“ALCOHOL IS SO 2014. TRY KAVA,” suggests a sandwich board on Tenth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, in the East Village. Whether by design or not, this block has become a retro-futurist downtown cornucopia of health, wellness, and New Agey philosophy. It is home to, among other establishments, a lush and gaudy store that peddles healing crystals; the beloved Russian and Turkish baths; a store called the Molecule Project, which sells artisanal tap water squeezed of any impurity; and a place named Body Evolution, which boasts the “largest and most fully equipped GYROTONIC® studio in Manhattan.” And then there is Kavasutra, the block’s newest addition, specializing in drinks made from the root of a South Pacific-originated plant called kava. Designed like a real bar but booze-free, Kavasutra is a New York City experiment that asks its patrons to imagine the possibility of a cosmopolitan social life without alcohol.
This is an especially tall order. If you live in a city and are not a hermit, chances are your life necessitates a lot of drinking. Even if you are exceptionally self-disciplined and can limit yourself to one or two drinks, chances are you are still subjecting yourself to the risk of a hangover on a routine basis. Drinking is meant to be a ritualized opportunity to unwind, but it also produces the unintended stress of dealing with the side effects of booze. Unsurprisingly, alcohol has a profound and documented cumulative effect on work: a 2015 report from the C.D.C. estimated that drinking (and subsequent hangovers) created a drop in productivity that cost the U.S. economy ninety billion dollars in 2010.
In the midst of any socio-professional drinking session, you often find yourself completing some crude cost-benefit analysis: How many drinks can I consume tonight without functioning poorly tomorrow? How can I loosen up right now without sacrificing tomorrow’s daytime productivity? Kava bars—of which there are now two in New York City—exist, ostensibly, to hack this problem. Kava drinks, used for centuries in ceremonial contexts throughout the South Pacific, are created by grinding the root of the plant into a powder and mixing it with water. Kava is legal and unregulated, and can be ordered online in the form of pills, which makes it popular among curious thrill-seeking college kids and vape connoisseurs. Its advertised effects are about the same as a cocktail: kava is a sedative used to relieve anxiety and relax the muscles. But, unlike alcohol, kava allegedly doesn’t interfere with any cognitive abilities, and, if you hydrate properly, it won’t give you a hangover.
I visited Kavasutra on a recent Monday evening. The tiny, dimly lit bar, which can hold about twenty people, was packed despite the early hour. Patrons jockeyed for the attention of the lone bartender, who wore a T-shirt that said “RELAX.” A mix of reggae and contemporary pop played over the speakers, and a stomach-churning nature documentary (about insects) played on a giant TV behind the bar.
The bartender recommended that first-time kava drinkers (my friends and I) begin by ordering a bowl with a triple dose of kava. We obliged, and he instructed us to say “Bula!” (“good health”) and then chug the liquid as quickly as possible. The bartender went on to explain rather dubiously that kava drinkers experience “reverse tolerance”—meaning it requires a lot to experience kava’s effects the first few times. As your system gets good at processing kava, he told us, one needs less of it to achieve the same effects. “But don’t worry,” he assured us. “You can’t really get fucked up on kava.” (He also told us that people on kava tend to become really chatty.) All this information about how to consume a drink that was supposed to relieve anxiety began to make me feel a little anxious. And then there was the actual drink: a putrid liquid that resembled dirt mixed with milk. Chugging was absolutely necessary. After this initial round, we stuck to small kava shots, which were mixed with fruit flavors and much easier to digest.
Increasingly, it feels as though New York is attempting to reconcile its booze-hounding tendencies with its newfound, almost Los Angelesque obsession with health and wellness. If you’re so inclined, you can attend a 6 A.M. sober rave. You can take late-night candlelit yoga or go out dancing until the wee hours of the morning with a collective like the Clean Fun Network. “Drynuary” is now a word that can be uttered without giving anyone pause; sober happy hours and neighborhood juice crawls abound. There have never been so many healthful activities disguised as debauchery. Everywhere, it seems, New Yorkers are trying to have old-school fun by unconventional means. Kava is certainly part of this wave, and it seems to be successful. Kavasutra has a number of other bars in the U.S.—most of them in Florida—but in just a few months, the bartender informed me, the New York City location has outpaced all other locations in popularity.
I can see why someone would be drawn to the allure of kava. And, after downing a few kava drinks, I did experience some of its promised effects: I felt physically relaxed, a little numb. But I also felt a bit foggy, mentally, and nauseated because of the excess of foreign liquid I’d put in my body. I was just about to leave for dinner—where I’d be skipping drinks altogether—but the kava had caused me to lose my appetite. Later that night, I was still feeling somewhat murky, and I floated home wondering what part of the experience was mental and what the kava had actually made me feel. I slept well, and had some particularly strange dreams. I woke up feeling a little queasy and confused by what I’d experienced, but mostly normal. Had I sought health or vice? Had I done something good or bad for myself? I wished I had some indication—the slightest twinge of a hangover, maybe—to help me figure it out.
