samsavenger
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2008
- Messages
- 42
so basically I'm currently recovering from a bout of hepatic cholestasis (liver injury) brought about by a few recreational doses of powdered kratom. It fucking blows.
Just to give some background - test results in the past have suggested that I have a somewhat sensitive liver. My bloodwork showed elevated liver enzymes for a period of about 3 weeks approx 18 months ago during a period of stress induced migraines and subsequent over-use of APAP, though the cause is not completely clear. This was resolved after total cessation of APAP and alcohol, and my blood work returned to normal after a short time. The past 18 months have been fine and my bloodwork has been normal. I'm 26, totally healthy, I don't have a drug habit, I don't smoke and I don't drink excessively or regularly.
I first used fresh Kratom in Thailand with no adverse effects. A local friend of mine bought a bag of fresh leaves from a truck driver and gave me a couple. It was very mild and not particularly noticeable. A couple of weeks later, a guy I met in a rural area offered me some pungent red liquid he’d brewed with homegrown kratom. I really felt the effect this time, but again, no adverse effects.
When I got back home to the Netherlands, I found a reputable online vendor and promptly ordered a small amount of finely powdered “thai”, “bali” and “borneo white” strains. The smell was slightly familiar, but quite different to the fresh kratom I’d had overseas. I first tried 3 grams of the thai just to get a feel for the dose. was comparable to the second time I had it in Thailand. A couple of days later I tried another few of grams with much the same effect. It was mostly unremarkable, but pleasant. I figured I’d experiment more when I had the time and put the rest aside for a rainy day.
3 weeks later, my girlfriend and I cooked up a batch of “bali” strain in a pot with boiling water (about 10 grams each, or whatever 3.5 teaspoons is). The taste was awful, the texture worse... but to my pleasant surprise, it was highly enjoyable. We spent the night sitting around listening to records in a state of euphoric sedation. It was still quite mild in comparison to heavy opiates, we were still 100% lucid and coherent. A glass of wine and a joint amplified things a great deal though. Very interesting body feeling, incredible warmth and fantastic dream-like ‘nods’ reminiscent of a moderate dose of opiates. Closing my eyes for a moment would take me into incredibly vivid dreams about my childhood home, platters of spinning colours or rolling green fields with familiar faces laughing and flying kites... This was great. awesome, cheap, relatively non-addictive organic opiate-like herb. right up my alley. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.
A few nights later, I repeated it exactly. The effects were the same. Just wonderful stuff I thought. The next week I had a little more. There was definitely no craving or sense of longing for the feeling, but it was certainly an enjoyable thing to relax after a big day. Over the course of about 2 weeks, I took kratom about 5 times - around 10 grams each time, never dosing more than once in a 48 hour period. Throughout this period I was using no medication, no drugs aside from weed and barely drinking alcohol.
After a usual enjoyable night with kratom and a glass of wine, I awoke the next morning feeling incredibly nauseated. I figured I was getting sick and carried on with my day. Eventually I was overcome with overwhelming nausea and went home. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t shit. I tried eating a banana and puked almost instantly.
I dragged myself to the doctor the next day, dehydrated and in poor shape. They took a blood test and found that my liver enzymes were through the roof. I was sent home with strict orders to go to hospital if symptoms worsen.
A couple of days later I became incredibly jaundiced and could do nothing but lie in bed shaking and sweating. The itching was fucking unbearable. My shit was like sharp grey rocks. My piss was brown, cloudy and burned like a motherfucker. My kidneys were radiating pain throughout my body and I had barely eaten a thing in 3 days. I was admitted to hospital that night. After extensive blood tests and several ultrasounds, I tested negative for all common liver diseases and showed no signs of gallstones, bile duct obstruction or anything else likely to cause such a reaction. My liver enzymes were literally off the charts.
Doctors in the Netherlands tend to take a fairly neutral and objective approach to drug use, so I was open and straightforward with the specialist about using kratom, which is quasi-legal here like most other things. He'd come across it before and was convinced that it was probably benign, just as I was. All the doctors were very baffled. In the absense of all known liver diseases, alcoholism, NSAID use and with gradually subsiding symptoms after cessation of kratom use - over the course of the week the doctors painstakingly and reluctantly isolated kratom as being the cause of my condition. Samples of the powdered kratom showed no obvious contaminants, but there is still a chance that I had taken a batch that had been contaminated with something that wasn't detected, probably not though. I hadn't known this before, but near-identical occurrences have been fairly well documented in medical literature with regards to hepatic toxicity of kratom. This study in particular bears remarkable similarity to what happened to me - http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13181-011-0155-5.pdf
I was discharged from hospital with a diagnosis of a drug-induced hepatic injury causing severe biliary cholestasis. There’s a strong chance that my liver would have failed (i.e. death) had I taken any more. A month later my jaundice has gone and I’m able to eat. I’m still feeling fatigued, weak, still experiencing abdominal pains and my liver enzymes are still abnormally high. I've lost 10 kilos and I feel like shit.. It's been very painful and it's probably going to take me a while to recover completely.
I regret being stupid enough to have thought that recreational use of kratom was safe, I advise anyone considering using it to take extreme caution as it seems that severe hepatic toxicity can occur in minimal recreational use with normal dosage. This crap has done totally disproportionate damage to my body considering the amount I used, not fun at all. If you don't want to take my word for it, take a look at the multiple published medical articles and erowid trip reports which show heavy correlations between liver injury and recreational kratom use. my advice is stay the hell away.
