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I'm glad it worked for you but I'd be hesitant to recommend it to people with substance abuse issues. It's also anecdotal on my end but when kratom first starte

I'm glad it worked for you but I'd be hesitant to recommend it to people with substance abuse issues. It's also anecdotal on my end but when kratom first started taking off and getting big I knew more than one person who switched from drinking/smoking to taking kratom recreationally before getting addicted to it and having to go through opiate like withdrawals, and another person who got addicted to it and graduated to harder opiates after a few months. I don't think they would have ever gotten addicted to heroin otherwise, too far out of their comfort zone to just jump into, but the lack of stigma around kratom and way it was marketed online gave them a taste for it and made it easier for them to take a more lax approach to opiates in their own mind. It's like recommending someone take morphine or codeine to cure themselves of alcohol addiction.

pstuart 3y ago
I noted there were caveats. I also know that others have used it with similar success. My brother got addicted to heroin when previously he had only used alcohol and cannabis (it killed him). My mother drank herself to death. How about those for counter anectdata? Most brain altering chemicals come with risk. Doctor prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depressants have long lists of warnings (including death). Your last line is disingenuous -- there's a significant difference. And let's go back to alcohol, the socially accepted and celebrated form of "taking the edge off" https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html#:~:text=Excessive%20alcohol%20use%20was%20responsible%20for%20about,the%20CDC's%20Alcohol%2DRelated%20Disease%20Impact%20(ARDI)%20application https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death.... https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-related-emergencies-and-deaths-united-states https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to... So 178,000 deaths from excessive alcohol abuse per year in the US. Yes, everything is fine.
- ultimafan 3y ago
  I'm not claiming alcohol is (physically) less dangerous than kratom. I'm well aware of how damaging alcohol is despite its prevalence. Brain altering chemicals do come with a risk but there's a big difference between being prescribed a drug by a doctor and deciding to use it yourself without supervision. You mentioned in another post of yours that you ended up abusing kratom as well, that's where the "risk tolerance" you railed against another poster for bringing up comes in. I'm very glad it worked out for you, I just said that I personally would not recommend replacing one substance with potential abuse for another as a means to quit, because I personally think it can have adverse effects in sidetracking people into harder drugs (and new addictions). I don't think comparing and opiate to an opioid is disingenuous at all. Kratom may be "safer" than morphine or codeine at first glance but it produces comparable effects, induces a comparable addiction, and we also don't have the thousands of years of feedback through history of people taking it the way they take it now to compare to like we do with alcohol or traditional opiates. The full safety profile just isn't there yet. For example, it's wasn't unheard of for people to develop issues with their liver, or other physical problems after months/years of use though it's not very clear to me if it's from the kratom alkaloids themselves or that some of the early suppliers had issues with heavy metals / pesticides in their crops. And that's not something we tended to see recently or historically with traditional opiates being used by long time patients in moderate doses, but it pops up in kratom after just a few years of it blowing up and becoming more commonly used at recreational doses.

pstuart 3y ago

I noted there were caveats. I also know that others have used it with similar success. My brother got addicted to heroin when previously he had only used alcohol and cannabis (it killed him). My mother drank herself to death. How about those for counter anectdata? Most brain altering chemicals come with risk. Doctor prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depressants have long lists of warnings (including death). Your last line is disingenuous -- there's a significant difference. And let's go back to alcohol, the socially accepted and celebrated form of "taking the edge off" https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html#:~:text=Excessive%20alcohol%20use%20was%20responsible%20for%20about,the%20CDC's%20Alcohol%2DRelated%20Disease%20Impact%20(ARDI)%20application https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death.... https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-topics/alcohol-facts-and-statistics/alcohol-related-emergencies-and-deaths-united-states https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to... So 178,000 deaths from excessive alcohol abuse per year in the US. Yes, everything is fine.

ultimafan 3y ago
I'm not claiming alcohol is (physically) less dangerous than kratom. I'm well aware of how damaging alcohol is despite its prevalence. Brain altering chemicals do come with a risk but there's a big difference between being prescribed a drug by a doctor and deciding to use it yourself without supervision. You mentioned in another post of yours that you ended up abusing kratom as well, that's where the "risk tolerance" you railed against another poster for bringing up comes in. I'm very glad it worked out for you, I just said that I personally would not recommend replacing one substance with potential abuse for another as a means to quit, because I personally think it can have adverse effects in sidetracking people into harder drugs (and new addictions). I don't think comparing and opiate to an opioid is disingenuous at all. Kratom may be "safer" than morphine or codeine at first glance but it produces comparable effects, induces a comparable addiction, and we also don't have the thousands of years of feedback through history of people taking it the way they take it now to compare to like we do with alcohol or traditional opiates. The full safety profile just isn't there yet. For example, it's wasn't unheard of for people to develop issues with their liver, or other physical problems after months/years of use though it's not very clear to me if it's from the kratom alkaloids themselves or that some of the early suppliers had issues with heavy metals / pesticides in their crops. And that's not something we tended to see recently or historically with traditional opiates being used by long time patients in moderate doses, but it pops up in kratom after just a few years of it blowing up and becoming more commonly used at recreational doses.