It's estimated that roughly 4 million to 5 million Americans currently use kratom , also known as Mitragyna Speciosa If those numbers are accurate, that equates to roughly one percent of the population. The DEA states that kratom abuse can lead to addiction and can result in psychotic symptoms, including hallucinations, delusion, and confusion. People will counterfeit it. People will adulterate it. People will get arrested for using it. People who can't get it will move on to other drugs.
Across America, thousands of people are throwing away their prescription drugs and picking up kratom, a plant-based drug from Southeast Asia usually brewed as a tea. Now all we need is Congress to rewrite the Controlled Substances Act to allow room for drugs that have moderate abuse potential and no accepted use, and drugs that
mitrascience may have medical use but it hasn't been proven yet.
In 2016, the DEA weighed in on kratom's safety and considered classifying it a Schedule 1 drug, which is defined on the DEA website as a "drug with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." If added to the list of Schedule 1 drugs, it will join heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone and peyote.
Symptoms include decreased appetite, diarrhea, sweating, nausea, gastrointestinal pain or discomfort, muscle spasms and twitching, watery eyes, cold or flu-like symptoms, agitation, anxiety, restlessness, difficulty sleeping or insomnia, tension, anger, hot flashes or fever, increased breathing or heart rate, or increased depression.
Kratom could eventually come to replace methadone in the treatment of heroin addiction 5 18 27 37 —especially given its relative ease of production, making it ideal for poor and developing countries. Ironically, because of all the different effects kratom alkaloids have besides the activity on opioid receptors, quitting kratom has always been more similar to quitting tramadol than plain opioids.