environments, real connection with people, these things. And it's like >> [sighs] >> you can do so much just by dissolving the boundaries and barriers between you and your innate God-given intelligence and wisdom. And it's funny because so much of like what constitutes wisdom, you don't have to like [ __ ] like learn by analyzing like facts in a book. It's in you. And and you know that because like you ever take a plant medicine and like and most of us, I'm sure you had this experience. I certainly did just like Timothy Leary talked about first time I took mushrooms and 5 hours I learned more in that 5 hours than I ever did about myself or about the world and I actually had a frame where I felt like I was at least had access to a thing called home and I felt like that everything was going to be okay. I still had a lot of work to do, a lot of integration, a lot of stuff. But it just it it it gave me a sense it it's almost like it it brought that lighthouse into the room and I kind of saw it and I kind of saw what I actually was and connected with what I actually was and realized my potential like as a human and I think a lot of people have that. And so it's like it's inside of you because in the same way that if a senescent cell, you know, can rejoin the neural network again, right, and be be reconnected into the network and fall back into harmony and accordance and a conscious understanding and start to facilitate, it's like it's it's the it can harness the the power and inertia of everything that brings that order to the body. It's like the you know, a single wave has the has the inertia of the entire ocean behind it, right? Every you know, that you can summon it, right? Like it's like individuals can do a lot. Like we're so powerful in the real sense, right? In the real true sense. We have the capacity >> of vested interests who are trying to disempower us because a disempowered person always needs to pay for a solution. >> Yeah. >> And >> [clears throat] >> um Well, I really appreciate this, man. This has been uh This has been really cool to feel this pathway like reopening again. And so for people who are interested in exploring kava, obviously, your company is especially designed for people to get an entry point. But for people like myself that are looking to go past the entry point uh that don't know you cuz you're going to hook me up and I'm [ __ ] stoked cuz I'm going to get kava drunk now. But if they don't know you, you know, where can they go to start exploring what some of the the higher grade >> Oh, absolutely. >> kava preparations look like? You can go to you you can check out the kava forums online. And I could I can make a shout-out. I can make a shout-out to a couple, you know, companies that sell really good bag bagged kavas. Um >> Shout them out. [clears throat] >> Yeah. Yeah, my friends at Calm with Kava make really really good or they just basically sell bagged powders of really clean noble cultivars, the safe ones that have been used forever that you can learn how to prepare it at home and you can watch a little YouTube video on there. Um you know, they make those. My friend uh you know, Chris in in Hawaii has a company called Gourmet Hawaiian Kava. It's one of my favorites. He doesn't have a huge supply of it. Um but you can order it online like on his website and Bula Kava House is another one. There's there's a few and they specifically just, you know, specialize in selling bags of kava that you have to make the sort of the crude the the the the full thing at home for those people that want to be full connoisseurs. And there's very simple. You can go into YouTube and just type in, you know, traditional kava preparation and learn the method. From all these websites I just named, you can go and you can buy a a strainer bag and you can buy little coconut shells and whatnot. And then you can make it and you can start to dose up. Uh we also have like tons of information on the Kava Coalition website at kavacoalition.org. Studies that we're getting published and all that. We've got a resource of every most of the literature that's been published on Kava uh that you can you know you know search by you know condition and and circumstance. And all of the the the initiatives that we're involved in on increasing uh you know awareness and integration for Kava in the culture as well, too. And of course everything with the TrueKava platform we're putting out information like this all the time talking about protocols and getting in the weeds on stuff on on how to really get in there. If if you're wanting to do it at the aggressive level or if you're just wanting the sort of lifestyle that you can share with anybody and use ubiquitously at any time. Um it's a phenomenal tool that's that hasn't really had the context and the depth of conversation that it deserves in the public sphere. It's one of those just like cannabis, just like psilocybin. Like no you know none of these medicines are you know better or worse. It's not about better or worse, but but it just occupies a very unique space of tolerability and more of this nutritional kind of entheogenic feeding of the soul and of the state that I think at mass when you get a you know culture using it, I think it's it's just you know see over time you know you know what it starts to do for you. And it's just excellent amazing compound. So >> I'm about to [ __ ] around and find out. So >> [laughter] >> that's what I take from this. Thanks so much for being here, man. >> Yeah, man. Thanks so much for having me, dude. >> Absolutely. Love you guys. We'll see you next week.