Kratom Helps Me Cope With Life, So What’s the Problem?
A kilo is surprisingly heavy, I thought as I dropped the package onto my mattress with a thud. I never thought I would return to the life of digital scales and weighing grams, but here I am. Except it’s not illegal drugs (this time), it’s kratom.
A cousin of the coffee plant, kratom is a tree native to Southeast Asia. Its leaves are shredded into a bitter green powder and sold across the world. I order mine online, avoiding the low-grade product sold at gas stations and headshops.
Over the six months since I began using kratom, I haven’t been mentioning my use to many people, and certainly not in addiction-recovery circles. Decades of drug-war rhetoric baked irrational fears into the American psyche. If the drug isn’t alcohol or caffeine, it is insidious. Except anyone who has taken kratom realizes how bogus this is.
