Originally Posted by
Jinsai
Ok, I'm putting this here as a warning. I had a bunch of people recommend Kratom to me as a legal herbal equivalent of a muscle relaxant / anti-anxiety / pain killer. Most of the stuff I was reading online seemed to imply it was harmless, and if you pushed it too hard you could have some withdrawal but it was no big deal.
No big deal my ass... Anyway, I never got the "high" off it that some people report. I found that I got the most "relaxing" feeling when I did the liquid extract shots... these usually sell for like 20 dollars each, but I got a huge discount on a large batch. I stopped paying attention to how much of this stuff I was doing, I just started taking it on a daily regimen. I started to notice I felt "off" if I didn't take it, and eventually I was taking these shots multiple times a day until they just ran out...
And holy hell. Anxiety through the roof, hot/cold flash sweats, indigestion, puking, and a couple other TMI things I'd rather not go into. I was hoping it would be at most a day of this... I wondered if I had possibly contracted COVID because the symptoms are relatively similar, but I'm not coughing, there's no shortness of breath, and my sense of smell/taste are intact. That was before I looked it up and found that there's a lot of people, most who seem WAY worse off than me, trying to "kick Kratom" and struggling with it, despite the terrible side effects that grow increasingly worse.
It's crazy this shit is just legal and there's no real warning on it, and there's no age restrictions on buying it. I had no idea what I was dabbling with. I didn't even get the "good feeling" trade off really. I feel like I'm gradually coming out of this (and from what I'm reading, the withdrawals aren't life-threatening or really dangerous, just awful, especially if you go cold turkey). If what I'm reading is right, I should hopefully start to feel clear of this in another couple days.
So I'm just throwing out that warning I wish someone else had put up for me: If you're going to fuck around with Kratom, be careful. This may not be deadly, but it SUCKS. I also am starting to wonder if I should be attributing my spiked feelings of anxiety from the past month to it. I originally thought it was helping with anxiety that I attributed to the quarantine/pandemic/no-work thing, along with stuff in my personal life. Now, I don't know... I'm off it cold turkey, and I'm shocked.
If you're going to get into this stuff, be careful, don't just increase your dosage if you stop feeling anything on lower doses, and STAY AWAY from those liquid extract shots. It is soooo easy to lose track of how much you're taking, and I didn't notice anything off until I stopped... I mean, I felt "maybe I could use a shot of Kratom" when I'd feel a little weird in the afternoon, but then I'd do a shot and it'd go away. In hindsight, I guess I'm kind of an idiot.
Really, do some research (unlike my dumb ass) and read some testimonies from people trying to get off this stuff. It sounds like it gets so much more horrifying than what I'm going through, and I guess I'm glad I just ran out when I did.