I highly enjoy kratom, however is it just a dark dead end road like opiates?
It can be, especially if you use the stuff daily. Personally, as someone who's had problems w/ opiates/opioids for the past decade of their life, I found kratom easy to abuse and easy to justify in doing so; knowing that it's not as harmful as other opiates/opioids makes it easy to just take and take.
Will I need it just to feel normal?
Yz, I've gotten to that point (as have several others in my social group). Speaking personally, as someone with social phobias who finds it draining just to maintain casual conversation with someone, kratom makes it a breeze to talk to people and feel confident in doing so. Hell, you actually start to
enjoy it. Ain't that shit crazy? It is for me, and once you get a taste of that, the days in between kratom become harder to take until finally you just say fuck it and take it whenever you're forced to interact with someone.
Or, again speaking personally, you might try creating art one day (writing, in my case) while under influence of kratom and discover that the usual self-doubt which invariably plagues the artistic process is gone, just completely gone. You start to only create while under the influence, hereby isolating your creativity in a 6x8 cell until kratom comes strolling on by, whistling a merry tune and twirling a keyring around its enchanted finger. There's no guarantee they'll stop and unlock your cell even if you do take the substance; sometimes you just sit there waiting, trying not to fall asleep and trying to ignore the low-level but pervasive anxiety that reminds you over-and-over how you're not a real artist and how you can't create anything even when you're high and now you're just a worthless junkie.
Yeah, the withdrawals aren't as bad as comparable opiates and opioids, but they ain't too pleasant either. I would type more, but I need to sleep before work tonight. I'll just end by saying to tread lightly, be safe, and all that good well-meaning shit.
