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Kratom for Opioid maintenance

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C

Cactus Man

Rising Star
Word to the wise kratom is more practical for long term opioid maintenance than bupe or mdone for those who can hack it.

Reason being because it has the most vitamins, minerals and nutrients as well as having the shortest half life which causes it not to build up within the body being that it is constantly rapidly excreted.

I notice the claims of kratom being better than other opioids in general has been widely spread but little substantiated outside of first hand experience (by genuine scientific data).

Personally looking to see that change so people can have access to information about healthier and more natural alternatives to modern medicine (as backwards as it genuinely is).

Sadly though I have found over the years that many people who have long term high dose opioid abuse are unable to feel much relief from even 7-10g of kratom and are more or less forced onto the pharmaceutical roller coaster when trying to get off buying sh*t on the street. Also kratom does not block the receptors the way suboxone does which is also a major draw back for people who truly need that specific effect.

Hope all of you have a blessed new year, I pray kratom stays legal in it.
 
Kratom is a step in the right direction if you came from harder opiates

Kratom is a great medicine, all things can be abused.

Kratom has some good reasons to be advocated for, but deserves serious warnings aswell..

I've heard the same thing about peoples tolerance being too high for it..
Can't say much about that personally. I got into kratom way after harder opiates(dont do those anymore)

Thanks for a mitragyna post​
 
I've used kratom to relieve heroin withdrawal, it takes away the worst symptoms. I've done tapers of bupe followed by kratom maintenance to kick a habit. Used it for a year plus as a replacement therapy. I think it is a very useful plant. Since I am now a methadone maintenance patient I have no need for it. Tried some recreationally a while back to no effect. I recommend it highly to others struggling with opiate addiction, especially before committing to bupe or methadone.
 
I know a couple, former H addicts, that have been very functional without relapse using kratom for many years. There's a possibility that kratom can have an additive effect with opioids in bringing a person to the OD theshhold though, so I would caution folks not to use it thinking that it's a harmless way to avoid temporary cravings when continuing to use opioids.
 
Word to the wise and rational:Fact is, it is an opiod, it creates dependence and ceasing use causes withdrawal symptoms. There are vitamins available from many sources, using the fact that kratom contains a little vitamin C as proof that it is innocuous or even useful is illogical.

Hate to have the unpopular opinion, but I believe that if one suffers from opiate addiction, and is unable or unwilling to engage in abstinence, that entering into a licensed MAT program with the benefit of access to professionals is a far better way to engage recovery and improve one's health and lifestyle than to simply engage in another expensive unregulated and unmonitored addiction.
 
Coja said:
I know a couple, former H addicts, that have been very functional without relapse using kratom for many years. There's a possibility that kratom can have an additive effect with opioids in bringing a person to the OD theshhold though, so I would caution folks not to use it thinking that it's a harmless way to avoid temporary cravings when continuing to use opioids.
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Using kratom in conjunction with other opiates/opioids is pharmacologically counterproductive due to the way the various chemicals "dont mesh" into the receptors, it has been hypothesized (and possibly even verified) that kratom alkaloids partially block off the receptors from other opiates/opioids which is why I have often felt a less pronounced effect after a shot of Heroin when I had taken some kratom earlier that same day.

I do not think it wise to combine kratom with any other opiates or opioids under any circumstances and recommend completely against it.

null24 said:
Word to the wise and rational:Fact is, it is an opiod, it creates dependence and ceasing use causes withdrawal symptoms. There are vitamins available from many sources, using the fact that kratom contains a little vitamin C as proof that it is innocuous or even useful is illogical.

Hate to have the unpopular opinion, but I believe that if one suffers from opiate addiction, and is unable or unwilling to engage in abstinence, that entering into a licensed MAT program with the benefit of access to professionals is a far better way to engage recovery and improve one's health and lifestyle than to simply engage in another expensive unregulated and unmonitored addiction.
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It is only logical as an alternative to other forms of opioid maintenance, not as a source of nutrients just for the sake of nutrients alone.

Also yes it is addictive just as all opioids can be, it does have physical withdrawal just as any opioid does, yet out of all the alternatives it is the most practical option when one is already in the face of severe opioid addiction (especially when such addiction is fueled by the completely unreasonable and dangerous products containing fentanyls that are sold common place on the street).

Kratom is an all round better alternative to suboxone or methadone and I can confirm that from a combination of personal experience and research, this information is being largely withheld from public discussion and I intend to change that.

