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Using kratom to treat opiate addiction: an op-ed for experience reports

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Godsmacker

Godsmacker

Rising Star
I am currently crafting a research paper concerning the use of M. Speciosa as a safer means of opioid maintenance therapy, and am searching for case reports from those who have, may and/or are presently using kratom as a means of maintenance therapy to keep the PAWS & cravings away. If anyone here is currently using this plant for said purpose, I would compel you to please send me a PM regarding your history with opiate abuse/use, what it has cost you, how kratom has helped you quit the harder stuff (e.g. heroin, oxycodone, etc.) & how the subjective effects and PAWS from kratom compare to other opiates in general. The driving force/hypothesis behind my thesis is that kratom is much much much safer than any other opiate-ergic on the market (FFS IT DOESN'T INDUCE NEARLY AS MUCH RESPIRATORY DEPRESSION AS THE OTHERS!!!!!!!!!!), produces a shorter and less intense period of PAWS upon cessation of use (a la cold turkey) due to its monstrous volume of distribution and fairly long terminal half-life (mitragynine) and would thus be a far better alternative than methadone and/or buprenorphine as a means for opiate maintenance therapy. Any and all aspects of your experience with using Kratom for this purpose (e.g. strain, dosage regimen, taper schedule, subjective comparison to the effects of other opiates & how Kratom's PAWS differs from that of other opiates' PAWS, etc.) would be greatly appreciated and would be invaluable sources of information to back up the thesis argument of my research paper. If this request applies to you and/or a close one & you feel comfortable with sharing your story (please note that all personal identifying information would not be included in the paper and kept anonymous and private under HIPAA guidelines), please don't hesitate to send a PM my way. The world of scientific literature is starving for more information concerning this issue; your contribution towards my research may play a crucial role in keeping kratom legal.

Thanks,
-Godsmacker
 
BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP

Still looking for case reports; as stated above, it still rings true below: your identity will be kept completely anonymous in compliance with HIPAA privacy policy; I am looking for well-written accounts of people using kratom to combat hardcore opiate addiction, as well as a detailed narration of their relationship with these substances, how they found out about kratom, how/if it worked out with them, a detailed comparison of kratom effects & PAWS compared to PAWS from other opiates (PLEASE elaborate as much as you can about this caveat of your experience as this is the centerfold of my research paper subject).

I thank you all again for your contributions towards my research; by sharing your stories with me, you may prove instrumental in the quest to keep kratom legal in the USA.

Thanks,
-Godsmacker
 
Hey, I used kratom to quit Suboxone maintenance therapy around March 2016, and used kratom until August 2016 as maintenance therapy to control severe opioid WD from about 1.3 years of buprenorphine use. I also was on Suboxone from 7/2007-11/2012. I tapered off Suboxone without kratom that time and it was extremely difficult but I was in a better place and mentally stronger. I was always in control of the kratom usage for the most part. I would use large amounts ~20g of kratom (red vein maeng da) a day initially while rapidly tapering off Suboxone from 1mg. I would also rapidly reduce my kratom dose in between Suboxone drops and raise it to 20g a day when I would make a new Suboxone drop. It worked very well, considering at this time I had no will power to taper Suboxone despite desperately wanting to quit. I just didn't have it in me at this time to taper Suboxone without the help of kratom because I was poly drugging and had issues. I dropped to 0.25mg of Suboxone in about 4 weeks, with kratom and quit Suboxone completely and started taking about 20-30g of kratom a day for about a week. I then gradually over 4 weeks, reduced my kratom dose to 10g a day and maintained like this for months. I never had severe WD from kratom and was actually forced to quit it cold turkey after being hospitalized....I'll get to that...but the kratom WD was a walk in the park compared to poppy derived opiates.

This recent stint on Suboxone, I've been using benzodiazepines as well and other GABAergic drugs... and various other RC's and nootropics. I quit phenibut in 7/2016.I see an addictionogist now who helped me quite a bit. I was hospitalized at a psychiatric hospital in July of this year as well, the day I quit phenibut. I tapered phenibut a 100mg a day from 3g and switched to baclofen. I was at a group (intensive outpatient) meeting and I was extremely agitated and people were scared of my behavior.

