Diana and JR discuss how Kratom began their journey into plant medicine, and how it can be an effective alternative to pharmaceutical pain medications. Guest Dr. Grinspoon shares insights on Kratom's potential in treating conditions like anxiety, insomnia, and chronic pain. The episode also emphasizes the need for further research, regulation, and sourcing from reliable vendors.
Diana and JR discuss how Kratom began their journey into plant medicine, and how it can be an effective alternative to pharmaceutical pain medications. Guest Dr. Grinspoon shares insights on Kratom's potential in treating conditions like anxiety, insomnia, and chronic pain.
Key Points of this episode:
*The podcast episode focuses on exploring Kratom, a plant native to Southeast Asia, known for its medicinal properties and increasing popularity in the Western world.
*Diana and JR share their personal experiences with Kratom, emphasizing how it has helped them manage their chronic pain.
*The podcast delves into the history of Kratom, discussing its traditional uses in Southeast Asia and its rise in popularity in the West, despite controversy and regulatory issues with the DEA.
*Dr. Grinspoon, a respected physician and author, provides a professional perspective on the potential of Kratom in treating conditions like anxiety, insomnia, and chronic pain.
*The importance of further research, regulation, and sourcing Kratom from reliable vendors to ensure its safety and efficacy.
*Diana and JR also discuss how Kratom has allowed them and others to successfully wean off scheduled drugs, providing a natural alternative for pain management.
*Dr. Grinspoon highlights the need for regulation and better study of Kratom, emphasizing that legal drugs are safer.
Timestamps:
0:16 - Welcome to Your Highness Podcast
1:41 - What is Kratom
2:19 - History of Kratom
7:59 - Diana’s Personal Kratom Story
21:55 - Dr. Grinspoon
38:00 - Kratom Science and Legislation
42:56 - Where to buy Kratom
Important links:
Kratom: Fear-worthy foliage or beneficial botanical? - Harvard Health
00:16 - Diana (Host)
Welcome to your Highness podcast. I'm your host, Diana Crash.
00:21 - JR (Host)
And I'm your co-host, JR Crash.
00:24 - Diana (Host)
So this episode is going to be different than our normal episodes. If you listened to the previous one, you might have heard something about it. If not, we're just going to tell you right now that this is not a cannabis focused episode. However, kratom is the plant that got us into the cannabis industry, despite the fact that both of us had used cannabis prior to Kratom.
00:48 - JR (Host)
Kratom is what changed our minds about plant medicine and really it really it's what made us start looking at it in a medicinal aspect, using plants as medicine and not just for pleasure, if you will Right.
01:05 - Diana (Host)
Yes, and we're not even going to get into the we aren't going to parse semantics. We're just going to say that Kratom is what changed our minds about things and really kind of changed the trajectory of our lives in a lot of ways. And so we are doing a mega-sized episode about Kratom. And for those who don't know, Kratom is a plant and the scientific name is Mitraginaspeciosa, and I might have mispronounced that, so apologies, but that's as close as I can get. So Kratom is a tropical evergreen tree that is native to Southeast Asia. It can be brewed as a tea, ground into a powder, put into capsules, made into a transdermal or extracted into tinctures, A relative of the coffee plant. Pure Kratom won't cause overdose deaths alone. I should make that up, To just say that up front. You'll hear that a lot more throughout the episode, but I should also note that if it is mixed with opioids, that's when there may be a chance of an overdose. Anyway, JR, why don't you talk about the history of it?
02:21 - JR (Host)
Yeah, I mean, before we talk about the present and the future, let's take a delve into the past. As you've already stated, kratom is actually a tree that's related to the coffee plant. It was originally used in Southeast Asia by labor workers. They would chew on the leaves and it would give them some energy to work throughout their day and it would also kind of eat some soreness of that constant labor. So while they were working they would actually chew on the leaves. Then when they would come home after doing their labor for the night, they would actually brew it then into a tea to consume to even more relax those sore muscles that they got from that constant labor out in the fields.
03:01
Then, moving from that, villages began to see the medicinal properties of it and began using it in its medicinal practices you know villages and medicine workers. They would ground it into a paste and apply it topically for skin infections to help treat wounds. Then they would start combining it with other herbs to create tonics and tinctures to combat digestive issues, respiratory issues. So it was really just focused strictly on a medicinal basis. Then, from there is where we started seeing this uptick of it being used for spiritual reasons. You know, it was believed, actually in Southeast Asia, that the leaves of the tree would welcome protective spirits. So they would plant crown trees near houses and near temples, in belief that it would actually ward off malevolent spirits and bring prosperity to whoever was inside the building that the tree was planted outside of. Wow, I didn't know that.
04:00
Yeah, it's really wild and then from that they would actually begin to consume it to induce a state of heightened focus and spiritual connection that they would in turn use to build a heightened meditative state and to communicate with the spirit world.
04:14
So not only was it a medicinal practice, it became a spiritual practice, very strong inside these communities, and that is when it was strictly fully in Southeast Asia.
04:26
You start seeing it being talked about more in the Western world in like the early 1800s, with Dutch and other European explorers.
04:32
They would actually go into Southeast Asia and explore and they would notate what they witnessed with people consuming cradom, how it was benefiting them, and in turn they would actually bring it back and in the early 1900s they would really begin to explore the actual medicinal properties of it by extracting alkaloids or isolating alkaloids, so they can really study the pharmaceutical prospects of it and learn the effects of it on the human body. All this being done prior to us even knowing about it in the States. It wasn't actually even really introduced into America until after the Vietnam War, when soldiers would actually bring it home with them after they were discharged and coming back from Vietnam into the US, those soldiers were bringing cradom with them along with a lot of Southeast Asians immigrants coming over during that time and that's where you actually start kind of filtering into the US. But at that time it was still very much like an undercover, low key thing. No one was really talking about it.
05:36
It wasn't really, if you know, you know, if you know you know it wasn't really until the 1990s we really saw the beginning of that heightened popularity of cradom, where it actually started being sold in shops, and that is where we started seeing a little bit of that troubled reputation because of what you were just talking about. You know, shops at first were just selling the powder in its natural state but, just as companies are known to do throughout history, you started seeing the adulterating of the product and the mixing of things like heroin and methadone and all these other things not methadone but morphine and that is when we really started seeing like a heightened focus on a federal level towards this plant. The DEA In 2005, after seeing this, actually had to issue a product warning because of so many cases of companies putting in other drugs into their mixtures. And this was even exacerbated even more. And you know, after 2005, when nine people in Sweden actually died from consuming something called Krypton cradom and it was actually found that it wasn't the cradom itself, it was actually lethal amounts of the opioid tremidol that were actually in it, which was causing a lot of the damage.
07:02
But still, through all that, unadulterated cradoms still continue to rise in popularity, primarily because of internet communities and forums where people would use it to, or use those forums to discuss how the cradom had benefited them on a medicinal level. And from there you really start out this rise in popularity because it has such great beneficial properties to it in its unadulterated form. And that's really what brought us into it, going from just something that was chewed on by day laborers in Southeast Asia to something that has a rich in popularity here now in the United States. So now that we know the history, you know, we're free to explore the personal side, the scientific side and the opposition to this plant.
07:51 - Diana (Host)
We are going to cover all of the bases for sure. So in the early days of the opioid crisis, I was on a regimen of low dose pharmaceuticals for my chronic intractable pain. Unfortunately, the same doctor who said that I would start at a lower amount and then work my way up told me, a year into prescribing this medication, that that wasn't possible anymore. So my body had become adjusted to the medication. For lack of a better way of explaining it, because, I mean, that is what happens when you take pharmaceutical pain medicine, right?
08:36 - JR (Host)
Absolutely yeah, that's exactly what happens.
08:38 - Diana (Host)
But anyway, we moved to Florida and what I found when we moved there, what we both found, was that the opioid crisis was much more heightened and intense and real there than it was in Maryland quite yet, you know it hadn't. It had reached other states, but in Florida, because of the sheer amount of rehab centers and the like there was, it was everywhere. It was very much a part of our everyday experience, meaning that we met people who were, you know, in Florida for rehab. We met people who were looking for other forms of relief, and then I quickly became one of those people, because there was a DEA crack down in Florida at the time and doctors who were prescribing schedule one substances were only allowed to do so in a very restricted manner, like they could only prescribe a week's worth at a time or you know, and you had to go into the office, which is very much happening now and probably everywhere.
