Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Edelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the
Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any
Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,
Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, Heed, as
Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not
Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show
Speaker 1: should be used his medical advice or encouragement to use
Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello Psychoactive listeners. So today we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a real adventurer as a guest. His name
Speaker 1: is Chris killing and Chris kill Um has been studying
Speaker 1: plant medicines for fifty years or more. He's written over
Speaker 1: a dozen books. Um, he's trying of all the world
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the very first guest on on Psychoactive,
Speaker 1: Andy Wile, says this about him. He says, Chris kill
Speaker 1: him is a trustworthy guide on the medicine trail, full
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm, wonder and respect for the wisdom of traditional cultures.
Speaker 1: I respect his mission to make these plants and their
Speaker 1: uses better known in our culture. So in looking over
Speaker 1: the books that Chris has written, I mean the one
Speaker 1: that struck me was when he wrote actually quite a
Speaker 1: while ago in late nineties on cava. Cava the plant
Speaker 1: medicine that is growing commonly in the South Pacific, and
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to do an episode about cava and
Speaker 1: so for a deep dive on cava and how it
Speaker 1: relates to other plant medicines, I asked Chris tell them
Speaker 1: to focus on that. So Chris, welcome so much to Psychoactive. Well, thanks, Ethan,
Speaker 1: It's a great pleasure to be on with you. I've
Speaker 1: been looking forward to this since you first suggested it,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad we're finally making this happen. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I've seen that, you know, you did this can
Speaker 1: Cava going to you know, one of the South Pacific islands.
Speaker 1: Is it Vonatua? Is that how you pronounce it? Vona
Speaker 1: Watu is the name of the country, and it's a
Speaker 1: group of about a hundred islands stretching north to south
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Pacific. So if you went
Speaker 1: to Australia and then you flew by jets a three
Speaker 1: hours east into the middle of the ocean, you dropped
Speaker 1: down on Vana Wattu. But yeah, it's in the middle
Speaker 1: of the South Pacific, and Vana Wattu is where kava
Speaker 1: first originated. It's spread from as far east as Tahiti
Speaker 1: in the Society Islands, to all the way west to
Speaker 1: um you know, Melanesia and people of a more kind
Speaker 1: of Asian Pacific descent. But kava really is the big
Speaker 1: psychoactive agent among all of the Pacific islands. So that
Speaker 1: counts with Fiji and Samoa, maybe Hawaii, what else, Yeah, Tonga,
Speaker 1: the Marquesses, New Caledonia, you know, sure, all of them. Um.
Speaker 1: Cava has played an extremely important role in culture, and uh,
Speaker 1: certainly nowhere more so than Vona Wattu. So when I
Speaker 1: first decided to take a very deep dive into cava,
Speaker 1: which I already knew about in nine, I went to
Speaker 1: Vona Watu and through a series of strange encounters, was
Speaker 1: told to go to a very very very far out
Speaker 1: outer island and look for a guy with tattooed legs.
Speaker 1: And that led to a long friendship and ridiculously amazing adventures,
Speaker 1: and together with other people, we started the international cova trade.
Speaker 1: We we actually did that, and uh we were wonderfully
Speaker 1: successfully in our efforts to popularize cova for a time,
Speaker 1: and that stimulated um enterprise all over the Pacific Islands.
Speaker 1: And I got to spend a lot of time in
Speaker 1: Vonawatu and continue to this day. I was there in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, just a week before all travel stopped
Speaker 1: due to COVID. So's it's an activity and a connection
Speaker 1: that I keep up very closely. Well, so let's just
Speaker 1: get down a basic first. I mean, the first question
Speaker 1: we have to ask, since I imagine a good part
Speaker 1: of our audience well not to the answer is what
Speaker 1: the hell is cava? Well, cava is a bush ethan
Speaker 1: and um. It is in the pepper family. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a piper species, and it's the root and the lateral
Speaker 1: roots that come off of this large sort of football
Speaker 1: shaped rootstock that are are taken out of the ground
Speaker 1: and pounded, cleaned and pounded and made into a very
Speaker 1: very strong drink that you drink out of coconut shells.
Speaker 1: You drink it fresh, it's not fermented, it's not alcoholic,
Speaker 1: and if cabba is properly made, you get a relaxing
Speaker 1: feeling in seconds. I don't mean minutes, I mean seconds
Speaker 1: as it's going down your throat, you feel this wave
Speaker 1: of relaxation. And so cava it goes way way back
Speaker 1: into antiquity with these different Pacific island communities and they
Speaker 1: all have traditions around cava. And in Vanuatu, where I
Speaker 1: have spent, you know, the majority of my time, though
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of work in Hawaii. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we drink cava in the evening. It's pretty funny actually,
Speaker 1: because you'll be out, you know, maybe somebody's working on
Speaker 1: their taro patch or whatever, and somebody will say, hey,
Speaker 1: what time is it, and somebody else says, it's cava time,
Speaker 1: and they just stop in mid machette swing and they
Speaker 1: just walk back to the village. And that starts the
Speaker 1: reparation of cava, which is very physically demanding and labor intensive.
Speaker 1: And this is an agent of kinship and community. It
Speaker 1: brings people together and you sit and talk about your
Speaker 1: day and you know, hang out for a while and
Speaker 1: after drinking a few coconut shells of cava, you go
Speaker 1: off and have dinner. But um, it said, don't miss
Speaker 1: there's never there's never a day that passes where there's
Speaker 1: no cava it's central to kinship and community in the Islands.
Speaker 1: Now meanwhile, of course cava has become a not super popular,
Speaker 1: but it's spreading in popularity in the U S. In Europe.
Speaker 1: I was just looking up. There must be a couple
Speaker 1: hundred cava bars around the country. So it's getting around
Speaker 1: and why are people using it? Well, it imparts a
Speaker 1: very specific feeling of relaxation and tranquility, and very quickly,
Speaker 1: I mean very quickly, just as you know, one good
Speaker 1: solid hit from a great joint of amazing ganja will
Speaker 1: get you high momentarily. Um, drinking well made cava, you
Speaker 1: will feel it almost instantaneously, and people like the sense
Speaker 1: of tranquility that it promotes. Um, you don't lose neuromuscular coordination,
Speaker 1: you don't become drunk the way you would on alcohol,
Speaker 1: you don't lose your sensibilities. If you can remember your
Speaker 1: friends phone numbers when you haven't drunk cava you can
Speaker 1: remember and when you have. And um, it's really something
Speaker 1: that just plane makes people feel good. And I think,
Speaker 1: especially now considering that so many people are stressed out
Speaker 1: and anxious, cava is sort of an of our time
Speaker 1: agent of peace. Really, you know, as one anthropologist said,
Speaker 1: you know, you cannot hate with cava in you. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's it's an agent of dispute resolution. Let's say you
Speaker 1: and I have something going on between us. You know what, ever,
Speaker 1: you're piste off at me, I'm piste off at you.
Speaker 1: There's something wrong. We get together, we sit down, we
Speaker 1: drink cava. We just hang out for a while and
Speaker 1: do that, and then afterwards we talk it through and
Speaker 1: when we leave, it's done. It's finished, it's over, it's settled.
