Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T13:59:46.111Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kava : A Challenge to Alcohol?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2015

J.E. Cawte
J.E. Cawte*
Affiliation:
Dept of Psychiatry, Prince Henry Hospital, Little Bay, NSW
Get access

Extract

Kava has been introduced into Aboriginal communities in Northern Australia. Persons from Yirrkala in North East Arnhem Land visiting the South Pacific region on study tours have been impressed by their welcome in Kava bowl ceremonies, and some of them hoped that the Aborigines might use Kava instead of alcohol.

In 1983 many Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land used Kava, and much more was used in 1984. By 1985 it became a social epidemic or ‘craze’ in many communities. Rings of people of both sexes and of all ages often sit together under trees around Kava bowls for many hours. They may drink up to a hundred times the amount normally drunk in the Pacific Islands by the same number of people in the same time.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , May 1987 , pp. 41 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boswell, Glenda, 1984: Personal communication. Health Centre, Galiwinku, Northern Territory.Google Scholar
Brown, Pascal, 1984: Kava in Samoa and Vanuatu. The Aboriginal Health Worker, 8:2, 11–15.Google Scholar
Buckley, J.P., Furgiuele, A.R., and O’Hara, M.J., 1979: Pharmacology of Kava. In Efron, D.H., Holmstedt, B., and Kline, N.S. (Eds): Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. New York, Raven Press.Google Scholar
Cawte, John, 1972: Cruel, Poor and Brutal Nations. The assessment of mental health in an Australian Aboriginal community by short-stay psychiatric field team methods. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Cawte, John, 1985: Psychoactive substances of the South Seas: Betel, Kava and Pituri. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 19:83–87.Google Scholar
Holmes, L.D., 1979: The Kava complex in Oceania. New Pacific, pp.30–33.Google Scholar
Klohs, M.W., 1979: Chemistry of Kava. In Efron, D.H., Holmstedt, B. and Kline, N.S., (Eds): Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. New York: Raven Press.Google Scholar
Nance, Rob, 1984: A comment on Kava. Drug and Alcohol Newsletter, Northern Territory Department of Health, October, p.9.Google Scholar
Pfeiffer, C.C., Murphree, H.B. and Goldstein, L., 1979: Effect of Kava in normal subjects and patients. In Efron, D.H., Holmstedt, B., and Kline, N.S. (Eds): Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs. New York: Raven Press.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, A.K., Scheline, R.R. and Solheim, E., 1979: Metabolism of some Kave pyrones in the rat. Xenobiotica, 9:1, 1–16.Google Scholar
Watson, David S., 1984: Transcultural medicine: a case of sorcery. The Lancet, 1: 1289-1290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar