Kava Bars Changed My Life

Exploring the trendy South Florida sober sub-culture behind the traditional teas.

On any given day in South Beach, you can find me at a Kava bar. What once started as a sort of alternative evening out pop-in on days I chose not to drink, or on days I simply wanted to hide from the melee of binge-drunken badgering I’d get at my favorite South of Fifth watering holes, turned into my daily routine, and not by accident. Kava bars, on the surface, feel just like any other bars: there’s a curated ambience set through music and decoration, there are staff who man the bar and tables, there are girls and guys who look to meet people, and others who simply want to be at peace in their own thoughts, while willfully sharing their space with others.

Kava bars serve no alcohol, but rather two ancient Pacific Island teas. One is a called Kava, which tastes heavily earthy, numbs the mouth a bit, and creates a mild mind and body calm. The other is Kratom, which carries a bit more complexity to it that I’ll get into later. Kratom is an ancient tea meant to stimulate the mind and body, alleviate anxiety, and drive focus. Kratom is the main driver of sales at an South Florida Kava bar, but due to its growing negative stigma as dangerous and unregulated, never headlines the names or descriptions of any of the Kava bars. Combining Kava and Kratom creates a pleasant, calm-yet-focused effect, so the two naturally lend to each other.

The Kava Garden

My first experience with the teas themselves was at Purple Lotus, a pioneer Kava bar that once anchored the scene at South Pointe, and birthed (in my estimation) at least a dozen more copycat bars. They built the scene, but not for me personally. My breakthrough into the Kava bar scene came slowly, and almost exclusively due to a wonderful tea house called The Kava Garden. I started popping into this place in 2022 when they first opened. It was a novelty to me and my friend group at the time.

My friend Hanna would take me there after long, sweaty walks, and we’d grab carved coconut shells full of the Kava/Kratom (“KG” as they call it) mix before getting into our underwear and poaching the hotel pool and hot tub the business (kind of) shared with the hotel they rented space from. Inside felt like a combination between a trendy California coffee shop and what I can only describe as the waiting room at a yoga studio. The outside is what defined the namesake: a garden-like patio with lush Miami flora draping over small steel tables and larger home-type outdoor furniture.

I would go about once a week, first with Hanna, then with random people around the neighborhood who I wanted to show a new side of SoFi socializing that didn’t include Ted’s, or Scapegoat, or doing dumb shit with me during demon hours on my porch. I spent a lot of time there with Danni, diving deeper into conversations we’d never get to in our normal booze-filled setting with our group of friends. I’d take visiting guests there who were in town even for just one day. The owners, Bill and Stephanie, were always so gracious, so appreciative, and so supportive. It felt like the antithesis of a dive bar, and I loved that balance, even when dive bars were my primary source of escape.

Finding a Home at Euphoria, the Pirate Ship…

The Kava bar scene exploded between 2023-2025 with new bars popping up all over Miami Beach and the mainland. One of these new bars opened in the building right in front of my mine in early 2025, challenging the local dominance of Kava Garden. At first I was skeptical. I was just a few months into sobriety and felt a sort of loyalty to Kava Garden. They had been there before sobriety, and in the early months of this sober year had been my daily go-to for teas, hang outs with friends, local gossip with Stephen, mind-bending metaphysical convos with Bill, and sometimes even quiet contemplation. But there was a catch.

Euphoria was going to be staffed, managed, and styled by Bubba (Justin), one of my favorite local characters and a former Kava Garden employee who himself was often a draw worthy of a visit. I popped in on their first week open, gave Bubba a big hug, heard he was hiring all the misfit toys who left Kava Garden, and heard about his vision for the space. It took less than a week for me to become hooked. The teas were stronger and cheaper, served out of plastic cups with straws. The customers were somewhat the same, yet filtered through some noticeable differences. I was more than just sold. I was furiously curious for more.

Euphoria is everything Kava Garden isn’t, and in the best way. It’s open late, often until near sunrise, and styled like the basement of an overpriced college dorm at a Liberal Arts school. There’s a folding pool table, TVs streaming whatever the mood calls for, small tables and comfy chairs for working or private chats inside, and bigger sprawling love seats with coffee tables outside on the lengthy-but-slim patio. If Kava bars and booze bars were to be compared at a stereotype level, Euphoria would be that dive that’s taken care of with love by its customers. It’s the spot you subconsciously see as your living room. It’s where you go to check-in, to find a plan when you have no plans.

Kava Bars are About People and Community More than the Teas

Most people who frequent Kava bars have a few things in common. For starters, they typically either don’t drink alcohol, drink sparingly, or are recovering addicts from drinking and/or harder drugs. This automatically adds to the dynamic of the conversations, the energy, and the atmosphere of these places. Another commonality is health and wellness, and spirituality. Though it can be somewhat exhausting to hear your tenth lecture of the week about protein macros, astrological accountability, crystal healing, and 50 flavors of non-solicited diatribes about “mindfulness”, there’s also a warming charm to it.

The Kava bar draws in people who are intentionally self-reflective, and looking to face their problems rather than running from them. This, to me, is what makes them beautiful, and a beautiful alternative to bars that sell liquor. At a booze bar, happiness is often a thinly-veiled veneer. You need to look through the pain and sadness to find authentic joy in people. At the Kava bar, you need to look through the authentic joy to find sadness, and this is both encouraging and humbling to a recovering drunk like me. The woo woo stuff is relatively harmless when compared to the beer-flavored belligerency, unbridled emotions, and self-harm of the local dives.

Like any regulars at any bar, the Kava bars have some incredible characters, particularly at Euphoria. There are the quiet observers, pensively sipping tea to get the courage to talk. There are the extraverts who sing into impromptu karaoke mics at 3AM and talk to everyone who will listen. There are the fitness bros and girls, who talk in Joe Rogan clips or coaching affirmations drenched in post-Pilates clarity. There are the Slavic women who pierce you with their calm demeanor and subtle, stoic beauty. There are young people and people of middle age, mingling, talking, laughing, flirting, dancing, and passing the time peacefully.

Euphoria is where you can disconnect from whatever you have going on in life and re-connect through shared, indistinguishable, collective vibrancies. I don’t miss drinking or the life I crash landed due to years of all of the ancillary risks and pain of self-harm and over-consumption. I don’t miss the good parts that kept me drinking and drugging so long either. Not because they weren’t fun, weren’t growth, weren’t good. But rather because I’ve replaced that joy of camaraderie and experience with the community I’ve adopted through Kava bars.

In the ebb and flow of Miami nights, the Kava bar became more than a ritual—it became home. I didn’t seek to run from anything; I only sought something different. Here I found conversations unburdened by slurred words or clinking bottles, a space where the soul is invited to rest. The teas could be part of the reason I walk in, but the people are the biggest reason I stay. In this quiet resistance against chaos, I’ve traded the predictable wreckage of past nights for unfolding presence, tethered not to a drink or an escape, but to this unexpected sanctuary of belonging.