Speaker 1: Maybe I owe you a pig or something, but it's over.
Speaker 1: And so it's an agent not only of kinshipping community,
Speaker 1: bringing people together, but it's also very useful for dispute resolution. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to honor a dignitary or a
Speaker 1: visiting chief, you throw a really wonderful cava celebration, or
Speaker 1: you bring a big beautiful bundle of cava roots to
Speaker 1: a wedding, you know, to give to the bride and groom.
Speaker 1: All of these things show the real central importance of
Speaker 1: this plant and it's culture. I mean, people love cava
Speaker 1: and it makes them feel terrific. So the extension of
Speaker 1: that to cava bars all over the US and Europe.
Speaker 1: It just makes sense. Although I really do I do
Speaker 1: prefer the island experience I can. I can imagine you
Speaker 1: know a lot of what you're saying saying Chris, it
Speaker 1: sounds like what I read in here and learn about,
Speaker 1: say coca um in Bolivia and Peru and parts of Colombia,
Speaker 1: or what one might hear read about, you know, tobacco
Speaker 1: and more traditional uses in the Americas, or may be
Speaker 1: caught in uh in Yemen and East Africa. You know,
Speaker 1: the same thing you hear about coca being given to
Speaker 1: the pope or the queen or the visiting president or
Speaker 1: what have you. So in terms of I mean, how
Speaker 1: would you compare it to those sorts of things in
Speaker 1: that context? Quite similar? If you have chewed coca leaf,
Speaker 1: you know this. You can't get high doing that. You
Speaker 1: can try, you can try with all your might, but
Speaker 1: you're not going to get high on it. Um. You
Speaker 1: may feel a little bit more clear minded, you may
Speaker 1: adjust to altitude better. Um, you know, feel kind of
Speaker 1: like you had a cup of tea, perhaps, but you're
Speaker 1: not going to get a different state of mind. If
Speaker 1: you drink good cava. I mean good cava, I don't
Speaker 1: mean the dishwater thin stuff that some people prepare from
Speaker 1: dried cova powder. But if you really drink good cava,
Speaker 1: you feel it, You feel it significantly, and it lasts
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours. And uh, it isn't it
Speaker 1: isn't comparable to coke. I mean, I've chewed coca hundreds
Speaker 1: of times and drunk the tea many many times, you
Speaker 1: know in the andies especially, and um certainly have you
Speaker 1: know been in and out of ceremonies where tobacco is
Speaker 1: uh widely you know and specifically used, But they don't
Speaker 1: compare to cava. The effects are just utterly different. And
Speaker 1: when you first have that cava wave that as it's
Speaker 1: going down your throat you feel your entire body and
Speaker 1: nervous system just kind of just spreading out through your
Speaker 1: entire body, you realize, oh, this is a different thing.
Speaker 1: It's not like anything. M h. Now, So what was
Speaker 1: your first encounter with Well, my very first encounter was
Speaker 1: at a dinner party in nineteen seventy nine in a
Speaker 1: very elegant neighborhood called Fisher Hill in Brookline, Massachusetts. And
Speaker 1: I was in this baronial manner that this rich friend
Speaker 1: had and um, his brother was there, and after dinner,
Speaker 1: his brother took out this jar and stuck a chopstick
Speaker 1: in it and pulled out this big black ball of
Speaker 1: goo about the size of a small marble, and he
Speaker 1: handed to me and he said, try this. We were herbalist,
Speaker 1: you know, so we did they like, you know, somebody'd
Speaker 1: always be pulling an extract out of the pocket, like hey,
Speaker 1: I just made an amazing you know whatever. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: ginger and be pollen extract, Try this or something. So
Speaker 1: I said, well, what is this and he said kava
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, you know what's it going to
Speaker 1: do to me? And he said, you know, you'll feel it?
Speaker 1: And so I put this ball of black goo in
Speaker 1: my mouth and my tongue started to numb and uh.
Speaker 1: In moments, I was pleasantly and delightfully high. Um. The light,
Speaker 1: which was low in the dining room where we were sitting,
Speaker 1: was had more sparkled to it, my hearing was more acute.
Speaker 1: I had this delightful sense of relaxation and peace. And
Speaker 1: I said, is this stuff legal? And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's legal and um. But it wasn't until nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: five that I actually got to Vona Watu and began,
Speaker 1: you know, my my real serious path with it. But
Speaker 1: after that dinner party, I found the entity that had
Speaker 1: supplied him with that little jar of goo and got
Speaker 1: some myself and experimented with it over time. But when
Speaker 1: I finally went to Vona Wattu, I was taken pretty
Speaker 1: promptly into an Aka mall, which is a place we
Speaker 1: had drink cava, and I had a couple of shells
Speaker 1: of cava, and I then I got it was like,
Speaker 1: oh right, okay, you can go very very deep at
Speaker 1: this stuff. This is this is not some sort of
Speaker 1: like little light buzz that you get from a ballago
Speaker 1: in your mouth. This is this is you know, pretty
Speaker 1: much as deep as you want to go, frankly, And
Speaker 1: so that turned me onto cava. And I think that
Speaker 1: we are certainly in my case, I'm drawn to certain plants.
Speaker 1: I'm drawn to Oshawa Ganda, I'm drawn to the Ayahuasca plants.
Speaker 1: I'm drawn to cava, to coffee in a huge way.
Speaker 1: I've researched coffee all over the world, maka um you know,
Speaker 1: Rodeola many other plants have really pulled me in in
Speaker 1: a big way. And cava is certainly very very high
Speaker 1: on that list. And why did it take so long?
Speaker 1: I mean, why the fifteen or sixteen years before the
Speaker 1: first time you tried it and you're going to find
Speaker 1: a want to? I mean, what would prompted I visit
Speaker 1: in Well, it was actually hard to uh for me
Speaker 1: to find out as much about Cava as I wanted to.
Speaker 1: I only got a little bits of information here and there.
Speaker 1: And I was not familiar at the time with some
Speaker 1: of the better botanical libraries where I could have gotten
Speaker 1: much more. Frankly, I could have gotten good anthropological information
Speaker 1: on Cava, but I didn't know where to go. And
Speaker 1: then in ninety I was basically hired by a couple
Speaker 1: who had purchased a massive botanical extraction facility in New Jersey, gigantic,
Speaker 1: largest in North America. And they hired me because they
Speaker 1: wanted to know what to do, uh, And I said,
Speaker 1: I think you should develop cava And they said, well,
Speaker 1: what do we need to do to do that? And
Speaker 1: I said, you send me to the South Pacific and
Speaker 1: they said, okay, when can a start And I said,
Speaker 1: like now and they said great. And that began actually
Speaker 1: a twenty one year engagement in which I have investigated
Speaker 1: medicinal plants and food crops and spices all over the globe. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and it really um threw me into what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do mostly, which was be an explorer,
Speaker 1: helped to develop sustainable chains of trade, make a difference
Speaker 1: with indigenous native people, and in the process have remarkable
Speaker 1: and extraordinary experiences. I mean, you describe at one point
Speaker 1: cava as the main religion of the Melanesian people? Is it?
