Opioids Healing from Kratom use

[ItsclearlyFake]

Hi there, I quit Kratom about 2 months ago. Physical withdrawals are completely over obviously. I do feel fine on my own body without having to chug the green drink finally. However, there are sometimes, that I have a certain craving-thought of it.

It's difficult to explain, but I would be just studying looking at the screen, and all of the sudden I will get an uncomfortable feeling in my body, a sense of 'I need something so I can feel Ok, something is wrong ', and that something its Kratom. I do not knew that 2-3 years daily use (being opiate naive) would cause this conditioning on the body and that the body has such a vivid memory so it can still crave it after 2 months.

I don't think it's psychological craving, because I don't have any urge or desire to use Kratom to enjoy myself, its just this feeling on the body that my own body naturally doesn't feel 'comfortable' or 'complete'. I suspect this feelings are created by thoughts (memory), because they are momentary, like 99% of the day I do not crave or think about Kratom, just at some moments.

I guess this will take more time than just 2 months? Or im just kidding myself and I have to accept that the body will always find appealing an opiate high so it just 'remembers it' some times? If it's like that it's quite frustrating because before doing Kratom in the first place I would never complain of feeling 'weird' in my own body. Kinda sucks but I guess that's the price you pay for the highs I guess.

 

[burn out]

Two months is a very short time in the world of post acute withdrawals. When I quit kratom, I felt mostly all the way better after 44 days following years of daily use and years of opiate use before that. The one thing that would happen is sometimes I'd have dreams where I got opiates and used them and I'd wake up missing that comfort a little bit. Over the years since quitting, those dreams became further and further apart going from maybe twice a month to once every six months now. It's really a small price to pay if you think about it, other drugs did way worse damage to me than kratom.

 

[Snafu in the Void]

Hi there, I quit Kratom about 2 months ago. Physical withdrawals are completely over obviously. I do feel fine on my own body without having to chug the green drink finally. However, there are sometimes, that I have a certain craving-thought of it.

It's difficult to explain, but I would be just studying looking at the screen, and all of the sudden I will get an uncomfortable feeling in my body, a sense of 'I need something so I can feel Ok, something is wrong ', and that something its Kratom. I do not knew that 2-3 years daily use (being opiate naive) would cause this conditioning on the body and that the body has such a vivid memory so it can still crave it after 2 months.

I don't think it's psychological craving, because I don't have any urge or desire to use Kratom to enjoy myself, its just this feeling on the body that my own body naturally doesn't feel 'comfortable' or 'complete'. I suspect this feelings are created by thoughts (memory), because they are momentary, like 99% of the day I do not crave or think about Kratom, just at some moments.

I guess this will take more time than just 2 months? Or im just kidding myself and I have to accept that the body will always find appealing an opiate high so it just 'remembers it' some times? If it's like that it's quite frustrating because before doing Kratom in the first place I would never complain of feeling 'weird' in my own body. Kinda sucks but I guess that's the price you pay for the highs I guess.

What kind of doses were you taking?

I was on very high doses (30-60 grams daily) for 9 years. For me the PAWS lasted around 4-6 months, but became noticeably less around 2-3 months.

These cravings you have unfortunately probably aren't going to go away any time soon, they can last years or forever. It's part of addiction. There are drugs I haven't done in over 10 years and I still get random cravings for them.

But anyways, kratom really alters your body's natural reward system, which is why you don't feel comfortable in your own skin or depressed. Do you get any exercise?

Aerobic exercise is by far the best thing you can do for PAWS. It heals and rewires your reward system, and significantly speeds up the recovery process by producing natural endorphins and serotonin, which are your natural rewards. It fixes the damaged circuits.

Congrats on quitting, takes a lot if strength to do that. Kratom is more addictive than a lot of people talk about, some people are in denial about just how addictive it can be.

 

[jasperkent]

I've been using kratom daily for about 3 years. It helped me tremendously when I got off oxys. Obviously I'm addicted to kratom now but it is far less destructive and expensive than my former habit.

That said, I'd like to get off the kratom or at least cut back. My tapering goes well on my days off but on workdays I jump back up to the amount I was using before. It's a struggle but I don't give up easily.

What y'all are describing sounds very much like every other addiction I've experienced. I got through those, so I'm cautiously optimistic that I will get through this.

 

[Snafu in the Void]

That said, I'd like to get off the kratom or at least cut back. My tapering goes well on my days off but on workdays I jump back up to the amount I was using before. It's a struggle but I don't give up easily.

That was the hardest part of PAWS for me, and the strongest cravings. Going to work without kratom. I really quited enjoyed my caffeine and kratom before work, and a strong association developed.

 

[jasperkent]

That was the hardest part of PAWS for me, and the strongest cravings. Going to work without kratom. I really quited enjoyed my caffeine and kratom before work, and a strong association developed.