09:45 - JR (Host)
This is the reality we have, now that I'm, in a way, yeah but at the time it was new to me.
09:51 - Diana (Host)
It was, you know, I was used to just calling the pharmacy and saying you know, refill every 30 days, or whatever. That was. Those those days were gone, and every doctor I came in contact with in Florida either laughed at me when I tried to renew my prescriptions or gave me an extremely harsh pep talk about basically how I would have to just get off of them soon and find something else, because in their eyes, my pain wasn't extreme enough to warrant pharmaceutical medication for a long period of time. I mean, it was just like every which way I went for pain relief. I was just hitting a roadblock, you know, and to be really honest, my options were either go to a pain pain what do you call it? Pain clinic, pill mill, which is what we call them places that were not reputable, that would charge you hundreds of dollars to go in and give you a prescription for a couple of weeks, or buying it on the street you know that was the other option and spending a fortune that I didn't have and putting myself in a legal situation because, you know, and so I was desperate, because I had gotten to a point where the doctors didn't want to prescribe me my small dose of pharmaceuticals on a regular basis and I couldn't afford the other options. And I didn't want to because you know it was dangerous on a lot of levels really.
11:26
So I was looking everywhere and the universe really was looking out for me in that moment, because I came across a Kava bar in Florida and I had heard about this place for a long time. Both you and I would always walk by kind of curious. We had heard from our local friends that they had this tea and it was a if you know, you know kind of a thing, because they didn't advertise that they had this tea. The bar, as far as anyone knew walking by, they thought this place just sold Kava and you would have to go in and say, can I have a cup of the hot tea? And it was. It wasn't illegal, but it was also not like openly accepted that we were selling this tea at the time.
12:16
And so I decided to go in and spend $10 on this tea and I was really skeptical, especially because it was so expensive, and I shared a cup with my friend and the only thing I noticed the first time was that I slept well that night, which at the time, I was dealing with what some people call pain somnia, which is insomnia caused by intractable pain, and I mean, if you know, you know, but it's, it's really a terrible place to be, because you're you're desperate for some pain relief, but you're also desperate for real rest, you know, anyway. So I didn't really notice anything the first time.
12:58
I just noticed that I slept well, but I'm like all right, you know I'll try it again, and the second time I tried it I tried the whole cup and I did feel a big difference in my pain relief, and so from then on I started to slowly add it more and more into my routine, and I have to say that was the thing that really kept me from going back to pharmaceuticals Well, pharmaceutical pain medication I haven't had any of that in my life, for what 10 years now.
13:33 - JR (Host)
And we tried other things before that too. Remember we tried the five HTTP before a bit. Then we were doing the right. Before we found out about Kratom and and Kava, we were trying the Marley juices. Yes, and they worked for a very brief period of time before they changed the ingredients and took out, like all the effective properties to it and made it just like a snap.
13:58
Essentially. So we, you know, tried a lot of stuff before we actually found Kratom and you know it reaches a point where you try so much stuff and you just think there's never going to be anything that helps me outside of this pharmaceutical and you feel so lost and you almost just want to say F it, I'm going to go to the pill mill because you have nowhere else to find relief.
14:24 - Diana (Host)
And some people were even going beyond that. I mean all across all socioeconomic groups.
14:31 - JR (Host)
Yeah.
14:31 - Diana (Host)
There was a huge uptake in heroin use at the time because people weren't able to access the pharmaceutical medication.
14:41 - JR (Host)
It's very much a cheaper alternative and you see that a lot this is a story isn't necessarily just fresh for us. You know this happens all across the board. Kurt Cobain it's widely believed that he got into his heroin addiction. We didn't get into it or not get into it, but it was exacerbated because he had Crohn's and didn't have any form of relief and heroin was the only thing that offered him relief.
15:03
And while now other people found other forms of relief that got very, very expensive. You know, when the crackdown happened you could buy a paint pill off the street for five times the amount that would cost to buy heroin. So people, just because of the economic state that they're in, they would think, well, it'll be cheaper if I just buy the heroin.
15:26 - Diana (Host)
Yeah, and. And the prescribing doctors. Now, I'm not saying every single doctor is complicit in this, but our doctor at the time was what some people call a pill pusher Right, the one that really got me on a real regimen of pain medication. She would write prescriptions for everything. I have anxiety. Here's prescription I can't sleep because of that prescription. Here's another prescription. And I mean, I didn't even fill half of the things that she would write because it was bonkers. Yeah. And when I told her that the low dose of pain medication I was on was no longer working, she wrote me an additional prescription for a low dose of oxycodone, like the lowest milligram.
16:14 - JR (Host)
Because she had you on hydrocodone and then gave you the low dose oxycodone.
16:18 - Diana (Host)
Right. And then when I moved to Florida, I had a doctor yell in my face that that was only for cancer patients, that I had no business being on oxycodone. And I only bring this up because you just talked about Crohn's disease and it is extremely difficult to find a doctor who will empathize with the amount of pain that Crohn's disease causes.
16:39 - JR (Host)
They think it's like an upset stomach.
16:41 - Diana (Host)
Right, yeah, it's like I always got like well, it can't be that bad. You know the infamous scale one to 10, if I said I was an eight, they would say that's, that's for childbirth. And let me tell you, having given birth now, I can say it is not the same. It was actually less painful than what I was dealing with at the time, and so Kratom has really made it manageable to me, or manageable for me. I can get through the day without being in the fetal position. I can take tolerance breaks because, as I just mentioned, I gave birth and during my pregnancy I didn't take Kratom. I didn't take it for a long time after that, actually, and I was fine yeah.
17:27 - JR (Host)
Yeah, I, I'll take Kratom and I don't take it every day. You know it's very possible to take tolerance breaks. You have different strains which allow you to not become strain dependent. You know it's often believed that it's a good idea to to mix the the red for a couple days and green for a couple days, just so that you don't build any any kind of dependency towards the strain itself. And these are all things that aren't even thought of when it comes to to prescription drugs. You know the thought process of oh, I'm going to, I'm going to skip a day of my hydrocodone. That is not something that that crosses your mind at all.
18:07 - Diana (Host)
No, I was, and you'll hear this part when, when you listen when Dr Grinspoon's section comes up. But I would literally be counting the hours like, ok, I took this, you know, five hours ago. I have one more hour left. Yeah, and I don't do that with Kratom.
18:23 - JR (Host)
Not, not ever. No, not at all. And, yet again, this isn't just a a special story just for our lives. This is something that we would see on the constant, and not only are we, we're seeing it help people from their pain. We were actually witnessing people being able to get off of their scheduled drugs with the use of of Kratom.
18:47
Granted, a lot of programs in Florida are unfortunately set up so that you have to be completely clean of any kind of substance in order to continue on that program, but it allowed a weird case study where I was able to witness and what not necessarily a case study, I'm not a scientist, but I was able to able to witness what was happening to the people that were attempting to do completely fresh and just stick to things like Suboxone, and then other people that chose the root of things like Kratom, and I'm still in contact with many people that chose the root of Kratom and found extreme success in coming off of their schedule one drugs the people that I knew that chose the root of Suboxone. I don't really talk that much anymore. I don't know what happened to them. I can't speculate. I just know that they don't have the wide variety of success stories that I'm seeing with the people that chose to supplement Kratom into their journey of getting off of their schedule.
19:51 - Diana (Host)
One drug Well, I mean you also saw that on a daily basis when you began working for the Kava Bar, because that is another part of our personal story. I mean you did see a lot of people every day, from all walks of life who were able to find a healthier alternative with the addition of Kratom and Kava into their routine.
20:15 - JR (Host)
It saved people's lives. Not to be hyperbolic, but it isn't, though it saved my life. I would say that I witnessed people not just from opiates but things like alcohol, because places like this it gave people a place to go to and belong, especially with people that are alcoholics. One of the hardest things for them to do is to separate themselves from the complete lifestyle that it delivered.
20:40
They were so used to leaving work and going to the bar the social aspect and then when they get off alcohol, it takes that all the way. So not only do they have that craving for the alcohol or whatever drug that they were using, but they're also craving the social aspect, whether it be the friends that they had they were also using, whether it be the bars they were going to. It gave them a safe place to go to consume something that wasn't dangerous, that would benefit them, that would help them heal and give them a social aspect and build a community. You're not getting those things from a lot of. You're not building opiate communities, for people and opiates are just helping each other.
