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kratom - 2nd time - hepatotoxic, ER w/ liver problems

hydroazuanacaine

hydroazuanacaine

bluelighter
Joined
May 17, 2007
Messages
8,497
there are countless threads about this on drug forums across the internet. but they're buried under the more abundant threads talking about how great and, other than addiction risk, benign the drug is. making mine in the hopes that a few more people discovering kratom approach it with caution. it's foolish that this risk is not mentioned more often in kratom threads.

recently i ordered a couple ounces of kratom powder online. this was close to my first time. i took kratom once in college, and didn't think much of it. anyway, i was giving up green and thought this might help during that first week or two. i didn't think much of it this time either, but continued to take it everyday because it was alright and i had it. like 2 - 3 rounded teaspoons twice a day. started to get abdominal pain, and figured i was getting heartburn from the kratom. cut my use back, but continued taking it for another day or two.

the pain increased until i was waking up at night in horrible pain. stopped taking the kratom. continued having horrible pain. got worse and worse every night. i don't suffer from heartburn. people on message boards were complaining about extreme heartburn from kratom, so that's what i figured it was. i couldn't believe people with heartburn had it so bad. ended up leaving work early one day because it was too much. was pacing in my living room until it crossed a line and i realized there was no way this was heartburn and even if it was, i needed help. other than a few instances of blunt physical trauma that did not last nearly as long, this was the worst pain i've been in. got a ride to the ER.

told them about the abdominal pain, but not the kratom. they did blood/urine tests. told me i had hepatitis, probably hepatitis a. freaked me the fuck out because that's all they said. person who drove me to the ER was in the room with me. after doc left the room, that person explained hepatitis a was not like b or c and went away. don't know why the asshole physician's assistant didn't mention that. anyway, they did a hep screen and sent it to a gp. made an appt with that doc for a few days later.

in the meantime i did some searching armed with a new keyword. found so many people telling my exact same story. and so many heads saying it was impossible and kratom is perfectly benign. used common sense and figured i didn't have some third world disease and people complaining of the problem were legit. got hep a screen back, and yeah i did not have viral hepatitis. did another blood test and liver enzyme levels were moving in the right direction.

pseudo-metanalysis of drug forums suggests people are in one group or the other. i didn't see people saying they'd been using kratom for year before the pain appeared, only to discover how much damage they'd done during that time. but there's no research to confirm. levels of hepatoxicity could be more of a spectrum. i didn't give my leftover ounces to anyone because i don't think it's worth the risk. i'm glad it was two weeks and then unbearable pain. i can't imagine how terrible for my health it would have been if the negative effects were less immediate/pronounced and i made a habit of kratom.

it seems that in a small subset of users, kratom is very hepatotoxic. maybe like how some people can't break down codeine. if you start taking the drug and begin to experience abdominal pain -- different from nausea --- it's serious and should discontinue use immediately.

edit:
oh, and the pain became more bearable after a week or less of abstinence. though it peaked two or so days after i had stopped taking kratom. felt like shit for two weeks after. about a month after, i'm still not 100 percent but it's no longer a problem. have a follow up appt with gp again in a month or to make sure everything went back to normal.
 
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Isn't hepatitus A viral? That would mean that the kratom was contaminated with the virus, not that your body can't process it. Hepatotoxic chemicals can cause general hepatitus(which is just an inflamation of the liver), but not hepatitus A because it's a viral infection. It would make sense that you could get hepatitis A from kratom tho, I've known people who got it from a chinese buffet. It just means the Indonesian processing your kratom didn't wash after pooping, resulting in fecal particles with your kratom. I have seen reports of kratom hepatitis on the internets before tho, so maybe hepatitus A is a common virus to find on kratom leaves... gross...
 
it's a lot of text and i've got weird punctuation rules for the internet, so easy to miss ...

hydroazuanacaine said:
anyway, they did a hep screen and sent it to a gp. made an appt with that doc for a few days later.

...

got hep a screen back, and yeah i did not have viral hepatitis. did another blood test and liver enzyme levels were moving in the right direction.
Click to expand...
 
I don't think there's any question that kratom has a strong impact on the liver. I'm curious if it is a function of the leaf powder or the active alkaloids themselves.

How long were you using at that dose, if you don't mind me asking? Also, was it a tea, or were you ingesting the leaf powder?
 
i don't have a scale. i was taking doses of 2 - 3 rounded teaspoons. usually twice a day for the first week. then down to once a day for a couple days. of the finely ground powder. just in a cup with some warm water and downing it.

edit:
or maybe they were level. i was switching it up because it didn't really matter. it did not have a strong effect with me so i wasn't worried about precise dosing. i think i went through about 2.5 ounces over 2 weeks, but hardly taking any at all toward the end of the second week because i was starting to feel sick.
 