I said I just quit phenibut (~1.3g) and started baclofen and recently switched from clonazepam to Librium and I'm not feeling well after they started asking questions and made me leave the room and put me in this other room. I only took 10mg of baclofen that day because I take 10mg, 3 times daily and it was 11am. I should of took more before I went to group that day because I didn't realize how agitated I would become as the baclofen wore off during the 3 hour meeting. I got in a trivial argument with my father before I went to group that day. That didn't help.
Next thing I know, there are 5 police officers there and they take me to the ER and then send me to a hell hole psych hospital called Hartgrove in Chicago. Weekends and holidays don't count as days served there so they can bill your insurance more. You are encouraged to sign a "5 day discharge notice" when you are there by other patients or they can keep you there as long as they want.
Some of these people were really disturbed and they gave me a hard time. My room mate had night terrors and woke me up all the time and some of the black patients were very racist toward me because I was white and I'd get into yelling matches with this crazy woman. It was like 80% black and the rest were white and other races. I never realized how racist black people were until I went to Hartgrove.

At the same time I was tapering phenibut, 100mg a day, I switched from 2mg of Klonopin to 75mg of Librium, which was unbearable....I added 0.25mg of Xanax for 10 days before I felt safe enough to safely switch to Librium, 75mg a day. 25mg of Librium equals 0.5mg of Klonopin and Xanax according to the benzo equivalency chart in the Ashton Manual. Librium and Valium are prescribed to taper people off benzos. I asked for Valium but got Librium instead btw. According to the Ashton Manual for tapering off benzos Librium is basically the same deal as the Valium taper.

Anyways, I'm doing better. Some stuff happened after my mom died of lung cancer in 8/2014. I got hurt and needed pain killers. My injury also caused severe anxiety so I took benzos too. The pain went away but I started snorting heroin at this time...before I knew it I was on 4mg of Suboxone, 3mg of clonazepam, 3g of phenibut, and whatever else. I could use 20 substances a day sometimes. I even used DMT sometimes on all these substances. At my lowest point... I remember I was on all these drugs, and started taking tianeptine and was smoking DMT and staring at myself in the mirror. I probably took like 15 hits of DMT and it reacted much weaker or differently...maybe. I just couldn't stop looking myself in the mirror and smoking DMT because it felt really good and it was entertaining watching my face morph into infinity but I never experienced ego death. I just would compulsively take a hit of DMT every 10 minutes.

I haven't used DMT or any psychedelics since I quit for around 6 months. I'm on 50mg of Librium still and have to wrap up a miserable benzo taper within 10 weeks hopefully. I still take baclofen. And I take gabapentin. I use a low dose of memantine still. It helps for opiate and benzo issues. I take around 4 drops a day, which is around 2-3mg. I'm not sure if I should quit memantine or not because I've been taking it for almost 8 months.

Sorry for hijacking the thread but I felt like sharing today.

Kratom is a miracle substance for opiate addicts though. I couldn't of quit Suboxone without it this time. I also had no issues quitting kratom and have no desire to use it again. Since they are banning it I just need to make sure I never use opiates again. I quit kratom because I didn't want to use it anymore and I wanted to get away from opiates and opiate agonists. Kratom is mildly addictive and has the potential for misuse. The WD's can be unpleasant if you quit at a high dose. It was bearable though, quitting at 10mg cold turkey when they sent my to the psych hospital. The first 2 days I felt a real cerebral mental foggy feeling, along with fatigue. I was more worried about being in a psych hospital than my kratom WD. I started using kratom again when I got out of the hospital because I was really messed up after they let me out and needed to feel better. I was in there for 8 days because it was the 4th of July weekend. I used stem and vein kratom at the end btw exclusively when I tapered off. I used mmmspeciosa kratom. Kratom interacts with DMT btw. It intensifies it.
 
Well am very positive with kratom. I did use it recreationally, and I was using opiates recreationnaly too.

Later I had episodes of opiomania. I must say, it helped for managing the withdrawls symptoms as well as a maintenance, kept cravings at bay. At times I would be using of having it whenever I feel like, I would have less relapse. When I didn't have it, the opiates are so tricky to trap you in slavery like state was hard.

I noticed, however it tend to help less if you keep relapsing and using kratom to quit.
But all this started by hospital, they shoot me morphine in the spine ( yes, the spine, like we do for birthing women ), then was treated with codein for post operation pain management. At the time, I was a fairly big cannabis smoker, like psilos, but thought to stay away form most drugs.