21:21
But you found that in the Cava and the Kratom communities in Florida and really, when it came to healing, the most healing I saw came from those bars. This is so. I worked in medicine, in Western medicine, at a doctor's office attached to a hospital, all that stuff and I worked at a Cava bar and I saw more healing, more genuine healing, coming out of that Cava bar than I did for the years I spent working in Eastern medicine or Western medicine.
21:55 - Diana (Host)
And now Dr Peter Grinspoon, md, will be giving us his medical opinion about Kratom. Dr Peter Grinspoon is a primary care doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and he has been a cannabis specialist for 25 years. His latest book, seeing Through the Smoke Cannabis an expert doctor untangles the truth about cannabis is available wherever books are sold. And now we will hear his medical opinion about cratum. So, dr Grinspoon, thank you for joining me again today. Can we start by talking about the science breakdown of cratum?
22:47 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
Absolutely. Cratum is a really interesting medicine slash drug that's been used for very, very long time in different cultures around the world. It's a botanical plant, a plant medicine. It's related botanically to the coffee plant, the caffeine, which many of us of course know and love. It's a complicated.
23:12
Cratum is complicated, you know. It's sort of like cannabis, has 500 different components in it and that's why there are different strains of cannabis. Cratum has about, you know, 20 to 30 active ingredients in it and you know that's why different strains of cratum can make you sort of more up and energetic and focused or more sort of relaxed and better for pain control. So sort of similar to cannabis. Cratum has, like different strains and different it's grown in different countries and it is different. You know there's like Bali or there's, like you know, different areas grow slightly different permutations of cratum. So cratum is not one simple thing, it's a whole variety of things and I can go into a lot more detail if you want.
23:57
But you know as certainly you know, dan cratum is used very commonly for people all over the world for chronic pain and, most poignantly, in the United States it's used by many people who are trying to get over their opioid addictions and are suffering from pain, anxiety, insomnia or withdrawal, and many, many people find cratum to be life saving, which is why it's just interesting I wrote. I write blogs for Harvard Health publications and you know I get 10, 20, 30, 40 comments. When I wrote my blog on cratum, we had a shutdown comments in under 24 hours yes yes, the system was basically crashing.
24:41
We got like something like a thousand comments in less than you know 24 hours, and Harvard Health was like we are just not set up to get a thousand comments and I've never seen anything like it. So people have a lot of say, a lot of opinions.
24:55 - Diana (Host)
Yes.
24:56
I stopped writing about it for that reason, like it's funny that you brought that up, because that is one of the things I I've written about a lot of controversial topics and yet cratum is the hottest one. I mean, people out of come out of the woodworks To comment on those articles. But you spoke about the opioid dependency component of this and you have a lot of experience in that. You wrote several, many books about it and articles and all of that. So can you talk about that a little bit more? Like, how is cratum in a medicinal sense? How does that apply to someone's overall wellness?
25:40 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
Absolutely Well. First of all, there's no substitute for lived experience, right, and why wouldn't get addicted to opiates, screw up your life, get to recovery from opiates and then help other doctors and help other patients on the medical school curriculum. It really does give you some insight into addiction. So I'm 15 years of recovery from opiate addiction and I work with a lot of people who are suffering from opiate addiction. And you know there's the addiction, but there's also things that underpin the addiction, like the.
26:08
A lot of people have untreated anxiety, untreated depression, insomnia, chronic pain, and many, many people find cratum to be a helpful, relatively non-toxic, plant-based alternative. But either trying to get more opiates, which is very difficult Doctors are very under a lot of pressure not to prescribe them or to buying opiates in the illicit market, which is very dangerous. That's why more than 100,000 people a year are dying from opiate overdoses. They're buying them illegally and they're tainted with fentanyl. So people are turning to cratum to help with the withdrawal symptoms and to help with many of the things Again, that sort of where the building blocks their addictions, the untreated or undertreated chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia. So people find cratum really, really helpful and that's why so many people have such strong opinions about it.
27:03 - Diana (Host)
And what's your opinion from a medical standpoint? I mean, I know you just touched on it a little bit, but I know there's more to it.
27:12 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
Right. Well, a medical standpoint. Like with all drugs, I think legal drugs are safe drugs and I think cratum would be safer if it were regulated as it is now. It's very poorly, if regulated at all, like any supplements. So I think it needs to be much better regulated so that when you buy cratum you know that you're getting cratum and you're getting the exact right dosage, the exact right dose of cratum. And you know and certainly some brands have much better reputations than others and you know they could do what the CBD industry did.