Just to give some background - test results in the past have suggested that I have a somewhat sensitive liver. My bloodwork showed elevated liver enzymes for a period of about 3 weeks approx 18 months ago during a period of stress induced migraines and subsequent over-use of APAP, though the cause is not completely clear. This was resolved after total cessation of APAP and alcohol, and my blood work returned to normal after a short time. The past 18 months have been fine and my bloodwork has been normal. I'm 26, totally healthy, I don't have a drug habit, I don't smoke and I don't drink excessively or regularly.
I first used fresh Kratom in Thailand with no adverse effects. A local friend of mine bought a bag of fresh leaves from a truck driver and gave me a couple. It was very mild and not particularly noticeable. A couple of weeks later, a guy I met in a rural area offered me some pungent red liquid he’d brewed with homegrown kratom. I really felt the effect this time, but again, no adverse effects.
When I got back home to the Netherlands, I found a reputable online vendor and promptly ordered a small amount of finely powdered “thai”, “bali” and “borneo white” strains. The smell was slightly familiar, but quite different to the fresh kratom I’d had overseas. I first tried 3 grams of the thai just to get a feel for the dose. was comparable to the second time I had it in Thailand. A couple of days later I tried another few of grams with much the same effect. It was mostly unremarkable, but pleasant. I figured I’d experiment more when I had the time and put the rest aside for a rainy day.
3 weeks later, my girlfriend and I cooked up a batch of “bali” strain in a pot with boiling water (about 10 grams each, or whatever 3.5 teaspoons is). The taste was awful, the texture worse... but to my pleasant surprise, it was highly enjoyable. We spent the night sitting around listening to records in a state of euphoric sedation. It was still quite mild in comparison to heavy opiates, we were still 100% lucid and coherent. A glass of wine and a joint amplified things a great deal though. Very interesting body feeling, incredible warmth and fantastic dream-like ‘nods’ reminiscent of a moderate dose of opiates. Closing my eyes for a moment would take me into incredibly vivid dreams about my childhood home, platters of spinning colours or rolling green fields with familiar faces laughing and flying kites... This was great. awesome, cheap, relatively non-addictive organic opiate-like herb. right up my alley. I thought I’d hit the jackpot.
A few nights later, I repeated it exactly. The effects were the same. Just wonderful stuff I thought. The next week I had a little more. There was definitely no craving or sense of longing for the feeling, but it was certainly an enjoyable thing to relax after a big day. Over the course of about 2 weeks, I took kratom about 5 times - around 10 grams each time, never dosing more than once in a 48 hour period. Throughout this period I was using no medication, no drugs aside from weed and barely drinking alcohol.
After a usual enjoyable night with kratom and a glass of wine, I awoke the next morning feeling incredibly nauseated. I figured I was getting sick and carried on with my day. Eventually I was overcome with overwhelming nausea and went home. I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t shit. I tried eating a banana and puked almost instantly.
I dragged myself to the doctor the next day, dehydrated and in poor shape. They took a blood test and found that my liver enzymes were through the roof. I was sent home with strict orders to go to hospital if symptoms worsen.
A couple of days later I became incredibly jaundiced and could do nothing but lie in bed shaking and sweating. The itching was fucking unbearable. My shit was like sharp grey rocks. My piss was brown, cloudy and burned like a motherfucker. My kidneys were radiating pain throughout my body and I had barely eaten a thing in 3 days. I was admitted to hospital that night. After extensive blood tests and several ultrasounds, I tested negative for all common liver diseases and showed no signs of gallstones, bile duct obstruction or anything else likely to cause such a reaction. My liver enzymes were literally off the charts.
Doctors in the Netherlands tend to take a fairly neutral and objective approach to drug use, so I was open and straightforward with the specialist about using kratom, which is quasi-legal here like most other things. He'd come across it before and was convinced that it was probably benign, just as I was. All the doctors were very baffled. In the absense of all known liver diseases, alcoholism, NSAID use and with gradually subsiding symptoms after cessation of kratom use - over the course of the week the doctors painstakingly and reluctantly isolated kratom as being the cause of my condition. Samples of the powdered kratom showed no obvious contaminants, but there is still a chance that I had taken a batch that had been contaminated with something that wasn't detected, probably not though. I hadn't known this before, but near-identical occurrences have been fairly well documented in medical literature with regards to hepatic toxicity of kratom. This study in particular bears remarkable similarity to what happened to me - http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13181-011-0155-5.pdf
I was discharged from hospital with a diagnosis of a drug-induced hepatic injury causing severe biliary cholestasis. There’s a strong chance that my liver would have failed (i.e. death) had I taken any more. A month later my jaundice has gone and I’m able to eat. I’m still feeling fatigued, weak, still experiencing abdominal pains and my liver enzymes are still abnormally high. I've lost 10 kilos and I feel like shit.. It's been very painful and it's probably going to take me a while to recover completely.
I regret being stupid enough to have thought that recreational use of kratom was safe, I advise anyone considering using it to take extreme caution as it seems that severe hepatic toxicity can occur in minimal recreational use with normal dosage. This crap has done totally disproportionate damage to my body considering the amount I used, not fun at all. If you don't want to take my word for it, take a look at the multiple published medical articles and erowid trip reports which show heavy correlations between liver injury and recreational kratom use. my advice is stay the hell away.
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![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
