Can the unregulated extract kratom help fight the opioid crisis? | Aeon Essays

Max Woods , a yacht captain from Florida , became addicted to prescription opioids in the early 2000s .

After dropping out of high school, he was caught stealing money from his parents to pay for street drugs.

He exhausted the two approved medical treatments for opioid withdrawal symptoms and cravings, both synthetic opioids that replaced a riskier drug with a safer one: methadone was ineffective, and buprenorphine worsened his dope sickness.

In 2018 , Max drove up to Pensacola to visit his best friend, a heroin user who had become newly sober after discovering a drink called Vivazen .

In 2021 , Woods found that up to a 10th of his patients were suddenly struggling with dependence on the atypical opioid.

Seizures, liver failure and cardiac arrest are rare complications of kratom use that almost exclusively occur in people taking the high doses found in extracts along with other illicit substances.

In the United States , dietary supplements are regulated more like food than drugs.

As Max ’s doses of self-administered kratom extracts increased, he found himself without the desire to eat.

In 2021 , only 22 per cent of Americans with opioid addictions received effective care.

Max was lured by a guest at a yacht party and quickly developed an addiction to kratom.