27:42
Cbd is in the same boat. It's like unregulated and people were getting very concerned. If I buy a 30 milligram gummy of CBD, does it have any CBD in it? Does it have THC in it? Does it have heavy metals in it? And I think cratum needs some regulation, either self-regulation with these independent laboratory studies and these certificates of analysis, or we just need some reasonable, sane way to regulate cratum, either on the state level or the federal level. So I think with regulation, and we also just need a lot more study of cratum.
28:16
Again, just because people find it helpful doesn't necessarily mean that it's safe.
28:21
The fact that we've used it for so long and so many people use it with benefit means that it's likely safe, especially compared to what we would be using instead of cratum, which is often opioids, and we know those aren't particularly safe. Right, but I'm hugely in favor of research, I'm hugely in favor of sensible regulation, and what I'm not in favor of and what I've completely against is just criminalizing cratum. I think that's the worst thing you could do. That would make the supply so much more dangerous and it would make it so people can't ask for help. A very small fraction of people can get addicted to cratum because cratum has it does tingle your opioid receptors. That's why it helps with opiate withdrawal in the first place or with chronic pain. So I think we need to keep it legal, give people access to it because it helps people at the same time, regulate it so it's much safer, and study it, because all of us should want to know the harms and benefits of any medicine or drug that we're taking.
29:23 - Diana (Host)
Absolutely. Can you expand a little bit more on the tickling your opioid receptor?
29:28 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
I don't think they totally understand how cratum works. Okay, it's sort of like they don't totally understand how cannabis works. These are the 500 different molecules. Many of them are active physiologically. I think cratum has a bunch of dozens of different active molecules and they know some of the receptors that it works on. It needs a lot more study Again. You know, if you go through the pharmaceutical pathway and you invent a drug, you at least have to study it. Cratum has been around for so long and it just has been sort of a folk remedy in many southeastern Asian countries that I just don't think there's been that much study of cratum in the lab. These are the receptors it works on. These are the side effects. These are the potential benefits. But one thing they do know is that it does affect the opioid receptors. If it didn't, it wouldn't be particularly helpful for opiate withdrawal or for chronic pain.
30:27 - Diana (Host)
I agree, and it definitely helped with me. I mean, I was able to. I think it basically saved my life. Honestly, I don't think it's an overstatement, but there are things that we have to be aware of when we embark on this journey with Kreatom. So can you speak to that from a medical standpoint? What should people be cautious about, aside from the research part?
30:53 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
Well, it's really a safe supply and all that stuff. The first thing to know is that Kreatom can be addictive because it does trigger your opioid receptors. I don't think it's nearly as addictive as many of the traditional classic opiates. In fact, that's why Kreatom seems to be more of an exit drug than a thing that people get primarily addicted. I would agree, yeah, but I do read the medical literature. Some people just have like, like I did with opiates 15 years ago, I just wanted more and more and more and more. That was just brain.
31:27 - Diana (Host)
And your brain was thinking okay, five hours till the next one or two hours until that. I never think that way with Kreatom. I take one or two in the morning and I'm good to go, and on really bad days I might take an extra two at night. Right, well it's kind of.
31:42 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
just like most people take it with benefit, a small percentage get addicted. Again, this needs to be studied more. You read these case studies of people that end up with like two grams, five grams, 20 grams, 40 grams, 80. They just take more and more and more because they're chasing the high. And with any opiate, if you chase the high which you can get with Kreatom, you have to take a lot of it. You can get very dependent on it. But so, yeah, again, I don't think we know what percentage of people who take Kreatom get addicted, because it's all underground and like. That's another reason why it would be great if we could study it and regulate it. But so people show number one, that it is potentially addictive. But you know, so are your benzodiazepines for anxiety, so are your opiates. I mean a lot of drugs are.
32:27 - Diana (Host)
So is cannabis right, it's cannabis.
32:30 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
A lot of drugs that we use, with very good benefits, are potentially addictive. So as long as the patient knows that, or the user knows that and they're making an informed decision, then that's what's important because then they can be aware of what's happening and get help if they need to. And then otherwise, you know Kreatom. You look at the studies, the US government's like, oh, there have been, you know, 80 deaths from Kreatom, but most of those, if not all of those, involved other drugs. So it is very hard to say if there's ever been a death related to Kreatom.
