DOSE:	3.5 hits	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)
		oral	Kava	(extract)
		oral	Alcohol

BODY WEIGHT:

124 lb

I thought I would submit a report on kava kava just because there seems to be a lot of confusion relating to how to prepare it, eat it, and so on. I'll be the first to tell you that Kava Kava can trigger the upchuck reflex, especially the first few times you try it. It is almost enough to say hell with it. As most of you probably have read there are 4 or 5 ingredients in kava kava that produce the various effects. A couple are lipid (fat) soluble and the others are water-soluble. All of them are alcohol soluble, or at least the important ones. Some things you might want to know before doing this. It takes a fair amount of time, it is slightly messy, and it needs to be monitored. The last thing, you get only active ingredients (maybe a few other things but not much) so it is super powerful. Start with small doses. Anyways enough talk here is my tried and true method to prepare the stuff. Stuff you need:

1. Isopropyl Alcohol (rubbing alcohol)
2. Kava Kava
3. Glass pot
4. Metal pot that the glass pot can fit inside but not tip-over in.
6. Strainer

1. Go to the store and buy isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol). I have been using 91% isopropyl 9 % water medical grade stuff. It is really cheap (1.29 for 16 OZ) and you can buy it at almost any store. This is going to be your solvent.

2. You need Kava Kava, if you have ground up root great, it saves you a step. If you have the actual root it is time to grind that stuff up into the finest mush you possible can.

3. Set your stove on low and bring a pot of water up to about 120 degrees F. This does not need to be exact, I have boiled the water a few times on accident. While the water is heating dump your ground kava into the glass pot, now put in half again as much isopropyl alcohol (i.e., put in 1 cup of kava kava, put 1 1/2 cup of Isopropyl). You just need to make sure the mixture is liquidy not sludgy.

4. Test your water that you have been heating, it should be just cool enough to touch but too hot to leave your hand in. Place the Glass Pot with the kava kava and isopropyl alcohol into the metal pot. NOTE: DO NOT DUMP KAVA KAVA AND ALCOHOL INTO METAL POT. You are only placing the glass pot (kava and alcohol) into the other metal pot (water). The reason for doing this is you do not want to directly heat the isopropyl alcohol since it would be quite easy to accidentally overheat it.

5.This step smells bad, the alcohol will be vaporizing if you have anything like a fume hood use it. Now you get to wait, at least a half an hour just let your mix warm, stir every few minutes. The reason for this is to dissolve the Kavatones (active ingredients) into the alcohol. The only part about this step that is important is to not get water into your mixture of kava and alcohol and to not let the water get too hot resulting in boiling your mixture. If it boils though, don’t worry, it will all still work.

6. Time to get out the strainer, into a separate pot strain your mixture. What you should have is a golden/brownish color alcohol smelling liquid in the bottom of whatever you strained the stuff into. In the strainer you have ground kava junk, it still has a lot of alcohol with kavatones dissolved into it so you are going to want to pour more isopropyl alcohol through the strainer over the kava (this isn’t essential but you will get more stuff at the end if you do it). What this will do is wash the rest of the important stuff into your mixture.

7. Now wash out the glass pot, it should just have a little junk in it. Once you have washed it out and DRIED it (semi important) pour your isopropyl /kava mix into the glass pot.

8. Put the glass pot back into the metal pot to heat again. Now we are evaporating the isopropyl alcohol so what you will have left is basically pure kavatones. The ideal way to do this is to get your water up to about 160-180 degrees. This part takes a few hours depending on how much liquid you have to evaporate. It is all right if the alcohol boils but it is safest if you keep it just under the boiling point or where it is a very slow boil. Normally isopropyl boils around 101 degrees F but since it has a solute in it, it boils much closer to 160-180.

9.Keep checking on your evaporating liquid, making sure it is not boiling too hard and also make sure not all of you water has evaporated, put in more water as needed. Near the end your mixture will be very sludgy, this is good.

10. Once you have reached the sludgy point you want to turn the stove down and bring the water temperature down to around 120 again. The reason for this is to keep from burning whatever you have left in the pot. Once you reach the sludgy stage you should be 5-15 minutes from being done. Eventually it will dry all the way out. Once it does this, remove it from the water bath and let it cool. You should probably let it sit for a couple of hours to make sure all the remaining alcohol evaporates.

11. Once it is dry and cool, it is ready to be eaten. An alternative to this is to scrape some of the kava into a high proof drinking alcohol (like vodka) letting it dissolve and doing a shot. A couple of thing to be careful about though; What you have left should be 70-95% pure kavatones, which is very potent. It really does not take much to feel it. So be careful and do small amounts until you get a feel for what you really have. Now you are done and do not have to deal with the horrible tasting kava again.

To give you all an idea of how extremely potent what you have left is let me relate a little story. Some friends came over and we were sitting around playing cards, smoking joints. I decided I wanted to try out my newly 'distilled' Kava so I took two pinky finger tips worth of kava (I am sorry I don’t have numbers for you guys). Within 15 minutes I was having amazing auditory hallucinations, I felt like a bit of a crack head since we were just sitting around playing cards, very relaxed, in a dim lit room, and here I was hearing things. I had only taken 3 or 4 hits from the joint so I was not very high when I took the kava. After about an hour of hearing things I decided it would be intresting to see how alcohol mixed with all this. So we cracked open the Corona and I had two beers in the space of about a half an hour. During that time we smoked another small bowl. After I finished the beer I got up to walk to the bathroom and found my legs didn't work to well. In fact all my limbs weren't working very well. I was still hearing things through out this whole time. I was feeling very relaxed, comfortable and mildly euphoric. The whole experience was very...comfortable (best way to describe it). I went to sleep about 15 minutes later and slept like a baby waking up feeling very rested. Normally a bowl and a half and two beers would hardly touch me. The kava definitely made everything stronger. It would be easy to over do it if you aren’t careful. Anyways I hope this helped.

Exp Year: 2000	ExpID: 2253
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jun 24, 2001	Views: 44,443
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Kava (30) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Preparation / Recipes (30)