Speaker 1: In fact? I mean akin to a religion way we
Speaker 1: think about it, Well, it's not akin to a religion,
Speaker 1: and that there's no dogma, and there's no central person.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no oh, follow the teachings of Saint Cava.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not happening. But what does happen is
Speaker 1: a type of behavior, a type of listening, a type
Speaker 1: of consideration that is engendered by drinking cava with others.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've sat in Um a couple of times
Speaker 1: and these magnificent cava ceremonies with like a whole crowded
Speaker 1: knock them holl just full of chiefs, you know, and
Speaker 1: everybody getting called up in turn and drinking this insanely
Speaker 1: strong cava they called stone cava, which is minced with
Speaker 1: a coral head, so that you erupture every last cell
Speaker 1: of this really fibrous cava root, giving every little bit
Speaker 1: of the relaxing compounds out there and into the water,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, it's magical. It's just plain magical,
Speaker 1: a breathtaking li So and then you go out underneath
Speaker 1: the stars, or you know, in case of my so
Speaker 1: called home village, staring across the bay at a live
Speaker 1: volcano that's lighting up the sky purple and orange and gold,
Speaker 1: and you just stand there and it's breathtaking, and you
Speaker 1: get a sense of the the absolute tiny nous of
Speaker 1: us and the absolute gigantic nature of everything else. When
Speaker 1: it was it that Westerner's first encountered cova, I think
Speaker 1: Captain Cook was one of the first to encounter it,
Speaker 1: and he found the habit disgusting and didn't want it
Speaker 1: to take place on his boat. Um, and that did
Speaker 1: not endear him to island people, for whom cove is
Speaker 1: the central, most esteemed artifact in their culture. But in general,
Speaker 1: I think the fact is that European invaders did not understand,
Speaker 1: mostly didn't care to understand, and found alarming almost everything
Speaker 1: about Native people, you know the basics of how they lived,
Speaker 1: what they did, and didn't seem to know, how they behave,
Speaker 1: what they ate, how they ate, what they drank, how
Speaker 1: they drank. I mean it was it was a disgust
Speaker 1: and a loathing that went out in all directions. And eventually,
Speaker 1: of course Captain Cook was killed because he was just
Speaker 1: playing an idiot and he you know, had no consideration
Speaker 1: for the native people, and he suffered terribly as a result.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking more after we hear this ad. You
Speaker 1: describe in the book the role of the missionary showing
Speaker 1: up in the eighteenth and ninth lad eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: and you know, las Captain Cook's crew take sort of
Speaker 1: down on the whole Cava tradition and just say a
Speaker 1: little more about that role of the missionaries. And you
Speaker 1: know what they did around Cava, well, missionaries as they
Speaker 1: went through the various Pacific islands, tried their best to
Speaker 1: get um, you know, native people, to stop being heathens
Speaker 1: and to become good Christians. And so that meant, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, learning Christian doctrine and following certain prescribed roles,
Speaker 1: including of course tithing, you know, giving resources that they
Speaker 1: didn't have two people they didn't know for purposes. They'd
Speaker 1: never find out about UM as somehow part of their
Speaker 1: salvation plan. And it is really a big con job
Speaker 1: from beginning to end. UM in some cases. In many
Speaker 1: cases the missions though at the very same time provided
Speaker 1: education and medicine. It's a very confusing mixture of elements.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to seduce people and dissuade
Speaker 1: them from their tragedi sational path and their traditional knowledge,
Speaker 1: then you have to offer them something. You can't just
Speaker 1: sort of walk around with a stick and demand that
Speaker 1: they changed their ways. And so, you know, they showed
Speaker 1: up with trinkets and education that is useful for sure,
Speaker 1: and medicine that is valuable in other things. And UH
Speaker 1: in the islands to one extent or another greatly depending
Speaker 1: on the dundun denomination that they represented UM, they either
Speaker 1: tried outright to ban kava or to somehow modify it.
Speaker 1: The Catholics were kind of the smartest of all because
Speaker 1: their approach was sort of like what they did in Mexico,
Speaker 1: you know, with the yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you know data,
Speaker 1: the dad's fine, no problem, no problem. But you know,
Speaker 1: here's how you need to worship and here's what you
Speaker 1: need to do. And I think with uh kava, certainly
Speaker 1: in Bonawatu um to the extent, I mean, to the
Speaker 1: greatest extent, it wound up being a better preserved Cavia
Speaker 1: culture uh than let's say in Fiji, Samoa, Tongua, Tahiti
Speaker 1: um and and continued to flourish. There wasn't the same
Speaker 1: attempt to ban it outright, and any attempts that did
Speaker 1: start were quickly just eliminated. Um. And So how the
Speaker 1: Catholic missionaries really got a hold in Vonawatu was by
Speaker 1: saying yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, drink your cob every evening.
Speaker 1: Sure that's fine, blah blah blah blah blah, but do
Speaker 1: this as well. Be good Catholics this way. So lots
Speaker 1: of different influences, because you know, everybody's got their own
Speaker 1: idea of what of what religion is, and every Christian
Speaker 1: missionary has their own idea of what they're actually representing.
Speaker 1: So it's a largely confused, ham fisted affair out there. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: you make me think, on the one hand, of some
Speaker 1: of the Catholic missionaries, you know, seeking to ban affect
Speaker 1: banning co in Latin America and punishing people for coca chewing.