The fight for Kratoms legality will be mostly centered around the value of its pharmacology when stacked up against what is currently available by modern medicine, in order to prove it deserves to be kept legal I believe it is a priority to show how it has properties of great value which any and all other pharmaceutical alternatives do not.
 
I think you missed my point. Using kratom may be a harm redux technique, but is not a recovery modality.

I don't understand how kratom's pharmacology renders it more effective relative to other currently available opiate medications. It does not have the same pain relief properties. As far as usefulness in a MAT agent, it's comparably (very) short half life when compared with currently useful things like methadone or buprenorphine mitigates it's usefulness in anything other than a patient controlled disorder regimen, which seems like a poor option for people already disposed to addiction.
 
Cactus Man said:
Kratom is an all round better alternative to suboxone or methadone and I can confirm that from a combination of personal experience and research...
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Really it depends upon the situation. How severe, how far along is the persons addiction? For someone trying to kick a vicodin or percocet habit, sure, I say kratom before resorting to pharmaceutical replacement. Even a small short term heroin habit. For long term addicts with over a decade in the spoon, methadone maintenance is the way to go. It holds you in ways kratom doesn't come close to.

I wish I would have gotten on methadone much earlier in my addiction. I could have saved myself years of pain and suffering. Also would have been nice if kratom was around when I first started using. There was nothing so readily available with which to deal with withdrawal. It was dope or be sick.
 
null24 said:
I think you missed my point. Using kratom may be a harm redux technique, but is not a recovery modality.

I don't understand how kratom's pharmacology renders it more effective relative to other currently available opiate medications. It does not have the same pain relief properties. As far as usefulness in a MAT agent, it's comparably (very) short half life when compared with currently useful things like methadone or buprenorphine mitigates it's usefulness in anything other than a patient controlled disorder regimen, which seems like a poor option for people already disposed to addiction.
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Your undeniably right, it is harm reduction, long term maintenance is not the same as completely trying to kick a habit, yet I would say kratom has every potential to be used under both situations.

In many ways it is better to have something that is not a full agonist as well as not having a long half life. Yet this also has its cons to it just as you described, its only practical for people who feel significant relief from it, which sadly many people do not.

It does not work out for all people but its potential to help people is tremendous, far beyond what is often thought to be the case.

The immune system boosting effects of kratom are also great specifically for people coming off harder opis, kratom has non-psychoactive constituents that are in no way found in isolated opioids/opiates or even in opium itself, which I believe plays a significant role in long term kratom users.

Being myself a long term addict who is regularly in the face of physical withdrawal, having experimented over the years with a wide variety of opis I can say for sure that Kratom gives me benefits I can not get from any alternative, I have also seen it do the same thing for other addicts.

I have also seen it be completely and utterly ineffective for addicts who feel no relief from it, thus under that auspice it is the LEAST desirable option for maintenance, but my ultimate conclusion is that if that person who does NOT feel relief goes and gets on a pharma they often may just end up being more "addicted" in the end.

I have often seen people who are shooting a small amount of dope get on 8-16mg of suboxone a day when they really only need about 2-4mg to feel full relief and thus after maintaining that obnoxiously high dosage for a month or a few months be unquestionably more physically addicted to opioids in general after the fact than they were when they shot a few bags of dope a day.

It sounds ridiculous but its actually somewhat common, because people arent very practical or realistic when telling people what dose of something like suboxone is appropriate for them.

In the past years I myself was put on an 8mg a day regiment when I could have felt full relief from half that, the whole thing seemed pretty counter productive to me and it especially raised a red flag when I looked into peoples of suboxone withdrawal vs heroin withdrawal.

Opioid maintenance is supposed to be about subsisting on a bare minimum, not on overloading your system with opi. Methadone addicts who are on high doses cant even feel a "normal" shot of H because they have had their tolerance raised too high by methadone, to me its insane that people on maintenance are having their addictions increased in this way, ive seen it set so many people up to fail.

I have seen too many people who are years deep into using 8-16mg suboxone think they are completely fine and out of the habit, only to realize that if they go 72 hours without a dose they will be in the worst withdrawal they can possibly imagine that will make the dope/pill withdrawal they used to have look like nothing...oh and its lasts like 3x as long...

Sadly most of this problem is really more of a dosage issue than the actual pharmacology of the compounds themselves but over the years I have concluded that doctors are usually in a bad habit of prescribing completely erroneous dosages when it comes to opioid maintenance.

Yet admittedly kratom can also set people up to fail in a different way, some people literally NEED to have the blocking effect of suboxone or methadone so they literally cant get high even if they want to, kratom does NOT provide that benefit which can be critical for many long term addicts.
 
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