33:10
And again, this is all has to do with things that we've talked about before, like the drug war. And if behavior is driven underground, if you criminalize behavior that people are going to do anyways, you just make it more dangerous and you make it hard to know how many people get addicted, how many people have toxicity. You know, and there need to be more studies. With all drugs you want to know what what they do to your liver, what they do to your kidney. And again, this is just an area where, like, more research would really help us because, again, just like with cannabis, with cannabis I say the people who are against it should know the benefits, or nobody's going to listen to them. And the people who are in favor of it should want to know the harm so they can make an informed decision.
33:51 - Diana (Host)
Absolutely. I so agree with that.
33:54 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
It's actually a thing with Kreatom. You know, I've tried Kreatom before and I'd want to know if it affects my liver or my kidney. I don't know of any evidence per se that it does affect your liver or your kidney. The much more dangerous thing would be is like the contaminants, because it's not very regulated. But no matter what, we all should be open-minded about this stuff. Even the people that are, you know, the very fanatical Kreatom advocates you know, who very passionately believe that it needs to be legal and available, they should want to know the harms too. I mean, it may be the case that, like you take three grams, you're fine. You take seven grams, it starts to affect your liver. So just take three grams. I mean, it's all about harm reduction and making whatever we take as safe as possible.
34:37 - Diana (Host)
Absolutely. I agree so much and I find it really surprising how quickly people who are into other plant-based, you know treatment options will do a cursory Google search about Kreatom and say, oh nope, never mind, I don't want anything to do with that. And there is actually. There are some you know research articles and recent developments and there's so much anecdotal evidence I mean I'm sure you know there's a lot of online, you know experiences that people can draw from, so including your article, which we will put in the notes, so I appreciate that. Before we end, is there anything else that you want to add about Kreatom, like any kind of thing that you want people to know?
35:29 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
Well, I think we've covered a lot of territory. You know, I just think again that, like no drug is free of harms, no medicine is free of harms. Like, if there were drugs and medicines that were free of harms, my job as a primary cure doctor would be a lot easier. You know I, you know strep throat. I'll give you penicillin. There's like a one in a thousand chance you're going to have a really, really, really nasty reaction to the penicillin. So our jobs as doctors are to prescribe what we believe is to be the least toxic alternative, not the perfectly safe alternative.
36:01
And then with cannabis, as I wrote a lot about in my recent book Seeing through the Smoke, it can make your life a lot easier as a doctor because you're treating these difficult conditions to treat, like anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, it. Cannabis gives me an extra tool in my toolbox. It doesn't work for everybody, but for a lot of people it's a not relatively non-toxic plant based medicine. And I think the same is true with Kreatom. If we studied it and embraced it, it could actually not only make the lives of doctors a little easier, because doctors are dropping like flies, which is a whole another discussion. Try finding a primary cure doctor these days. Good luck.
36:40
I think, it acts a lot easier because they're trying to treat chronic pain and there's very few alternatives. Kyloneol doesn't do anything. Nobody can get anybody to prescribe opiates anymore If you don't really want to be an opiates. It's a crappy quality of life. The non-steroidals if you take them year after year after year, they destroy your kidneys. If they don't give you a heart attack. 10,000 people a year die from heart attacks from the non-steroidals. They're ibuprofen, your napers in your leave, your diclofenac, and they can also give you bleeding gastric ulcers. So we study, regulate, legalize and make Kreatom available. That would give us another plant-based, relatively non-toxic though we still need to study it tool for doctors and patients to treat some of these miserably difficult conditions to treat and I think the more we study it and normalize it, it could really help both doctors and patients.
37:35 - Diana (Host)
I agree. I agree with everything that you said. Thank you, and definitely by his book. If you haven't yet, we'll have that linked in the show notes, of course. Thank you again for spending your time with us and just teaching me something new, as you always do.
37:51 - Dr.Grinspoon (Guest)
Well, it's always a pleasure. This is always. I love our conversations. Oh, thank you.