Speaker 1: And then the other hand, I think about the Protestant
Speaker 1: missionaries and figures who played a big role in sort
Speaker 1: of banning the opium control UH monopolies in Philippines and
Speaker 1: elsewhere to later points. So, you know, and I guess
Speaker 1: the similar roles played oftenized by some of these missionaries
Speaker 1: and colonial governments in Africa of Vius of the traditional
Speaker 1: alcohol use. So it's a fairly global phenomenon. But they
Speaker 1: actually do ban it, right, I mean in some of
Speaker 1: these islands, and they punish people for using it. They
Speaker 1: have in different islands for a time. Yes. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, there's a wonderful photograph of UH Pope John
Speaker 1: Paul the Second drinking cava and Vona watu um, you know,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it. It depends on the denomination,
Speaker 1: It depends on the missionaries. It depends on how zealous
Speaker 1: and out of touch with reality they are. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have to be out of touch with reality to
Speaker 1: go to indigenous native people who have lived a certain
Speaker 1: way for long, long, long, long time and tell them
Speaker 1: that they're completely out to lunch in their approach to
Speaker 1: their very mortal existence. And they ought to be worshiping
Speaker 1: some guy they never met before previous and never heard about,
Speaker 1: and start giving money to these people who they also
Speaker 1: never heard never never heard of before, I never heard about. Oh,
Speaker 1: and stop doing all this stuff you love. That's a
Speaker 1: big Pilda swallow, right, you don't say if that Tahitian
Speaker 1: prince you mentioned earlier, Paya was maybe the most fascinating
Speaker 1: contemporary character. The most fascinating historical one was who fell
Speaker 1: you write about named John From? Yeah, John From is
Speaker 1: a legend. Um, He's a cargo cult messiah. The deal is,
Speaker 1: you know, cargo ships travel all around the world, right,
Speaker 1: and they constantly lose cargo, and cargo cults have evolved
Speaker 1: and developed around found cargo. And John From was supposedly
Speaker 1: this very tall, dignified, mysterious black man in a white
Speaker 1: suit who showed up and would demand that they like
Speaker 1: kill and roasted chicken for him, and just this mysterious
Speaker 1: character overall, and he promised great riches. And they are
Speaker 1: actually some people I don't know if there are anymore,
Speaker 1: but up until certainly the eighties who were waiting around
Speaker 1: for John From to come back. Um, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: what happens is there's a person you know, um, and
Speaker 1: over time that person becomes a legend, and then that
Speaker 1: legend becomes a magical person, and then the you know,
Speaker 1: the who they are, that what they do, the how
Speaker 1: they do it all gets greatly exaggerated, and you've got
Speaker 1: something like John from I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: we'll ever know the real the earliest possible beginnings of this,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he's a legendary character who brings riches through
Speaker 1: lost cargo. That's so Chris, now to bring this up
Speaker 1: to basically the latent end of the last century in
Speaker 1: the current century. So when you come back from Vanuata too,
Speaker 1: and you're and you're you know, you're being hired by
Speaker 1: this company that's interested in taking plant medicines and making
Speaker 1: them more widely available, um, you know, for commercial purposes, um,
Speaker 1: and health benefit purposes. UM. So what happens then, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, there's a period when it starts to spread,
Speaker 1: and then there's a scare over the feared of toxicity
Speaker 1: to people's livers of consuming it. I don't know, in
Speaker 1: great amounts or in combination of the things. And that
Speaker 1: seems to just tell us that that general story globally
Speaker 1: as well as your role in it. Well, when I
Speaker 1: came back from Bonawatu in nine, the company that had
Speaker 1: hired me, Pure World, promptly started to develop a cava
Speaker 1: extract and within a year as time we had a
Speaker 1: really remarkable, profoundly effective cova extract that could be either
Speaker 1: a liquid or a powder. And um then that jump
Speaker 1: started real imports from von Owatu. And you know, when
Speaker 1: you do something like this, you realize you've got people
Speaker 1: in native villages in far flung islands all over the place.
Speaker 1: Maybe they got boats, maybe they don't. Maybe they're hiking
Speaker 1: from one village to another on foot all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And and there are many, many hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: tons of cova in the ground all over these islands.
Speaker 1: But how do you move some of that um, you know,
Speaker 1: and get all the things you need like phyto sanitary
Speaker 1: certificates you know for shipping and clearance from f d A,
Speaker 1: and you know, all the right import licenses and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff is behind and pretty much every herb
Speaker 1: that exists. You know, if you're bringing Oshwa gande in
Speaker 1: from India or rodeola from China, or you know, cava
Speaker 1: from Bonawat, you have to set up a whole infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So we had to do that. We had to do
Speaker 1: all of that, um, you know, working together with people
Speaker 1: all over the Islands and in the United States and
Speaker 1: shippers and all of that, and um we got a good, good,
Speaker 1: good business going for about ten years. And then, Um,
Speaker 1: the toxicity thing was was very very sad because it
Speaker 1: was complete bullshit from beginning to end, and none of
Speaker 1: it was true. Uh. Really, it's not even a matter
Speaker 1: that people consuming in large amounts or in interactions, whether
Speaker 1: the drugs was There's really nothing to it. You could
Speaker 1: uh not begin to take enough supplementary cava to approach
Speaker 1: at any time what the Natives drink every single night
Speaker 1: of their lives. If it were bad for you, they'd
Speaker 1: all be dead. Um, they'll drink um the equivalent of ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty times the most you could possibly consume in a
Speaker 1: supplementary manner every single night. Um. No. I mean the
Speaker 1: the story to that is Classic Politics on an ABC
Speaker 1: television special that I helped to land about cava back
Speaker 1: in their early days, right after we'd gotten this huge
Speaker 1: feature in the Wall Street Journal and everybody wanted to
Speaker 1: know about cava. Um. The director of the National Institutes
Speaker 1: of Mental Health, having reviewed several European cava studies on anxiety, said,
Speaker 1: if we have American studies that show these same results,
Speaker 1: will have no choice but to recommend cava. And for
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical entities who were selling Ben's oar diaz appeene drugs,
Speaker 1: um you know of all different kinds, an ax er ax, halcyon,
Speaker 1: you know the works. That was the most terrifying thing
Speaker 1: that guy could ever have said. And one week before
Speaker 1: the release of the publication of the Duke University Medical
Speaker 1: Center studies showing that cava quote is proves every bit
Speaker 1: is effective in the treatment of mild to moderate anxiety
Speaker 1: as benzo diazepine class of drugs. One week controlled double
Speaker 1: blind studies basically showing that cava was as good or
Speaker 1: double blind controlled human Yeah, double blind, placebo controlled human
Speaker 1: clinical studies conducted a Duke University Medical Center. Exactly what
Speaker 1: the director of the Institute National Institutes of Mental Health
Speaker 1: had been talking about one week before that came out
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, overnight something nobody had ever heard about.
Speaker 1: Twenty one cases of talk cava related liver toxicity, and
Speaker 1: it tanked Cava overnight. And what happened from that time
Speaker 1: was that several groups of medical researchers and specialists went
Speaker 1: through that report and discovered that of the twenty one cases,
Speaker 1: twenty of them could be summarily explained away. It was
Speaker 1: people using benzo diazepines and a lot of alcohol and
Speaker 1: then subsequently also taking some cava, and one woman who
Speaker 1: was anomalous that they don't know anything about her previous
Speaker 1: liver history. But basically the job that was intended to
Speaker 1: be done to just blow cava out of the water,
Speaker 1: it worked, and insurance companies wouldn't ensure companies for having
Speaker 1: cava anymore. And you know, there were some class action
Speaker 1: suits and all the usual ambulance chasing and that gravely,
Speaker 1: gravely damaged the cava market and gravely damage the income
Speaker 1: of indigenous people all over the Pacific. And you're talking
Speaker 1: about the period roughly the first decade of the two thousands,
Speaker 1: like two thousand two to two thousand and six, seven eight.
Speaker 1: I mean it was not just in the US, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you had I think Germany and Switzerland, the UK, France,
Speaker 1: you know, all banning it for a while, is that right? Right?
