My First Week Trying Kanna – Here’s What Happened

Here is my entry on the first time I took kanna and why taking this plant extract led me to creating a platform to try and help other people find it who can benefit from it. Kanna (Sceletium tortuosum) is a South African plant traditionally used for emotional healing, calm, and connection. (Read more here – what is kanna?)

Context

I’m a 33 year old male in good physical health. I was five weeks off SSRIs after eight years, struggling with panic attacks, heartbreak, and the kind of depression that makes even walking through a supermarket feel unbearable.

I couldn’t even fake a smile.
I felt broken, exhausted, and completely disconnected from life. I also felt guilty for being such a negative presence around my family.

I got home, sat on my bed and started to cry. ‘Feel it to heal it’ right? Trouble is when you are feeling it for so many months…you start to feel defeated.

And then, a small package arrived. I didn’t expect it to arrive until Monday, but it arrived on a Saturday.

Inside was kanna – a plant I’d heard about on the Huberman Lab Podcast when I was trying to make sense of my depression with neuroscience. I didn’t expect much from it. But it arrived on the exact day I hit emotional rock bottom.

First Try of Kanna

I took 25mg of kanna plant extract orally. I then had a glass of water. I hadn’t eaten anything yet that day.

No expectations. As I had been trying other supplements such as CBD, magnesium, ashwagandha, that all had helped a little bit, but I was still stuck in a diminishing mental loop.

And within half an hour, I started to feel something. I took some notes on how I felt on kanna:

‘I feel like it feels good when I brush my feet on the carpet. I feel a slight numbness in my face. I feel a soft glow in the room. A contentedness with nothing. When I think of her (my ex), I feel the pain, however, things do feel more neutral. I feel less desperate to contact her.’

I no longer felt as if I was about to lose all hope. I felt capable of having positive energy. The first thing I did was go down to see my family to show them that I was smiling and had energy – to try and erase their worries about the person I was at the supermarket.

My intrusive thoughts started to slow down.

The voice in my head – the one that kept saying “there’s no point, you’re worthless”—was still there, but quieter.
I didn’t feel amazing. But I felt space.

Enough space to breathe. Enough space to not be immediately diminished by my thoughts.

The next day

I was still waking up feeling low, with a lack of interest in anything. However after a 25mg scoop of kanna, I found myself taking interest in reading again. I could remove my mind from diminishing thoughts and focus on improving my future.

I felt a slight euphoria…but I also could feel when the effects were wearing off. I was taking half of the recommended dose on my tub of BioExtracts Classic Sceletium. Recommended dose = 3 full 50mg scoops, 3 times per day.

I decided to go away for a week in a caravan with a friend for a change of scenery.

One week later

After a full week of taking kanna and upping my dose to the full dose each day of 150mg. I came back from my trip with a much better perspective. I had even created this website (after previously not being able to even think about doing anything productive for weeks).

I discovered that kanna is not a miracle cure, but it really helped me break the negative cycle I was in. The real shift comes with what you do once kanna breaks the negative loop.

I built new habits such as doing yoga nidra to reset my nervous system each day. I also had more motivation to exercise and meditate and engage in conversation with my friend.

A week previous I was an absolute shell of a man who couldn’t summon the energy for any of these habits.

Final Thoughts

I knew from my first taste of kanna (as bitter as it was) that it was going to help. I felt the immediate transition and helped me to get to the place I am now.

I am creating again and wanted to use the resurgence of my creativity to write this post and make this website so that people in a similar situation to me may find kanna. And I hope it can help you break out of your negative pattern just like how it helped me.