But being seen as drug addicts for smoking spliff, being introduced in a controlled setting, with fairly good product ( well hospital morphine and codein ), I liked the effect enough to be wanting to give a try.
I did introduce a few local peers here to kratom, many with chronic pain, or opiates abuse issues. They all found it useful.
It's been ten years I used it on and off. And I don't find it particularly toxic, or draining in the long run even. If I have none I feel fine too. I haven't find it is hardest than coffee or canabis to quit suddenly. But as with many psychological pleasure, it all depends where you are and what you project on it.
So best is to use it and tapper off if possible. And for chronic pain or the like, alternate with different substances.

All in all, am fairly positive Kratom could be the next "cannabis medical" effect, meaning, if it were to become widely available in open market, as cannabis porduct starts to be, it has this huge potential to adress many isues. And in my opinion, the risk have been exagerated. But what we need more would be genuine research going on before it is made illegal.
 
Kratom saved me from IV heroin / pharmaceutical opiods. It made the withdrawal tolerable for the first week, after that I gradually lowered my daily kratom dosage. With no euphoria or rush, I didn't go on a binge in a haze like is part of the many pronged trap of full agonist opioids.

My quitting was possible also thanks to DMT which gave me better relief from cluster headache agony than opioids did.

I got to the point in about two months where I was forgetting to take my dose and realized that I didn't need it anymore and I stopped. I've been clean and opioid free for close to five years now.

After about six months clean, I did get the poison thoughts... What if I did it once, to feel the rush again... but just once... This of course is a huge trap, relapse is certain, addictions start where they left off. I made the right decision to not give in to temptation, but the gnawing urge was back.

I took a DMT trip instead where it had me really grok the reality of the situation. The ugliness of opiate addiction. I saw fully the reality that opiods as a soggy and disgusting, rotting blanket that had me clenching it more tightly around me to keep warm, but it only made me colder.

After about a year clean I had the worst times in my life with my Father passing away then only a few months later my Boyfriend if 15 years passed away. I was crushed, I didn't want to live, but I never considered going back to opiates.

I feel confident that I'll live the rest of my life free of opiates, at least self-administered ones. I'm still piecing my life back together, with the help of therapy, support of friends, and any progress would be impossible under the addition trap.

I was saddened by the news of the scheduling of kratom in a country with ibogaine is schedule 1, only methadone and suboxone are left for treatment. Withdrawal from opiates is something that the human imagination isn't capable of without experience, it's so much worse than what you'd think if you never have gone through it.

Suboxone and methadone aren't a viable option for many for a few reasons. A friend of mine died from heroin while on a waiting list, still six months away from being able to get suboxone treatment.

What I've read on the subject indicates that suboxone and methadone taper can lead to the extension of years of post acute withdrawal symptom, which sucks the joy out of life, and makes sufferers especially vulnerable to relapse.
 
Mustelid said:
Kratom saved me from IV heroin / pharmaceutical opiods. It made the withdrawal tolerable for the first week, after that I gradually lowered my daily kratom dosage. With no euphoria or rush, I didn't go on a binge in a haze like is part of the many pronged trap of full agonist opioids.

My quitting was possible also thanks to DMT which gave me better relief from cluster headache agony than opioids did.

I got to the point in about two months where I was forgetting to take my dose and realized that I didn't need it anymore and I stopped. I've been clean and opioid free for close to five years now.

After about six months clean, I did get the poison thoughts... What if I did it once, to feel the rush again... but just once... This of course is a huge trap, relapse is certain, addictions start where they left off. I made the right decision to not give in to temptation, but the gnawing urge was back.

I took a DMT trip instead where it had me really grok the reality of the situation. The ugliness of opiate addiction. I saw fully the reality that opiods as a soggy and disgusting, rotting blanket that had me clenching it more tightly around me to keep warm, but it only made me colder.

After about a year clean I had the worst times in my life with my Father passing away then only a few months later my Boyfriend if 15 years passed away. I was crushed, I didn't want to live, but I never considered going back to opiates.

I feel confident that I'll live the rest of my life free of opiates, at least self-administered ones. I'm still piecing my life back together, with the help of therapy, support of friends, and any progress would be impossible under the addition trap.

I was saddened by the news of the scheduling of kratom in a country with ibogaine is schedule 1, only methadone and suboxone are left for treatment. Withdrawal from opiates is something that the human imagination isn't capable of without experience, it's so much worse than what you'd think if you never have gone through it.