Speaker 1: Because of this one study that wasn't a study, correct, Chirse.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you it's reminding me. We did an episode
Speaker 1: a little while back about Cratum creatum or what they
Speaker 1: call in Southeast Asia kreaton, and a very similar thing
Speaker 1: where a study comes out saying fortis or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then when people start digging, it turns out that every
Speaker 1: or virtually every claim is bogus. Uh, you know, knocking
Speaker 1: out some product that seems to have real promise coming
Speaker 1: In both cases, I mean from you know, another part
Speaker 1: of the world, you know, either Southeast Asia and in
Speaker 1: your case South Pacific. You know, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: when the New York Times put out a study went
Speaker 1: forty years ago, you know, front page, the LSD splits
Speaker 1: your chromosomes. And then I think of how many people
Speaker 1: I knew were in the middle of lst trip and
Speaker 1: they started freaking out that their kids were going to
Speaker 1: be born to foreign because there's chromosomes are going to
Speaker 1: be split and turn will be totally bogus. But it's
Speaker 1: those kind of scary stories that get so well publicized. Well,
Speaker 1: in the case of protecting at that time a twenty
Speaker 1: billion dollar pharma sector, the benzo diazepine drugs for anxiety.
Speaker 1: It was a matter of self preservation for whoever, you know,
Speaker 1: whoever was hired to do this. It was a hit job.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean I remember very well when it
Speaker 1: was you know, LSD would damage your chromosomes. So let
Speaker 1: me ask you this, why do you think kava did
Speaker 1: not take off until you show it up given the
Speaker 1: beneficial property associated with it. For one thing, cava doesn't
Speaker 1: taste good. Okay, nobody drinks cava and goes, God, that's
Speaker 1: delicious cava, whereas you might have an enchanting cup of
Speaker 1: coffee and just go, wow, this is a beautiful cup
Speaker 1: of coffee. I mean, the different agents you described are very,
Speaker 1: very different, one from another. Coffee is something you can
Speaker 1: have any day unless you're caffeine intolerant. It is fragrant
Speaker 1: and delicious if it's well made. And cava still nobody
Speaker 1: really set up an infrastructure for cava trade until the nineties.
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, it doesn't taste good, you know,
Speaker 1: and the more you drink it, the worse it tastes.
Speaker 1: So you know, like you have a couple of shells
Speaker 1: of cava your first time, you go wow, this is
Speaker 1: great stuff, and I tell you what, by the third
Speaker 1: or fourth night, you're just going gun. I hate the
Speaker 1: smell of this stuff. It really does not enchant you.
Speaker 1: I don't know any Native guys who love the taste
Speaker 1: of cava, none of them. When you think of the
Speaker 1: overall properties of something like you think of cannabis, okay um.
Speaker 1: For most people and not for all people, if you
Speaker 1: consume cannabis in some manner, you're going to get this
Speaker 1: delightful or pleasant you for a sense. It's going to
Speaker 1: feed your endocannabinoid system in hundreds of different ways that
Speaker 1: we know are valuable for harmonizing organ systems between each other.
Speaker 1: It's going to do all kinds of intrinsically good things.
Speaker 1: And the fragrance of it, and hopefully the flavor of it,
Speaker 1: if it's cured right, will make it something that you're
Speaker 1: happy to go back to again and again. Um cava,
Speaker 1: you know it's a tougher it's a tougher fight. I
Speaker 1: don't expect cava ever to be huge. I just don't
Speaker 1: think that will happen. And I think that cava's chance
Speaker 1: to play a significant role in UM. The relief of
Speaker 1: mild to moderate anxiety was very, very badly damaged by
Speaker 1: that study. And I do think that cava will continue
Speaker 1: to slowly creep on back somewhat, but I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll ever see the very very high popularity of it
Speaker 1: that we saw initially, and and part of that is
Speaker 1: due to the flavor barrier for sure. So in all
Speaker 1: these cava bars, I mean these a couple of the
Speaker 1: cava bars around the US, and I guess a whole
Speaker 1: bunch around the world. I mean, are people kind of
Speaker 1: holding their nose and like, you know, kind of grimacing
Speaker 1: as they drink this stuff, or are there are flavors
Speaker 1: being added, or are people consuming in ways which remove
Speaker 1: the offensive elements of smell and taste. Well, you can't
Speaker 1: remove the offensive elements of smell and taste. You can
Speaker 1: mask them. You know. You can put cava into say
Speaker 1: a coconut pineapple drink, as some places do, and that
Speaker 1: will make it more tolerable. But yeah, for the most part,
Speaker 1: I mean that the good cava bars like Kanaka Cava
Speaker 1: and Kyle Lua on the Big Island of Hawaii. You know,
Speaker 1: they got a great big cava bowl there and they
Speaker 1: just keep stirring it and stirring it and they fill
Speaker 1: up a coconut shell and you drink it, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's full on, boy, this isn't delicious kava, that's what
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, you know there are people out there
Speaker 1: who will drink Yeagermeister. Now, Yeagermeister is one of the
Speaker 1: most offensive, nasty tasting boozes on the market, Okay, and
Speaker 1: yet you have people who favor it, who gravitate toward it,
Speaker 1: who have Yeagermeister parties, who drink a lot of it
Speaker 1: and go figure or look at red Bull. I mean,
Speaker 1: red Bull is just plain nasty. It's not good tasting
Speaker 1: at all. Uh, they make no pretense of it being
Speaker 1: good tasting. People get a buzz and a lift from it,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't stop them from using well over a
Speaker 1: billion dollars worth a year. So you know, it's an
Speaker 1: odd thing about flavor and all of the organ elleptic
Speaker 1: properties of these things. I mean, tobacco fundamentally tastes just
Speaker 1: horrifyingly bad. And yet because it it does what it
Speaker 1: does in terms of you know, suppressing uh, certain emotional sensitivities,
Speaker 1: it's highly desirable among a lot of people. And you're right,
Speaker 1: it has a major central role in the America's as
Speaker 1: a sacred medicine. Um. You know, in in ayahuasca ceremonies,
Speaker 1: and I've sat in about a hundred thirty five ceremonies
Speaker 1: in the Amazon, there's always tobacco. Always. Usually the shamans
Speaker 1: are smoking mapacho, which is the Amazonian broad leaf tobacco,
Speaker 1: which contains twenty to twenty four times the nicotine of
Speaker 1: the Virginian tobacco that you know gets used to make
Speaker 1: cigarettes here in the US. And um, sometimes they'll do
Speaker 1: what's called the soap lar. They'll they'll sit down in
Speaker 1: front of you and they'll take a mapaco, a cigarette
Speaker 1: made of this Amazonian tobacco, and they'll blow it at
Speaker 1: your face, and they'll blow it on the top of
Speaker 1: your head and down the back of your shirt and
Speaker 1: into the palms of your hands, on the soles of
Speaker 1: your feet. You know, this whole ritualized thing. And I
Speaker 1: have to say Ethan that even though I hate the
Speaker 1: smell of tobacco and I don't want to be around
Speaker 1: people smoking cigarettes with something like a soaplar, I find
Speaker 1: it amazingly enjoyable and very much in keeping with what
Speaker 1: I want to have happened during an ayahuasca ceremony. So
Speaker 1: it's that's interesting to me because I really don't like
Speaker 1: tobacco at all. I've done the tobacco snuffs thing and
Speaker 1: that just made me puke and crap my brains out,
Speaker 1: and I don't want anything more to do with that. Um.
