Kratom didn’t kill him, not by itself, not leaf capsules. Want to hear from an actual addict?

You got great answers as to the opioid effects, but I’ll lay out my experience. No idea if this is typical as I’ve never known anyone else to use it. I can only speak to the ground plant-leaf capsules, nothing purified, synthetic, whatever is out there.

I’ve done about everything but angel dust and heroin, and kratom is truly strange. For me, it’s psychologically addictive, zero withdrawal symptoms if I quit cold turkey. The worst part is being annoyed at lethargy. More on that later.

There are three sorts: Red, green and white. I gather the difference is in the leaf’s vein color. Never tried red but it’s said to be calming with the same analgesic effect. Green gives me speed and pain killing, makes me nauseous, puked on it, damned near quit. White gives me both and I feel great. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Kratom is an excellent pain killer. I often work on projects all night, physical stuff, wake up in the morning with aches and pains I didn’t know I had. I’d hate for it to become illegal because I know a great many people need it for pain control. I don’t have to have it, but I’d cry for the people it helps.

The energy boost is great! And that’s where my addiction comes in. Using too much writes a check your body can’t cash. Gotta pay for that. I don’t mean a hangover, but I have to sleep extra to recover. OR, I could just take more! See how that works? It’s a spiral but takes a long time to be an issue. I’ve been on it for almost 5 years. In any case, it beats the hell out of caffeine for me. I can get almost no end of energy out of kratom where caffeine leaves me feeling like shit after too much. And I’m not going to get monster headaches if I quite kratom, like I used to with coffee.

Strange enough, that speedy boost doesn’t kill my appetite. No idea why this is. I can’t eat on crack or coke or even old-fashioned white crosses, but I can hog down high on kratom if I’m physically active. Another strange thing about the speed, I can sleep on it. Doesn’t make sense, but I can be wired up, lay down, grab my novel and crash out. Caffeine’s 5-hour half-life comes back to haunt me at times. Not so with kratom.

One other note on addiction: The more ya take, the more ya gotta take. OTOH, if I lay off even a day or two, my tolerance mostly resets. After 5-7 days, my tolerance level is gone.

Perhaps your friend was using kratom to get over the effects of some other drug? That would be my suspicion, but this comment is all about my personal experience, YMMV.

Not my best writeup, but I hit the high (heh) points. Questions?

EDIT: Forgot to mention an important part that may be relevant to your friend’s case. Got my first ever bad liver report a couple of years ago. Doc knows I’m an alcoholic, checks me yearly, always GTG. Since starting kratom I got some bad numbers back one time. Quit for two weeks and she congratulated me for laying off the beer. Yeah. 😜 More like I wasn’t wired up and drinking so much, secondary effects and such. Hence why I wonder if your friend wasn’t self-medicating in some way.

Kratom is an opiate-like plant-based drug that gives users a boost of energy, but is addictive like actual opiates.

Not sure. I got old and boring before this became popular.

My understanding its a mood enhancement and pain reliever.

I’m sorry you lost this person.

Kratom is a tropical evergreen native to Southeast Asia. It’s an agonist for a few opioid receptors and has been used for centuries to treat opium withdraw. K2 on the other hand is synthetic pot.

My understanding is that Kratom high isn’t really a big thing. Like trying to get high on ibuprofen or CBD. It has some promise for pain management and anxiety but it’s hardly something you’d party on and if you’re worried said friend OD’ed I can tell you it wasn’t on Kratom.

I recently read an article about synthetic Kratom getting banned for sale. In that article a couple store clerks were arrested after selling the federaly banned versions of the product. I’ve never heard good things about Kratom, but now it sounds like it’s getting significantly more dangerous.

From what I understand, it’s a stimulant and people with ADHD are self medicating with it and developing a dependency on it. I don’t know exactly how it harms the body though.