Nick Pell

Yeah, I've...

I've been known to enjoy a few Vicodin pills, a dimmer switch and an electric wizard record on my headphones, which, you know, by the way, is both why I was interested in Kratom and also why I didn't do it.

The last thing I need to get into is an addictive form of Vicodin that I can get at a local gas station.

OK, so it is addictive.

Again, complicated.

And we will discuss it later.

chronic users have a sort of profile about them where they're existing in this state of permanent brain fog lower no libido constant fatigue lack of motivation sort of like your neighborhood pothead but worse now with all that said i also know that this is the drug that some opioid users talk about as being extremely helpful for them just as a brief aside there was a guy at my

Jim, an older guy who was opioid addicted, he, you know, he did the back pain to opioid addiction pipeline that is tragically all too common.

And he said that, you know, now he takes Kratom to manage his chronic back pain and, you know, good for him.

In the cases of people who are using more hardcore recreational drugs,

opioids like fentanyl or what have you i think training those in for something far less likely to kill them is probably a good thing i think living people are preferable to dead people so how does kratom work you said it was in the coffee family i don't know anybody who's ever sat on the couch half asleep drooling on themselves vibing out to heavy metal or whatever it is on four cups of coffee

So kratom is mostly made up of mitragynine, but there's another alkaloid called 7-hydroxymitragynine, which is where it's getting most of its effects.

These interact with two, possibly three receptors in the brain.

First, the opioid receptors, but they don't activate the opioid receptors to full capacity, which is, this is why it causes drowsiness, dopiness, pain relief with limited respiratory depression, which is the main

Danger factor when you're talking about opioids is respiratory depression.

Next, there's adrenergic receptors.

These are where it gets its stimulating properties.

There's also some impact on the dopamine and serotonin receptors, but it's very poorly understood.

So what's it doing there?

We don't really know.