Speaker 1: But people react differently. There's a tobacco preparation called bomble,
Speaker 1: and it's this. You cook the tobacco down until you
Speaker 1: have this black tar and you just put it your
Speaker 1: fing your tip just to touch into the ombile, and
Speaker 1: you put it on your tongue and in pretty short
Speaker 1: order you're very high. And I've done that bombile in
Speaker 1: ceremony and that was pretty pleasant actually. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: tobacco is extremely toxic, extremely So if you were to
Speaker 1: take a cigar and put it in a glass of
Speaker 1: water and leave it overnight and then in the morning
Speaker 1: drink the glass of water, you'd be dead in about
Speaker 1: half an hour. Let's take a break here and go
Speaker 1: to an ad. So let me just read a paragraph
Speaker 1: from your book The years Ago and see would you
Speaker 1: would you correct any of this or not? But you
Speaker 1: basically say, you know, here's the recap. What we know
Speaker 1: about Calva's pharmacological activity. The nature of the effects that
Speaker 1: cover producers depends on the variety of cava plant being used,
Speaker 1: the age of the plant, and the rage ratio of
Speaker 1: cavalact tones. I guess the key ingredient found in that type,
Speaker 1: the potency of the cova preparation, whether it is consumed
Speaker 1: on a full or empty stomach, the set in the
Speaker 1: setting of the user will all influence the actual effects
Speaker 1: each user will experience. First and foremost, it's a local
Speaker 1: anesthetic with potency similar to that of cocaine and procaine.
Speaker 1: It numbs the tongue and the throat when drunk in
Speaker 1: its traditional form or when taken orally as a liquid extract.
Speaker 1: It's a first rate sedative, producing a state of calm
Speaker 1: and promoting sleep if taken in sufficient quantity. Cobb is
Speaker 1: an excellent analgesic, but its mode of activity as a
Speaker 1: pain reliever has yet to be determined. It's superior to
Speaker 1: aspirin and its analgesic effects, and less potent than morphine.
Speaker 1: Cobb is an excellent muscle relaxing and can make the
Speaker 1: pain of an aching back, a sore neck, or any
Speaker 1: other cramped, sore, injured muscle disappear as an aid in
Speaker 1: the relief of both systitis and go out gonorrhea. Cava
Speaker 1: appears to be beneficial, though the exact mechanism for this
Speaker 1: action is not yet fully understood. Some researchers believe that
Speaker 1: this action is due to kava's anti fungal activity. The
Speaker 1: cavalac tones have demonstrated significant anti fungal activity against some
Speaker 1: human pathogens. Unfortunately, appears to have no effect on Candida
Speaker 1: albacin's yeast. I no idea what that is. It also
Speaker 1: possesses anti convulsant properties. Promising studies with epileptic show that
Speaker 1: cova enhances control over grandmall seizures. While colba produces no
Speaker 1: side effects when taken in moderate doses, its abuse can
Speaker 1: immediately lead to health problems. There was one study in
Speaker 1: the late eighties among Aboriginal showing excessive consumption leading to
Speaker 1: deteriorating health. So would you stick by all of that?
Speaker 1: Add to it does take away any of that? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I would stand by that. The only thing I would
Speaker 1: add but I do think that I covered that otherwise
Speaker 1: in the book is that you know, in the right set,
Speaker 1: in the right setting, I mean, this is a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: You know. I taught ethnobotany at the University of Massachusetts
Speaker 1: for fourteen years, and every semester we would have a
Speaker 1: class where we would make cava and I had cava
Speaker 1: shipped in, uh from Hawaii. I'd have it shipped in
Speaker 1: fresh and or or I also had some freeze dried
Speaker 1: cava that was not commercially available, and we would go
Speaker 1: out outside. The students in my class and I we
Speaker 1: would sit around and we would make cava and we
Speaker 1: would drink cava, and we would do it as close
Speaker 1: to island style as you could on the grass outside
Speaker 1: of an engineering building on a college campus on a
Speaker 1: sunny day. And the students loved it. They just loved it.
Speaker 1: They loved everything about it, the feeling of it, the
Speaker 1: fact that they were you able to consume this plant
Speaker 1: and feel it right away. They enjoyed it very much.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever had a bad time. Um. You know, some
Speaker 1: plants just confer more delightful properties than others, and cove
Speaker 1: us one of those. Okay, so, Chris, so, so now
Speaker 1: we've been talking, so our listeners are here, and this
Speaker 1: thing go Wow, this could help with anxiety. It's already
Speaker 1: been demonstrated. It appears to help with sleep right. It
Speaker 1: relaxes you, makes you feel kind of tranquil, but your
Speaker 1: mind stays clear. It can be kind of fun. So
Speaker 1: what's your recommendation, and please get as specific as you
Speaker 1: feel comfortable doing so in terms of how and where
Speaker 1: people should be getting this, you know what forms should
Speaker 1: be they consuming it in. What are the brands? Are
Speaker 1: the websites that you'd recommend, what are the dosages? What
Speaker 1: can you tell us? Well, okay, I think that two
Speaker 1: companies who are doing cova right out there are both
Speaker 1: making liquid extracts. One is Gaya and one is Herb
Speaker 1: Farm and that's pH A r M. And they're both
Speaker 1: very fine brands. They're both using bonawa to cova. They're
Speaker 1: both doing a good job. If you want to have
Speaker 1: the cava experience that is that wave of relaxation, um,
Speaker 1: you know that that really feeling the cava, then those
Speaker 1: are two good ways to do it because you can try, um,
Speaker 1: you know, as much as you want until you get
Speaker 1: that relaxing feeling. What I would do with something like
Speaker 1: the Guya or the Herb Farm um extracts is take
Speaker 1: a little paper dixie cup, a little one and put
Speaker 1: about an ounce of water in the bottom of it,
Speaker 1: squirt in two full droppers full of the cava extract,
Speaker 1: and drink it on the spot. I mean, bang it
Speaker 1: right back. And the reason you do that is that
Speaker 1: if you don't, the relaxing compounds will stick to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the cup and you won't get the effects.
Speaker 1: So you want to put that in right away and
Speaker 1: just throw it back. You'll have the cava experience. And
Speaker 1: if you do that and then you want more, you
Speaker 1: wait twenty or twenty five minutes. You don't do shots
Speaker 1: or shells of cava back to back. If you have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to go to Vanawa to South Pacific, then
Speaker 1: you can drink real fresh cava and cava bars. But
Speaker 1: most people can't do that. So I would say Guya
Speaker 1: and herb Farm are excellent ways to go. And if
Speaker 1: just for anxiety or sleep, same thing, or the capsules effective,
Speaker 1: or there are other forms of consuming it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that Guaya has some cava capsules as well. Basically,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure who else does right now. I actually
Speaker 1: haven't looked at that side of things in a little while.
Speaker 1: There are also some concentrated cava pastes out there that
Speaker 1: you can find that will deliver a good, strong cava experience.