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Great report, but bad experience. Hopefully you're okay now. Kratom isn't well studied, well a lot of the substances we take aren't either. It's good to know that you went to the doc and were able to cure yourself. They might not know all these new substances well, but they know the human body very well. Anyway, it's nice to put this out there in case someone needs this info. Thanks. :)
 
Wow, I'm glad it isn't that way for me. I was addicted to kratom for 7 years and then for another 3 I used it or poppy tea. I would use raw leaf powder, up to 10 grams, up to 5 times a day, every single day. Actually during the end of that time, before I had quit, I had a physical done and my liver looked clean as a whistle.
 
^ That's interesting. There are a few reports floating around of hepatitis after kratom use and at least one documentation of "hepatic face" in native users of the plant. I wonder if it's purely individual body chemistry at play, or if it's related to specific strains or contaminants as well...
 
I kinda figure it must have something to do with individual body chemistry, if it's possible for very little use to cause this (and I have seen more than one report indicating this is possible), where incredibly excessive chronic use for me produced no negative health effects (that I detected, but certainly not on my liver) after many years. Howevere I have had an issue from kava... when I was trying to quit opiates I yo-yoed a lot... when I was withdrawing I would take a lot of kava, 3-5 times a day, because it helped a bit. After 2 weeks of that daily, I suddenly started getting very sick... a lot of abdomen pain, really bad pain, and fever, and my skin started getting pale/yellow. Finally I realized it was probably the kava (when my skin started yellowing) and I promptly stopped (and started using kratom again the next day). The sickness lingered for like 6 more hours and then quickly got better and I was fine the next day. But certainly it was the kava hurting my liver.
 
Kratom seems totally fine for most - it would be really useful to find out what goes off in these idiosycratic cases - bad batches or individual chemistry
 
From all the reading I did online, of anecdotal reports since there's no studies, it seemed that kratom is totally fine for the vast majority of users on the liver, but can cause big problems for the few. Also, it seemed that if you were one of those people that had an issue, you definitely knew it.

As for me, I took kratom about three times a day for over a year, and never had issues. Although it definitely made bowel movements less frequent :(
 
I wAs taking it twice a day for a year and I started having some weird pains in different areas of my abdomen

So I said duck this I'm cutting WAY back....now I'm taking it 2-3 times a week and I'm so glad I did....it is much more effective that way....twice a day or even daily really makes it lose it's magic
 
I have chronic hep c so I need to take blood tests frequently. I take kratom. My liver enzymes were not significantly changed during the times I was taking it as opposed to the times I was not.

I think it boils down to individual body chemistry. My body cannot tolerate codeine. I don't get a buzz from it, and I get lots of hives and extreme itchiness and my breathing becomes labored. It might be that some people have a hard time processing the alkaloids through the liver....this is just a thought, I am in no way a scientist or chemist.

In fact, I will post the next two liver enzymes results in this thread with a journal of how much kratom I was taking in the interim.
 
Peacephrog1972 said:
I wAs taking it twice a day for a year and I started having some weird pains in different areas of my abdomen

So I said duck this I'm cutting WAY back....now I'm taking it 2-3 times a week and I'm so glad I did....it is much more effective that way....twice a day or even daily really makes it lose it's magic
Click to expand...

It sure does. Kratom is best used non-regularly, but at least giving day(s) between dosages is important. I got really, really addicted to kratom, my use escalated over the course of 7 years from once a day (almost immediately) to 4-5 times a day. At that point, I'd take it before bed and wake up like clockwork at 5:45am, in withdrawals, take more, sleep for a couple of hours, get up, take it again within a few hours, etc. It was horrible. I actually experienced physical dependence from a few months of taking it once daily and sometimes twice. It worked well for a long time through this but the initial magic of it wore off quick, and by the end I didn't even feel it anymore, it just made me feel normal instead of in opiate withdrawal. It's a good substance, so best to use it just sometimes so it keeps its magic and you avoid issues. I think any degree of regularity is probably going to lead to diminished effects over time, but daily will for damn sure.
 
It got to the point at taking it twice A day that effects were minimal....then cut down to once a day and still hardly any effects

Now I can take it 3 times a week and it feels like it should, and lasts SO much longer than when I was using once a day at the beginning!

I can actually notice effects for like 6-8 hours after I take it....the way it should be ;-)
 
I took kratom a handful of times. The first time was bliss, but the last two times I took it, I got terrible pain in my lower abdomen, so it's definitely not for me.
 
It can cause pretty intense nausea for me if I take to much....but as far as having a sharp pain or something of that nature, yeah I'd be freaked out enough to stay away.....nausea and constipation are the main negatives I get
 
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