{"id":13709,"date":"2020-02-05T06:36:21","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T21:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/feb\/05\/the-great-kava-boom-how-fijis-beloved-psychoactive-brew-is-going-global"},"modified":"2020-02-05T06:36:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T21:36:21","slug":"the-great-kava-boom-how-fijis-beloved-psychoactive-brew-is-going-global","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=13709","title":{"rendered":"The great kava boom: how Fiji&#8217;s beloved psychoactive brew is going global"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From trendy bars in New York, to anti-anxiety pills sold in Australia and New Zealand, the powdered root is taking off<\/p>\n<p>On a Friday night in Suva, the capital of Fiji, the Kava Bure is filling up. Groups of people have started arriving to meet friends for a post-work basin or three of kava, a drink made from the root of the piper methysticum tree.<\/p>\n<p>The bar, which is out in the open air with wooden tables surrounded by bamboo fencing, sells $5 or $10 bags of powdered kava. These are mixed in a plastic basin by an elderly Fijian man, who asks patrons if they would like the mix \u201csosoko\u201d \u2013 strong \u2013 or \u201cjust right\u201d, before giving them the basin and coconut shell bowls for drinking.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/feb\/05\/the-great-kava-boom-how-fijis-beloved-psychoactive-brew-is-going-global\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From trendy bars in New York, to anti-anxiety pills sold in Australia and New Zealand, the powdered root is taking offOn a Friday night in Suva, the capital of Fiji, the Kava Bure is filling up. Groups of people have started arriving to meet friends fo&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":928,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,436,874,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-fiji","category-pacific-islands","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/928"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13711,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13709\/revisions\/13711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}