The Karma Casa

The Karma Casa occupies 1821 Youngfield Street in the Applewood area of Golden, on the western edge of the Denver metro where the suburbs run up against the foothills, and it is open from 10am to 2am every single day. It states what it is for without hedging: a safe, alcohol-free space for work, arts, games and community building. That sentence describes a fairly specific kind of room — one that has to function as a laptop-friendly daytime space and as a genuine late-night social venue out of the same fit-out, and that is programmed around things to do rather than things to consume.

The west side of the metro has quietly become the centre of gravity for Colorado's kava scene. Within a few miles of here are Golden Kava Lounge on South Golden Road, KavaDen and Roots & Leaves' Peak Kava in Lakewood, and Roots & Leaves' Mile High Kava Bar up in Westminster — all alcohol-free, all trading late. The Karma Casa's particular contribution is the emphasis on arts and work: it is the one that reads most like a community centre that happens to serve kava, and its two daily happy hours, from 2pm to 4pm and again from 7pm to 9pm, are timed around the rhythms of people who are there for the afternoon rather than dropping in for one drink.

The drinks are kava, kratom and herbal teas. Kava, the venue's namesake, is the ground root of Piper methysticum, a South Pacific shrub; it is infused in water, contains no alcohol, tastes earthy and bitter, numbs the lips, and is mildly sedative rather than intoxicating in alcohol's sense. It has been drunk socially across Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and Samoa for roughly three thousand years, and it exhibits reverse tolerance — regular drinkers usually need less rather than more — so a first visit rewards taking it slowly across an hour or two.

The kratom on that list needs stating clearly rather than in passing, because the people most likely to use this directory are the people for whom the difference matters most. **Kratom is served here alongside kava.** It is the leaf of a Southeast Asian tree, Mitragyna speciosa, and its principal alkaloids act on the opioid receptors. Regular use produces tolerance and a real withdrawal syndrome; several US states prohibit it outright; and its concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine derivatives are the subject of active federal scheduling action. Kava has no equivalent dependence profile. A great many people come to kava bars specifically because they are looking for the social ritual without a substance that can get a grip on them. In this room, that means reading the menu headers and asking what is in the cup.