Suboxone and methadone aren't a viable option for many for a few reasons. A friend of mine died from heroin while on a waiting list, still six months away from being able to get suboxone treatment.

What I've read on the subject indicates that suboxone and methadone taper can lead to the extension of years of post acute withdrawal symptom, which sucks the joy out of life, and makes sufferers especially vulnerable to relapse.
Click to expand...
I've heard that salvia can be very effective against opiate-craving as well. If you'd ever feel a longing for it, and kratom is somehow unavailable, maybe it's worth giving it a try.
 
BUMP

Deadline is approaching; need as much info ASAP as you can give which is relevant to my project.

Thanks,
-God
 
Deadlines are approaching faster than the speed of smell, and I need as many experience reports with the use of Kratom as a means of treating opiate addiction as a substitution therapy similar to that of methadone/suboxone as humanly possible ASAP; if you haven't done so already, I BEG you to please share your story with us now if you have not done so already. Thankfully, the DEA has backed-off on ban-hammering them to schedule 1 status due to massive public outlash against the measure (as well as behind-the-scenes wining and dining done by lobbyists funded by the Kratom industry), which means that my paper may be of good use to the intl community of opiate addicts as a means of spreading, or at least contributing to, the sea of information on the WWW regarding this potentially life-saving clinical application of the "happy tree"; in particular, i'm trying to argue it's a better alternative to methadone and buprenorphine due to their larger volume of distribution, shorter half lives (shorter PAWS period) and markedly reduced rate of respiratory depression at therapeutic doses when compared with nearly every other opiate out there; time is of the essence and there is not a single second to spare; do not burn-out silently into that good warm night; write, write I say, write against the dawning of mine deadline!
 

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I am a new member so I cannot pm you. However I will give you a quick answer to your questions anyway.
I started smoking oxy 80s when I was 19. When they were banned i started smoking perc 30s in excessive amounts, I would smoke 10 to 20 in a day at least a couple times a week and smoke a few everyday in between, which led me to smoke heroin instead. When that wasn't enough i started taking ridiculous amounts of benadryl and smoking tons of pot. Benadryl potentiates opiates much like xanax. I battled with addiction until I got married in 2013 when i was 22. Kratom did not get me off the hard stuff, the Lord and my wife did. However, kratom has been a very nice ally. I used to have times where i would get overly stressed and binge on some heroin, but then when i found kratom I was able to just buy $5 worth and be cool, rather than spend $200 on heroin. Kratom also helped my father in law wean off percocet when he got his knee replaced. Kratom helps me with back and joint pain. It helps regulate my bowels as a fiber supplement. It also improves my motivation and productivity much like adhd medication would for someone else. It can be abused just like everything, but if used properly it is a very safe natural alternative to dangerously addicting drugs. I believe the way it works on multiple opiate receptors, mu and delta,is antiaddictive much like salvia, which acts on your kappa opiod receptors. I don't ever feel like overdoing it on kratom.
 
Whelp. That paper sure as hell Götterdämmerung too late too oh-god-where-did-these-twenty-something-pages-of-Science-fiction-gone-real-come-from? Whelp. The deed is done. The curse is cast. The load is blown. The troll's taken his damned toll. That goddamned paper stole my soul. If you'd like to scamper-on through the gobblety-mindjiggling-gook of this twenty-something-page trainwreck, feel free to PM me whenever and however you please; you can easily reach me via this and/or any other of dozen or so virtual realities which this bizarrely beautiful being commonly called I inhabits. Oh me oh my succinic apply high; just PM if you'd like to give what is already known another read/peer-review.

$elalalalallalaalllalalalalalalahuakhbar,
-God
 
Attached is a copy of my paper on the use of kratom to treat opioid dependency (sans personal identifying information) for the community to enjoy; I'd appreciate everyone's opinions on the merits/writing style present throughout the paper, as well as any/all possible suggestions you may be able to give me with regards to writing future research papers.

Thank you,
Godsmacker
 

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I hope my paper may please those who contributed personal accounts of Kratom use, alongside the rest of our community in general.
 
It is worth mentioning that if you have any liver damage (Hep C and opiate use happens), kratom is a bad idea. It appears to be quite hepatoxic. Feel free to PM me if you are in this position and want to know more about our experience with it.
 
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