Speaker 1: But I think for capsules, yeah, I think you can
Speaker 1: get those through Guya as well. And if you want
Speaker 1: to take it every night for sleeping, what do you
Speaker 1: suggest in Well, you probably would want an encapsulated cova
Speaker 1: just so you don't have to deal with the flavor barrier.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, cova is interesting. It does help
Speaker 1: a lot of people to sleep better. It doesn't help
Speaker 1: everybody to do so, but it does help a lot
Speaker 1: of people to get a deeper more uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just relaxed rest really really relaxes your muscles in a
Speaker 1: big way. M h. And you know, I did an
Speaker 1: episode about micro dosing and a lot of episodes about
Speaker 1: you know, quote unquote macro dozing. And then in between
Speaker 1: is something you know, I've called mini dozing, but I
Speaker 1: saw you were writing you were calling it. I think
Speaker 1: MENI dozing right, but the middling dose. And so I'm
Speaker 1: just wondering what about with cava um and what about
Speaker 1: if people are trying to treat anxiety. What's your recommendation
Speaker 1: about that. Well, here's what we know. In cava. There's
Speaker 1: a group of compounds called the cava lac tones. And
Speaker 1: if you look at a standardized cava extract, whether it's
Speaker 1: in a capsule or a fluid, it will give the
Speaker 1: caval actone value. Okay. Um All of the human studies
Speaker 1: are done in increments of seventy milligrams of caval act tones.
Speaker 1: So and generally the studies that show the best anti
Speaker 1: anxiety effects are three or four times that per day. Um. So,
Speaker 1: let's say two hundred ten to two hundred eighty milligrams
Speaker 1: of caval act tones a day that is sufficient enough
Speaker 1: to significantly quell mild to moderate anxiety. Won't do anything
Speaker 1: for extreme anxiety, just like we don't have anything for
Speaker 1: extreme depression other than you know, heavy duty tripping under
Speaker 1: supervised conditions. Um. So, that's what I would say. You know,
Speaker 1: you look for an absoluated cava product that, let's say
Speaker 1: per capsule, delivers seventy milligrams of caval actnes per capsule,
Speaker 1: and you do three or four of those a day,
Speaker 1: and that will put you in the clinically verified zone
Speaker 1: for helping to manage mild to moderate anxiety. I see.
Speaker 1: And is it correct to say people do not build
Speaker 1: up tolerance to cava in the way they do to
Speaker 1: some other drugs. Well, I mean I never have, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I can't be a clinical study of one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if you drink cava in large
Speaker 1: quantities every single evening, the way they do in the Islands, um,
Speaker 1: at the very least, you build up a little bit
Speaker 1: of a tolerance. But in terms of people managing mild
Speaker 1: to moderate anxiety, we haven't seen that in any of
Speaker 1: the studies. And what about combining it with alcohol or
Speaker 1: cannabis or CBD or do we know anything about the
Speaker 1: drug interactions. Yeah, I'm not a friend of combining cava
Speaker 1: with alcohol. I think the cava accentuates the alcohol and
Speaker 1: the and the alcohol accentuates the cava in weird ways.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a good combination cava and cannabis.
Speaker 1: That's these days very common. Um. You know, the cava
Speaker 1: adds extra relaxing dimension to the cannabis, and the cannabis
Speaker 1: gives an extra lift to the cava. That's the way
Speaker 1: I would describe it. And it can only grow in
Speaker 1: this part of the world, or could it grow in
Speaker 1: many other places? Well, cava needs to be in an
Speaker 1: an equatorial tropical environment and it favors very easy to
Speaker 1: drain bulk anne soil um. So for example, in Vanawatu,
Speaker 1: where all of those islands are volcanic, every last one
Speaker 1: of them, uh, the soil is really ideal. And you
Speaker 1: have similar things in Samoa and Tonga uh and other
Speaker 1: parts of the Pacific Islands where those islands themselves are
Speaker 1: volcanic and so the soil is right. You know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kava grown in in Hawaii for example, which I have
Speaker 1: a long involvement with. It's very very good uh and
Speaker 1: that owes to the soil. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: were to try it, like say, to grow it, you
Speaker 1: know you see Davis or something where they have you know,
Speaker 1: phenomenal agricultural geniuses, you couldn't. You just couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: And Vanuatum, how is this business working out for them now?
Speaker 1: Are they making more and more money? I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: COVID you know the first the uh you know, the
Speaker 1: liber disease thing, and then COVID you know, we're obviously
Speaker 1: major knocks and typhoons as well. But are they doing
Speaker 1: better and better in this area and is it having
Speaker 1: a generally positive impact done people in the islands or
Speaker 1: is it bringing some unwashed Well, look that the steady,
Speaker 1: the steady on slot of multicultural influences from all over
Speaker 1: the world on any place is disorienting for people no
Speaker 1: matter where they are. But I will say that in Vonawatu,
Speaker 1: the wonderful thing that has happened with the cova trade
Speaker 1: is that the cava growers and the cava shippers are
Speaker 1: making far far more money than they ever did, and
Speaker 1: that means that you know, more of them can afford boats.
Speaker 1: The kids are dressed better, They have things they need,
Speaker 1: like you know, cooking pots and washing basins and stuff
Speaker 1: that we take completely for granted, and newer bush knives
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And it has really, uh frankly
Speaker 1: transformed their lives in very positive ways, you know, from
Speaker 1: an access to goods and services ways. Uh, they're doing
Speaker 1: better now, and you know it's it's in that sense,
Speaker 1: it's what my friends and I hoped for in the beginning.
Speaker 1: You know, wouldn't it be great if these people could have,
Speaker 1: you know, take this tradition of theirs, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and earn a living and be less at the mercy
Speaker 1: of forces all around them because they have some economic
Speaker 1: stability and power, and thankfully that's exactly what has happened.
Speaker 1: You know, not everybody in Vona Watu or in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Islands is in the cava trade, so not everybody
Speaker 1: um is equally benefiting from that. But that's true all
Speaker 1: over the world, no matter what trade you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So in the case of h Vona Watu cava, it's
Speaker 1: been a big success. And you're right that COVID and
Speaker 1: other things over time have harmed it, but the overall
Speaker 1: condition of the trade and of the growers and of
Speaker 1: the cava bars and all of that, it's gone way
Speaker 1: way up in very gratifying ways. And there's not un
Speaker 1: any problems of over harvesting or endangering access the ability
Speaker 1: of locals to get quality cova. There's the market would
Speaker 1: have to grow much more substantially before that was a concern.
Speaker 1: There is so much cava in the ground it's unimaginable,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, we're we're really talking many hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of tons um. You know that, because what
Speaker 1: happens ethan you pull a cava bush, okay, and so
Speaker 1: you're after the route and the lateral roots, but you
Speaker 1: pull up this bush and it has maybe thirty five stocks,
Speaker 1: not one thirty five, and you cut each stock at
Speaker 1: an angle and you stab it into the ground, and
Speaker 1: that grows a cova plant. So at a certain point
Speaker 1: you can't even grow anymore, you know, because over hill
Speaker 1: and dale, as far as you can see, under every tree,
Speaker 1: and further and further and further and further, it's cava.
