My Experience with Kratom

Miracle drug? Surely not.

Image courtesy of Pexels.com

My first experience with kratom was working at a smoke shop in South Florida. We sold ground leaf powder along with extracts. One day a man with beautiful eyes came in and bought some, then left his phone number for me. I was intrigued.

We began dating soon after and that man introduced me to the world of kratom. We had a lot in common as far as interest in psychedelics and so I trusted his instincts that it was a safe substance.

For those of you who don’t know what kratom is, it is a drug in the coffee family that has some of the same properties as opiates. It has helped a lot of people with ailments from anxiety to chronic pain to depression. I won’t speak badly or judge those that it has helped, but it was not a safe or easy experience for me personally.

The first time I took it, I mixed it in with some peppermint tea and gulped down the disgusting concoction, which looked vaguely like a wheat grass smoothie. It tasted terrible, like dirt, and I almost vomited trying to swallow the sludge.

The feeling it gave me was nothing short of a miracle, however. My anxiety, a constant presence in my life, disappeared and I felt willing and able to interact with the world in ways that normally terrified me. It was an incredible difference, night and day. I wasn’t sure how I’d never heard of this stuff before.

For a few months, I used it once or twice a week. My boyfriend however used it several times a day every day. His reasoning was that he was a former opiate addict and it helped with his cravings. (I found out later that he’d never stopped taking pills.)

After a particularly bad incident of him combining pills and kratom, he began to hallucinate. We had a talk after he came back to reality and decided it would be better for us to stop.

Fast forward to a few years later. I began dating someone new who also took kratom to help him get through the day. His use could barely be considered abusive and so I figured, each person is different. I dabbled in it as well, but didn’t start taking it until later on.

My father passed away in January. Last November, I visited Florida to go see him for what would be the last time, though I didn’t know it at the time. I…