Published on: 01 Nov 00:12

Image source: https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/kratom-wha...

Ever heard of kratom?

I hadn't. Until about 2015. It's a collection of tree species in Southeast Asia. If you dry and crush the leaves, then drink them with water on an empty stomach, the locals report sensations of delicious internal warmth, persisting for several hours. Apparently kratom had remained a local SE Asian delicacy/recreational-drug for centuries, and only recently penetrated various US subcultures. People crow about it. By all accounts it's the serious tits. I figured I'd order some and try some.

And god yes. It seriously was. Perked my mood up something wonderfully.

I researched further. Turns out its internal active ingredients are a mixture of opioids, a relative of alkaloids, a chemical relative of caffeine. Its proponents tote it as a milder, healthier alternative to the opiate epidemic sweeping much of the USA. Quitting even legally prescribed opiate drugs is by all accounts hell on earth. But take some kratom and your internal hell deflates to mere mild discomfort.

But that's another story. I'd never gone near opiates. Kratom seems fab nonetheless. I persisted.

Fast forward five years. I've got slightly-longer-than-shoulder-length hair. I'd not ever been able to grow it longer, and not for lack of trying. Popular opinion seems to be that everyone has different rates at which they shed their hair, or break it, or get split ends, or damage it in some other way, and no-one's damage rate is exactly zero: if you grow your hair, then as it lengthens, one's opportunities for damage and breakage and shedding and overall follicular attrition increase, and eventually the attrition rate and the growth rate reach equilibrium.

Okay fair enough. I'd figured I'd hit this equilibrium. Don't we all? I'd never had cause to wonder if kratom might affect this.

Until I discovered reddit.com/r/quittingkratom.

And oh man. Its users claim prolonged kratom usage has a gazillion awful side effects. Not only hair damage and shedding (and some women were bemoaning losing up to three quarters of their hair), but all kinds of other crap: inhibition of vitamin uptakes and nutrient absorption, tummy microbiome damage, dehydration, skin damage, premature aging, loads of other stuff.

Geez. In the last year or two, I can't deny I'd received or overheard comments from more than a few well-meaning family members, remarking on how apparently I'd visibly aged. Again, at the time I'd figured this was just regular ol' passage of time. Come on, I'm 37. Don't we all age eventually?

Sure. But /r/quittingkratom's consensus is that this kratom gunk vastly accelerates it. I pored through comment thread after comment thread, page after page, of people all crowing the same two claims: (1) long-term kratom usage seriously messed up their health; and (2) within a few months of quitting, their skin resumed its former radiant glow, their hair thickened and strengthened and shot down their backs, and their health cleared up in a ton of other ways.

That does it, I vowed. Time to quit for good.

And I did. That was back in May.

So. Have I experienced these same health resurrections? Well. One of my more morbidly hilarious domestic habits in recent years has been to time my shower-cleaning schedule to the shower's drain clogging from all my shedding hair. Takes about three weeks.

Until I quit kratom. At some point in September, I thought "huh, the shower's looking a bit grubbier than usual, when did I last clean it? I ... honestly can't remember! It's been ages! But the shower drain is draining perfectly ... wait ... oh, I've stopped shedding hair!"

Yup. Thicker hair, growing faster, shinier, tougher, fewer breakages whilst combing, it's awesome. Additionally, I'm now also seeing thousands of new hairs growing. I first noticed it a few weeks ago: I was combing my hair, standard practice ... and for the life of me could not figure out why my hair had suddenly become so much more frizzy. No amount of combing would flatten this extra frizz. It took bloody ages to realise that this wasn't my existing hair getting frizzier: no, it was entirely new hair-strand growth, all 1-2 inches in length.

My head is starting to look like I'm wearing a shoulder-length wig over the top of two inches' growth of my real hair. It's insane.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily against slight-to-moderate kratom usage. Once in a while is probably fine. But sure as hell not every day. I was putting away ~60g/day for a while. No longer!

It's also rather expensive.