Speaker 1: So at this point in time, there is no concern
Speaker 1: about it being endangered, no concern about it being over harvested. Uh,
Speaker 1: no concern at all about any of that. So your
Speaker 1: prediction is that this is going to be a slow
Speaker 1: growth in the US and around the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: There's more and more people appreciate it, but ultimately inherently
Speaker 1: limited because of the smell and taste issues. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. But also think about it this way.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's say that we have all kinds of
Speaker 1: foods in our kitchen, right, you know, we have things
Speaker 1: that we eat every day, we have things on occasion,
Speaker 1: we have things that we eat every once in a while. Um,
Speaker 1: all of these plants, whether you're talking creatum, whether you're
Speaker 1: talking Salvia divinorum, whether you're talking cava, they're all part
Speaker 1: of this vast buffet of psychoactive plants, and some are
Speaker 1: just naturally more appealing to people than others and something
Speaker 1: that they want to turn to more often than they
Speaker 1: do with others. That's just the way it is with plants,
Speaker 1: with different items of clothing, with foods, with music, it's
Speaker 1: no different. Um Cava, you know, it will never be
Speaker 1: as big as alcohol. Cava will probably hold its sort
Speaker 1: of moderate place in society, and maybe we'll see the
Speaker 1: European bands eventually go away because they're fool harded, eat
Speaker 1: fool hardy and based on non reality. Um but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be huge huge. I think
Speaker 1: it's just part of the psychoactive buffet. Just as you know.
Speaker 1: I used to direct my students in class to go
Speaker 1: to this particular place that made hot chocolate, and I
Speaker 1: would say to them, I don't care what hot chocolate
Speaker 1: you've had in life, I don't care where you've been.
Speaker 1: Go to this place, drink a cup of it, come
Speaker 1: back and tell us about it. And they would all
Speaker 1: come back and go, WHOA man. I was high for
Speaker 1: hours on that, and this place just had a particular
Speaker 1: way of doing it so that it was as concentrated
Speaker 1: a coco elevating experiences you could possibly have, um, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's something that people will go back to taste good,
Speaker 1: really amazing, love the effect, you know, all of that.
Speaker 1: People are going to reach for that more than they're
Speaker 1: going to reach for cava for sure. So Chris, just
Speaker 1: to finish up here, I mean, you've spent many decades
Speaker 1: being a quote unquote medicine hunter, traveling the world, you know, finding, discovering, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, figuring out whether these things could be brought
Speaker 1: to broader markets. So what are the other ones in
Speaker 1: your decades of travel and investigation that you're most excited
Speaker 1: about and why? And I really you could go on
Speaker 1: for hours about this, but if you had to give
Speaker 1: me the highlights, what would you say? I would say
Speaker 1: that my involvement with Maka, which is a highly nutritious,
Speaker 1: stamina promoting route in the Andes, which I started working
Speaker 1: on in ninety eight. Um, that's been a very big,
Speaker 1: deep involvement that I have loved tremendously. And the kava
Speaker 1: market didn't exist before my friends and I got involved,
Speaker 1: and now cove is everywhere around the world. I mean, Marca,
Speaker 1: excuse me, Um, Rodeo la Rosa, which I've investigated in
Speaker 1: the central south of Siberia and the Shinjong region of China,
Speaker 1: is just remarkable for its overall health and vitality promoting properties.
Speaker 1: And I've worked with that extensively for years, and that's
Speaker 1: an involvement. I'm very proud of um Oshawa Ganda, which
Speaker 1: is also a vitality enhancing route from India and a
Speaker 1: key part of the ira Vedic tradition over there. I
Speaker 1: work with that to this day. I work with commit
Speaker 1: commercial entities with Ashwaganda to this day, and and and
Speaker 1: other things like coffee, which I've investigated around the world,
Speaker 1: coco or that is cacao, the source of chocolate um
Speaker 1: and you know Amazonian plants. I mean, I've gone very
Speaker 1: very far and deep with the ingredients of ayahuasca, so
Speaker 1: both the vine that's used to make it and also
Speaker 1: the leaf and my Peruvian team and I did the
Speaker 1: only real legitimate survey on ayahuasca that's ever been done.
Speaker 1: Took us two years to do it. These have been
Speaker 1: some of the major plants. But you know, I've been
Speaker 1: fortunate to research rosemary and time and hawthorne and olive
Speaker 1: leaf in Morocco, and um, you know, work all over
Speaker 1: Africa and the Middle East. You know, in Malaysia, I've
Speaker 1: worked with tonkat Ali, which is a humongous plant over
Speaker 1: there that almost nobody over here even knows. And many
Speaker 1: Thai plants in Thailand. Um, you know, the plants call
Speaker 1: to me and I get to go work with them,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I get to make a real and profound
Speaker 1: difference in the livelihoods and the and the fortunes of
Speaker 1: other people. And I love that. That's you know, that's
Speaker 1: the greatest reward reward I could possibly ask for. Well, Chris,
Speaker 1: on that note, I mean, god, I've loved this conversation
Speaker 1: with I've learned a hell of a lot, and I
Speaker 1: think our listeners must have as well. So listen, thank
Speaker 1: you ever so much for joining me and my listeners
Speaker 1: on Psychoactive. Well, thank you Ethan Yet you ask great
Speaker 1: questions and I've enjoyed the time immensely. I'm glad we
Speaker 1: finally connected after sort of kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: rubbing or us at different conferences over time. It was
Speaker 1: nice to make a more of a real connection in
Speaker 1: New York, and I wish you continued success with this
Speaker 1: and to all of your listeners. Thanks for tuning in. Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell
Speaker 1: your friends about it, or you can write us a
Speaker 1: review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: We love to hear from our listeners. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to share your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave
Speaker 1: us a message at one eight three three seven seven
Speaker 1: nine sixty that's eight three three psycho zero, or you
Speaker 1: can email us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com or
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You can
Speaker 1: also find contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's
Speaker 1: hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Noam Osband
Speaker 1: and Josh Stain. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozoma Pictures, Alex Williams
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick from my Heart Radio and me Ethan Edelman.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Blucien and a special thanks
Speaker 1: to a Brio s f Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep.
Speaker 1: Next week I'll be talking with Dr Gabor Matte, the
Speaker 1: Hungarian Canadian physician from Vancouver who's influenced millions of people
Speaker 1: with his writing about addiction, trauma, pain, and the power
Speaker 1: of healing. I've always argued that addictions are rooted in trauma,
Speaker 1: and the reason the book is subtitled traum Ileus and
Speaker 1: Healing in a Toxic Culture is because the very conditions
Speaker 1: of life in modern day global it's corporate capitalist society
Speaker 1: actually traumatized people. Um they hurt people, they wound people,
Speaker 1: and that diseases of mind and body in this environment
Speaker 1: are not abnormal, they're normal responses to what is an
Speaker 1: abnormal culture. Subscribe to Psycoactive now see it, don't miss it.