The Karma House

The Karma House sits on Garrison Street in Lakewood, immediately west of Denver, and it is structured unusually for a bar: it is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with Nick Gnieski as founder and board president, Mollie Paige as treasurer and bar manager, and Deonna Lupola — a registered nurse — as secretary and director of events. It keeps genuinely long hours, 8am to 3am every day including holidays, which makes it one of the few places in the metro open when nothing else alcohol-free is. Freshly brewed kava is what it specialises in, and around that sits a long shelf of ready-to-drink alternatives: Leilo kava at $8, Kin Euphorics at $6, Hiyo at $5, Sir Inkwell's yerba maté at $6, Odyssey mushroom elixirs at $5, Rowdy Mermaid kombucha at $4 and its own Karma Water at $4.

This is an alcohol-free venue that is emphatically not substance-free, and it deserves credit for being clearer about that than most. Alongside kava it sells kratom in several forms — Mitra 9 seltzers at $8, each can carrying 20mg of kratom extract; White Rabbit at $8; Kiody sold by vein colour at $40; Krabot capsules at $35 — plus CBD soda at $5 with 20mg a can, CBD chocolate at $10, and chewables combining kratom extract, kava and blue lotus. What separates it from most venues in this category is that it publishes a dated Legal and Safety Policy rather than leaving customers to guess: kratom may only be sold to people 21 or over, valid government photo ID is required for every kratom purchase, the products are stored behind the counter, customers are told to avoid combining botanical beverages with alcohol or other intoxicating substances, and anyone pregnant, nursing or on medication is told to consult a healthcare professional. That is a real policy, and more than almost any comparable bar offers. What it stops short of is a quantified dosage table — there is no per-drink or per-day limit in grams, only the per-can potency printed on individual retail products. Colorado regulates rather than bans kratom: a 2022 act imposed labelling and a 21-plus rule from July 2024, and a further bill signed in May 2025 capped 7-hydroxymitragynine content and banned candy-like and vapeable kratom products.