Drink is normally followed by a hot meal or tea. The meal traditionally follows some time after the drink so that the psychoactives are absorbed into the bloodstream quicker. Traditionally no flavoring is added. In Papua New Guinea, the locals in Madang province refer to their kava kava as "waild koniak" ("wild cognac" in English).

Fijians commonly share a drink called grog made by pounding sun-dried kava kava root into a fine powder, straining and mixing it with cold water. Traditionally, grog is drunk from the shorn half-shell of a coconut, called a bilo. Grog is very popular in Fiji, especially among young men, and kava kava often brings people together for storytelling and socializing. Drinking grog for a few hours brings a numbing and relaxing effect to the drinker, grog also numbs the tongue and it is typical that grog drinking be followed by a "chaser" or sweet or spicy snack to follow a bilo.

Read more: In Vanuatu, strong kava kava  (web crawlers)