I Discovered Kratom in 2016
I first discovered Kratom while working as a carpenter building a house in Oregon. I was chatting with a coworker one day talking about how I thought I was addicted to coffee. I was drinking 3-4 cups per day and if I forgot to drink it, I would get a bad headache by the afternoon. My coworker suggested I try using something called Kratom to help stop drinking coffee.
On my way home from work that day I passed a store that had a giant sign in the window that said: “Kratom Sold Here”. Here’s an actual picture of the store I’m talking about:
I stopped in and told the guy what I was up to. I wanted to try Kratom and see if it would help me kick my coffee habit. It just so happened that there was about to be a government vote to make Kratom illegal. Because of this, the store owner was dumping their stock of Kratom for super cheap. He offered me a Kilo for $100. I bought it not understanding how much that really was…
Day One: Goodbye Coffee!
The next day I woke up in my normal zombie-like state and went to brew some coffee. Where the coffee beans usually are I found a large bag of Kratom. “Oh ya!”, I thought, “Time to see if this really works.”
Well, it did. I took a small dose and within 30 minutes was zooming around the house getting ready to go to work. I felt great! Not only did I have an energy boost as I would from coffee, but I felt somewhat euphoric, like today was going to be a good day.
The feeling lasted all day. I still got the headache characteristic of coffee withdrawal, but with a couple of ibuprofen I was able to ignore it.
I followed the same routine for the next 30 days. It was great that I was able to kick the coffee habit that easily. By day 30, however, the feelings of energy of euphoria I had experienced from Kratom on day one would no longer last all day. In order to keep the feeling going, I had to take another dose at lunch time. This is where my tolerance began to show itself.
60 Days Later
After another month or so, I was taking 3 doses per day. I felt great, but I was beginning to get tired of having to eat so much of this powder. At around the 60 day mark I decided to take a break. I woke up one morning and didn’t take any Kratom. In the absence of the energy and euphoria, it was a pretty lame day. The real monster of withdrawals reared its ugly head when I tried to sleep that night. I couldn’t.
I would sleep for a little while then wake up drenched in sweat. This pattern repeated itself until morning. When it was time to get up, I felt absolutely terrible. I would have done anything to escape this feeling, so I took some Kratom. Within 20 minutes I was feeling better. I was still tired, but I had some energy and felt like it was going to be a good day. “Shit”, I thought, “I’m addicted to Kratom.”
Over the next few months I tried to quit a few more times. Each time ended the same as the first with me taking Kratom to escape the sickness. I did a lot of research online about Kratom addiction and how to overcome it. I discovered a lot of people talking about tapering. Some people said they were able to quit Kratom entirely without feeling any withdrawal symptoms. I was intrigued.
Over time I was able to get my doses down to ~1g, 3x per day. It began to get difficult to accurately measure out doses. Sometimes I wouldn’t feel like I took enough so I would take more. Though I was able to reduce my dose, kicking the habit entirely was still a challenge. It was so hard to make myself take the right amount 3 times per day, especially when I wasn’t feeling all that great.
Another factor that made it hard was the money factor. Typically when you buy Kratom, the more you buy, the cheaper it gets. When you buy really small amounts, the price is ridiculous, at least where I was buying it. This lead me to buying more and having more around than I needed. This resulted in a constant temptation to take more than I should have, which I often did.
Looking back, I wish there would have been some way to make it easier. These thoughts are what gave me the idea of a Kratom Taper Kit. A kit someone can order in the mail that is customized to their dosage and time of use that has clear, simple instructions about how to use the kit and pre-weighed out doses that one can take in order to have a near-perfect tapering experience.
My goal with this website is to help people overcome their Kratom addictions as painlessly as possible using education and customized tapering kits to designed to assist people with reducing their tolerance and practicing responsible substance use.