They call the skin problems derma if I remember right and if you just put some lotion on and lay off the kava they go away. I used to drink loads of kava and never had any withdrawal from it. It's a very strange and unique substance. The high from kava can be intense and extremely enjoyable, I've talked about this on here before but I've had experiences with kava where after drinking a strong shell I would get a rush so intense that I remember thinking "this is more enjoyable than IV heroin". However, kava is much less consistent than IV heroin. Sometimes you can drink the same amount of the same kava and the euphoria just never arrives.
yeah, in my opinion kava is so unique
comparisions with alcohol or cannabis are not good, it seems a bit like both of them to an extent because they share some mechanism in a way and kavalactones/weed/alcohol are all "dirty drugs" in terms of receptor affinity (a lot of different effects) but..... it feels much cleaner than both (I hate alcohol and weed feels like shit for me since 2015, being a chronic user before..)
Kava high can get pretty pretty intense, more than kratom for me, once I developed tolerance and the honeymoon phase was over. Now I get floored by kava very easily, to the point that after my 4th shell I tend to get zombified without any will to do anything and I need to lay down and do something passive, like listening to music, I guess I'm so sensitive to GABA drugs, but the same feeling with beers or wine is not even fun in any way.
I don't know why it's so inconsistent, if it wasn't and the flavour was a bit better this would be much more popular than alcohol, but sometimes I feel that people like to feel "fucked up", like, they want to blackout and things like that, because for non-spiritual drug users being fucked up= being under the influence of a drug.
I think that's the same reason why people would prefer mdma to 6-apb, 3-fea or 3-mmc that in my opinion are superior substances compared with mdma.