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

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.