KANNA
Sceletium tortuosum
Active ingredients: mesembrine, mesembrenone, mesembrenol
Kanna is the name given to the fermented roots and leaves of the South African bush Sceletium tortuosum once they have been dried and ground to powder.
The result is a traditional vision-inducing euphoriant that can be taken in various ways for a spectrum of effects. It is increasingly used in the West to improve mood and reduce anxiety.
Kanna has been used by pastoralists and hunter-gatherers for relaxation, promoting social bonding for well over 1,000 years, and warriors returning from battle, who took it to help dispel what we now call PTSD, typical after violent conflict.
Traditionally, dried Sceletium was chewed, and the saliva swallowed. It was also added to smoking mixtures with other psychoactive plants, like cannabis and possibly wild dagga (Leonotus leonurus) to generate the more ‘hallucinogenic’ effects attributed to Sceletium.
Kanna potentiates alcohol and cannabis, which means you need substantially less of these substances to get the same effect. It also combines well with other smokable herbs like damiana and blue lotus flowers - mixtures that can also be enjoyed in drinks.
The first known written account of the plant’s use was in 1662 by the Dutch explorer/trader Jan van Riebeeck. He started to barter with local tribes for it after finding out about its effects on stressed individuals and called it kougoed, or ‘stuff for chewing’.
Kanna can be purchased as a powder, used as a snuff, smoked or made into a tea. Snuffed or smoked, the effects come on rapidly (a couple of minutes) and last for an hour or two, creating a mild, MDMA-like euphoria (with less of the effusive outpouring of emotion!) that fades to an almost narcotic state of relaxation.
As a drink, Kanna is less effective, and more of the product is needed to reach the same effect as when it is smoked or sniffed. It should be drunk on an empty stomach to work, and the results tend to be less euphoric and more sedative, analgesic and narcotic. It might take longer before effects appear (sometimes up to 1.5 hours), and in general, the effects last quite long: up to 4 -5 hours after ingestion.
Kanna contains several alkaloids responsible for its spectrum of effects, mesembrine, mesembrenone and mesembrenol being the most significant. Kanna powder can be enhanced with a 10x extract of these alkaloids, and since this reduces the amount of plant material, we exclusively work with extracts in our drinks.
Several Kanna extracts commercially available differ in their general effects depending on which alkaloid is prominent. For example, mesembrine is a serotonin-uptake inhibitor (SRI) and is the main ingredient of the UC and UC2 extract. It is responsible for the sedative effects of Kanna.
Being a Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor, Kanna should not be combined with pharmaceutical (S)SRI’s or Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOI’s).
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