So, you’re interested in trying out kava…
But maybe you don’t have time to sit and sip a cup of this sleep stuff in its tea form.
Problem solved… with the tincture:
Use is pretty intuitve. You take a couple of drops, plopped into a beverage of choice, and drink up.
The one pictured above is the one I use – by Herb Pharm. Tinctures can come with both an alcohol or water base. (Although the only one I saw at my grocer was the grain alcohol based one.) I never really understood this because they say not to mix kava and alcohol – which is the perfect segue into talking about pros and cons. The one con of all kava is that long term, every day use can cause side effects like liver damage, scaly skin, and a bunch of other weird stuff I’m going to make you look up. I’ve never made this an everyday thing because A.) I finally built a life for myself where escape wasn’t a daily need anymore (10/10 stars; highly recommend) and B.) because all these slumber supplements aren’t cheap. (Cue Dana White quote about ski slope street drugs being expensive.) This goes for either form, though – it’s just adding alcohol is a bit less good for you. The flipside is that – whether you get it with water or alcohol – it is more concentrated in tincture form, meaning that although you pay more, it goes a longer way. It’s also, obviously, going to work far faster than tea – taking only the ten or fifteen minutes after you swill it down to start going to work.
And what was my personal experience?
(What? If y’all can dry-scoop your pre, I can straight-drip my kava.)
It wasn’t terribly dissimilar.
Within a short while of “adding it to a beverage” (AKA dropping it directly into my mouth, as seen above, because I’m a monster and I’m not sorry), I was already feeling the effects. It was as if the tension-ometer on my world had clicked down a couple notches. Still, something was missing. I didn’t feel that same body calm. No cozy-toe feeling. That sensation of vertical breathing suddenly becoming slow, full, and horizontal was missing. And why? I’d say it’s probably because it’s that whole Western vs. Eastern philosophy of approaching something like relaxation and sleep holistically versus treating it like another button on your phone you click for instant results. The tea offers an experience. There’s the aroma, the soporific quality of the steam rising up from your mug and slowly seducing your olfactory centers, and the warm beverage itself – inviting calm into your body. You can’t mimic that with a quick tincture. The whole problem with our approach to sleep is that we don’t want to take the time to make space for it. We aren’t willing to turn off our phones an hour before bed. (Guilty.) We aren’t willing to carve out space for pre sleep rituals. We want to go straight from escaping our brains to shutting them down without sitting for a moment to connect to our senses. Yogi’s kava tea will force you to do that. And you’ll be reluctant to, at first, but grateful for it after.
Final winner decision?
Tea if you have time and love yourself. Tincture if you have money and hate feeling good.
And winner over both’ve those is moderation – because, again, long term daily use is not suggested.