Caffeine? Lemme tell ya something:
They'll take away my coffee when they pry my mug from my cold dead fingers.

 

[Snafu in the Void]

Caffeine? Lemme tell ya something:
They'll take away my coffee when they pry my mug from my cold dead fingers.

Quite*

I never quit caffeine, heck no. My caffeine intake double or tripled in the process if getting off kratom.

 

[Dr. Now]

Just stopped myself about a week ago, was on a high dose of around 30ish grams a day for several months, escalating from the 20s in the months before that, and then from the teens before that, all in all for probably around 2 years. I stopped when I went to rehab for benzos for like 8 days or so like 2 months ago, but really didn't sleep the entire time I was there (likely due to both withdrawals) so finished my benzo taper at home and hopped back on kratom at around 8-10gpd. Knocked it back to around half that in the past several weeks (though did a gram of 2-MAP because I'm stupid around new years in like 2-3 days), some days not taking it but taking it most days.

Have to say I was expecting it to be pretty much over since I tapered to what I felt was really low but this physical effects are still noticeable and I am just feeling wiped out from a lack of sleep. Yesterday I had really bad restless legs though don't seem as bad today. Though I stupidly also did benzos + occassionally boozed again for like a week straight too and dropped all that at the same time as the kratom, sure that didn't help matters. I did finally get some noticeable sleep last night (prob like 2ish hours) but it felt like moments. Still, I really needed it so was grateful to get it. Just feeling foggier than I thought. Also still feel super unmotivated still, which isn't shocking or anything but fuck I don't feel like doing much just feel lifeless/mindless and it's tough to concentrate when someone is talking at length.

Still, glad I stopped using the stuff. I was probably withdrawing from trying to lower my benzo dosage too fast but at my height with kratom I could hardly eat most days and ended up losing so much weight I was smaller than I've been since I was a child (lost 70 pounds from like Dec 2021-late November 2022), I looked like fucking death. I do still wonder how much of that was the kratom and how much was the benzos. I had done harder opiates and been addicted to them and never lost weight like that, but also wasn't ingesting 30+ grams of material mixed with milk/choc syrup a day. I've read online it can cause weight loss too but I can't really say for sure.

 

[jasperkent]

...Still, glad I stopped using the stuff. I was probably withdrawing from trying to lower my benzo dosage too fast but at my height with kratom I could hardly eat most days and ended up losing so much weight I was smaller than I've been since I was a child...

Interesting.
Kratom never affected my appetite in any way.

 

[Dr. Now]

Interesting.
Kratom never affected my appetite in any way.

I'm really not sure if it was the kratom or not. My benzo tolerance was absolutely insane, was taking like 90mg+ of flubromazepam at a time some days (was taking a fuckton of dissociatives too and doing stupid shit with benzos while under the influence of those) and I think 12mg is supposed to be a high dose of flub, most people feel for three days. I couldn't even tell I was on anything when I'd take 90mg. I didn't want to continue dosing that much and was changing between different benzos trying to figure out what was the levels of dosing I needed to stave off feeling like total shit. At times taking more kratom would make me feel better so sometimes I didn't know which was the problem at times. By the end of November things had just gotten really out of control health wise and I was so weak from not eating and got sick often when I did eat, and just mentally so fucking bad, that I went to rehab. Mostly for the benzos, I wouldn't have gone there just for kratom although the withdrawals kinda sucked at that high a dose.

Note that once I was off benzos but doing kratom again at moderate doses (like 4g-6g twice a day or something) there was no appetite issue. And I don't really recall there being too much of a problem until high dose benzos got involved, though until then my overall kratom doses were probably around 15-20g a day, not the 30g+ it became, not sure how much of a difference that made). I definitely lost weight before that but was working really hard and eating okay. Just that one of the nurses said to me that she was reading about kratom and said weight loss was one of the side effects, and sure enough I looked it up and several articles mention it. Though I wasn't really interested enough to look for any sort of anecdotal reports online, just glad I've put on a good 15+ pounds since then and feel much better as far as that goes.

 

[brokedownpalace10]

Calling a craving "psychological" isn't accurate, IMO. I think there's physical in there too.
Regardless, in Haiti people do hexes on people and they die. It's all psychological and placebo, but they're dead. The "psychological" can affect the physical strongly.
I have eczema. I can think I've been exposed to an allergen and begin to get a rash. Skin issues are one of the more susceptible to placebo. The rash is real, though.

 

[Bonch]

I’v been working on getting my dose down as low as possible recently. I’m afraid it will get banned in my state soon. I’m down to about 10-12 teaspoons a day total which is pretty good I would say. I was probably on double or triple that for a few years. I kicked it in rehab twice before (was there for other stuff too), but started up again. I’m off oxy and even weed and nic so I feel pretty good about that. I’m still kinda terrified of going through withdrawals again, but feel pretty motivated to taper down.

Cheers on quitting! Hope you feel better every day!