I've tried Chameleon and Valyrian root tea blends before thinking they might make good sleep aids, but I've never had any luck with them. A lot people say they find those very relaxing, but I wasn't even catching a placebo effect.
So for a while I just assumed all this herbal tea bullshit I see in stores and pharmacies must be just a step above homeopathic products. They're probably pretty good if you like the taste of the herbal blends and find sipping a warm beverage relaxing in itself, but otherwise a waste of time. Clearly if they really worked they wouldn't be sold in large supermarket chains. Instead they'd be relegated to the weird, near grey market status that Kratom seems to exist in, right?
Today at the store I just happened to notice something very alarming. A box of Kava blend tea was the absolute one and only herbal tea variety on the shelf to include a warning asking you to consult your doctor before use, and stating that minors and pregnant women should not consume this product.
Well, that warning instantaneously lit up the junkie addict center of my brain like a Christmas tree, and I impulse bought two boxes. This might have major negative health consequences? Wow, must be the fucking good stuff. I got home and brewed six of them into a single mug of tea, and yep, this shit is psychoactive all right. Subtle, but definitely not placebo subtle. It quite honestly feels similar to a moderate dose of Gabapentin, and it's making me sleepy.
I sure wish I knew this before I most likely took 15 years off the lifespan of my kidneys by using 200mg of Diphenhydramine every night for years just to have a fighting chance at falling asleep more often than every two days.
I have fond memories of drinking myself halfway into a stupor with kava in my younger days which was no mean feat. I'm very keen on the stuff.
Just make sure that you take a few days break every week if you're consuming it regularly. Chronic consumers of kava can develop a (reversible) skin condition but you'd need to be drinking it like you're living on a Pacific island before that's likely to happen.
It's been a while since I've dug into the literature on kava but the risk of liver damage is completely overblown - it may cause an elevation in particular liver enzymes, especially with heavy or chronic consumption but there hasn't been any actual links to liver damage. In countries where kava consumption is commonplace, they tend not to consume the root whole but instead drink the extract from the root using water and so there's some hypotheses that consuming the root whole rather than just the extract may cause elevated liver enzymes and potentially lead to liver damage so if you're going to make it a regular thing then I'd veer on the safer side and make an extract the way that it's traditionally done rather than taking capsules of whole powdered root or something similar like that.
But, all in all, in regards to safety if you're consuming it occasionally for recreational purposes the risk is very minimal. We're talking like less risk than smoking cannabis here.