38:00 - Diana (Host)
All right. So, piggybacking off of what Dr Grinspoon said, I just wanted to note a few things. This is from an academic paper which I will link to in the show notes. Several national internet surveys found that cradium use was helpful in managing opioid withdrawal, reducing opioid cravings and achieving abstinence from opioids. None of the national surveys relied upon by the FDA Centers for Disease Control, CDC, NIDA and DEA to determine if a substance poses an abuse related threat to public health suggested that cradium poses a known or imminent risk to public health. Consistent with this, the DEA never listed cradium as a threat to public health and its annual national drug threat assessment reports Also metrogenene treatment results in reduced opioid drug seeking and self administration, and animal models assessing the potential effectiveness of drug use disorder reduction and cessation.
39:15
There are a lot of academic papers out there available for you to read about cradium, and a really good resource for these papers, for the science and also for the legislation side of it, is the American Cradium Association. Now if you go on the American Cradium Association's website, you can see which states have an outright ban For an outright cradium ban. Those states are Wisconsin, Indiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Rhode Island. You can also find on the website which states have passed the KCPA. Now, the KCPA is actually the Cradium Consumer Protection Act, so the KCPA is a bill that protects the consumers in the cradium industry. It requires that vendors follow specific safety guidelines and good manufacturing practices, because the FDA has just refused to deal with cradium, to put it put it simply, the KCPA offers an extra layer of protection, an extra layer of protection for cradium consumers, and basically the language looks different for each state, but the gist of it is that the guidelines include distribution, sale, possession, age limits, fines and testing requirements. So the states each have their own version, like I said, but most of the standard text includes selling to 18 and over, disclosing if any food items include cradium.
41:12
It also bans the sale of adulterated or contaminated cradium products. It disallows cradium that is packaged with harmful substances that alter the strength or quality of the cradium in any way. It also forbids the sale of cradium products that contain more than 2% of seven hydrooxymitrogenine, which I know I mispronounced that. But it also most importantly well, not most importantly, but very importantly prohibits the sale of any products that contain synthetic cradium alkaloids or a synthetic version of any natural compounds found in cradium. And that is really important because a lot of the controversy around cradium is because there are products out there with these things in them and that can cause things like overdoses and other adverse reactions. So it can be a little scary when you begin this journey of taking cradium when you're dealing with that. But luckily we have the KCPA, Luckily we have the fierce advocacy of the American Cradium Association and a lot of other cradium enthusiasts activists. I mean, I really have not found a fiercer crowd when it comes to advocating for safe and responsible use of plant medicine.
42:49
So where do you purchase it? So when purchasing cradium, there are a few things to keep in mind. Buying from an online vendor can not only be more cost effective, but it can also ensure that the vendor is buying directly from a source, meaning the farmer or processing facility. It also gives you the freedom to comparison shop a little bit more if you purchase from an online vendor, but also check to see if they guarantee third party testing. Trustworthy vendors put their products through rigorous third party testing at professional testing labs. You can also check to see if they're affiliated with the American Cradium Association. They may not be certified by them, but they should be supporting the KCPA and be outwardly vocal about their support for consumer protection. So you won't really find that in a gas station or some other local retail shop.
44:02
I shouldn't paint with a broad stroke here, but it has been my experience that I have found better quality products online, One of my favorites being our actual sponsor, Mitra Gaia. I purchased from them for years before they became a sponsor, and there are a lot of reasons why I choose to continue purchasing from them. Number one, they have excellent customer service. Number two, they have a ton of reviews. And number three, they support the KCPA. So, and also number four, they're very affordable.
44:42
Cradium should not be exorbitantly expensive, but it also shouldn't be too cheap either, that's. You know that goes with all types of plant medicine. If it's too cheap, there's a reason, and so, in conclusion, before you begin, do as much research as possible. We will link to a bunch of different resources articles, research papers, all in our show notes but please feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions about cradium. We're not doctors here, but we do have a lot of experience and we might be able to point you in the right direction or just give you some feedback from our experience. But we encourage you to reach out and let us know how your journey is going, and also if you have any questions, because if we can't answer them, I guarantee you that we know someone who can. So don't be afraid to reach out at any point. Really, and that's pretty much it for our cradium episode.
45:45
Until next time, stay high and beautiful. Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay high and beautiful. This episode was produced by your Highness Media. Audio editing by JR Crash. Intro music by your Mom Likes my Music. Subscribe to our sub-stack your Highness Newsletter for the latest announcements and event updates.