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Seven Years, Twice

I didn't think I'd ever write this page. Seven years ago I told myself the kratom chapter was closed. Read it, threw the book out, moved on. I was wrong. This is the story of how it came back, what it took from me, and the one thing that keeps pulling me out.

The first time

The first time, I took kratom for about two years. Seven to eight grams a dose, plus extracts, three times a day, sometimes four. I tapered down and quit and swore it off. Threw everything out. I believed I was done, and for seven years I was.

The second time

Then life got bigger, and in most ways better. Two more kids, three in total, all of them a blessing. None of them the reason for any of this. I want that on the record. The reason was the work.

Being an entrepreneur is hard. Being a tech entrepreneur is harder. The financials, the hours, the client emergencies that always seem to catch fire at the worst possible moment. It crept up on me the same way it had the first time. I started putting client problems ahead of my own health, ahead of my family. I'd disappear into my home office and work, and work, and work, while the people who mattered most sat on the other side of the door.

So I went back to what I knew would take the edge off. At first it was almost nothing. Five grams at night, just to come down. I told myself that was the whole arrangement. Five grams, nighttime, done.

It didn't stay there. Five at night became five in the morning too, then a third time during the day. I never pushed much past that with the leaf — until the ad.

I saw it online. 7-OH. MGM-15. Concentrated, consistent, and so much easier than mixing leaf into a glass of orange juice and choking it down. No mess, no smell, no ritual. Just a pill. Half a pill in the morning and some amount of 7-OH I couldn't even tell you the dose of, and I was up. Motivated. Happy. Pumped to start the day. It felt like a shortcut straight to the version of myself I wanted to be.

On the surface, I wasn't hiding anything. I wasn't sneaking around. But inside I was running a quiet sales pitch on myself: this is just a cleaner version of the leaf. More discreet. More consistent. Easier. All of that was true, and none of it was the point. The point was the high. I was chasing it and calling it convenience so I'd never have to say the real word out loud.

I found out what it really was on the morning of my son's pre-K graduation.

I woke up soaked in sweat. I took half a dose and straightened out fast — too fast — and told myself I was probably just coming down with something. A bug, maybe. I sat through my son's graduation not knowing whether I was sick or whether the thing I kept insisting wasn't a problem had finally shown me its real face.

The next day answered the question. It got worse.

What scared me most wasn't quitting. It was the withdrawal. I'd never felt anything like it and I had no idea what was coming or how far down it went. But I've always dealt with fear by learning. When something frightens me, I go find out everything I can about it. So that's what I did. I read, I studied, I learned what my body was doing and why. It didn't make it painless. It made it survivable.

What it cost

Here's what it cost me, and it was never really about money.

I lost my creativity. I lost the ability to enjoy small things, the ones a life is built out of. I lost myself somewhere in that office, under a pile of work and a substance I kept swearing was fine.

I let people down. My wife. My kids, who had a father who was in the building but not in the room. And in a way that's harder to explain, I felt like I let down my brother.

He overdosed on heroin in 2012. It's the hardest thing I've ever been through, and I'm still going through it. I tear up every time it crosses my mind, including right now, writing this line. I never imagined I'd end up in any version of that story. I'm not saying kratom is heroin. I'm saying I learned young, and permanently, where "it's not a problem" can lead, because I watched it take someone I love.

I think his memory is what saves me. It's the thing that keeps pulling me back from the edge, and it pulled me back this time. I'm betting everything that it keeps doing it.

I'm writing this from the other side of the worst of it. Not because I have it all figured out. I don't. I'm writing it because when I was scared and searching, I couldn't find anyone who would just tell me the truth. What this stuff is, what it does, and what it takes to get out from under it.

So that's what this is. My story, and everything I learned the hard way, for whoever's standing where I was standing. If that's you: you're not stuck, and you're not alone. Keep reading.