In this episode, we talk about Kratom, a plant that has been around for over 2,000 years and has many uses. It s been around since ancient times and has a variety of uses. It s a plant with psychoactive properties that has helped people get off of opiates so they don t have withdrawals when they re on them. It also helps relieve pain and anxiety, and elevates your mood. It does all these great things, but the government now wants to make it a Schedule I drug, which means it s not allowed to be used in conjunction with other drugs. In this episode of the podcast, we discuss how Kratom can be used to get people off of prescription drugs, and how it can help people get back on track after getting off of them. We also talk about how it s been used to help people who have been addicted to prescription drugs and the effects it s had on their lives. If you like what we talked about, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review! if you re a supporter of the show, please give us a review and a review on iTunes and tell us what you think about it. We ll be looking out for you in the future episodes! Thank you so much for all the support we've gotten so far! -Your support has been so far, we really appreciate it. -Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! -Dedicated to all of our listeners! -Jon & God Blessings, Jon & Mike Jon -Jon and Mike and Chris and Cheers! -The Crew & Mike and Matt (and all the rest of the Crews <3 Cheers, R. Jon and Shannon Briggs Mike & Will Sarah . Jon & Paul Chad Tim Jake Tom Steve Ben Brian Thanks to: Joe Jack John Michael Jason Sam Evan Shannons Rick Chacho James Stephen Dansi And so much more! Jon talks about the Kratom and his experience with Kratom & much more!! Chris is a little bit more Nick Ryan Jordan Matt talks about it's effects on his life
00:00:14.000So I'm glad we can get you in here today because explain to everybody.
00:00:19.000First of all, if people don't know, Chris produced and what did you direct it and produce it?
00:00:24.000Bigger, Stronger, Faster and Prescription Thugs.
00:00:27.000And Prescription Thugs, which is particularly important because a lot of it was about the prescription industry and how many people get hooked.
00:01:58.000No one's ever done any studies on it being a drug, and no one's ever done any studies on it being a drug.
00:02:02.000Well, there's been actually a lot of studies on it being a supplement, but they aren't like these FDA-approved double-blind placebo studies that they're requiring for it to be on the market as a normal supplement.
00:02:19.000So we're just talking about alpha brain or some, you know, nootropics.
00:02:22.000It'll work like that and it'll elevate your mood.
00:02:25.000I mean, I don't know where the real distinction is between high and elevation of mood or where, you know, what the difference is really there.
00:02:33.000But it doesn't make you feel like it's not like I smoked pot.
00:02:36.000It's more like I had a good cup of coffee.
00:04:04.000I think a lot of times like what happened with me is I came out of anesthesia from a surgery and I was all doped up on the drugs and I didn't even know it.
00:04:10.000So it just kind of like just kept going.
00:06:00.000Well, I felt like it was probably just a good way that people could relieve pain naturally, but I felt like if someone was going to describe it to me, I thought they were going to tell me about an opiate type of effect, that it just mellows you out, but it doesn't...
00:08:09.000So where's the pressure coming from to turn this stuff into a Schedule I drug?
00:08:13.000If there's no negative response by the body, you're not having people die of overdoses, is there an LD50 rate on this stuff?
00:08:21.000Well, if you look at, you know, I mean, you're saying where is the...
00:08:25.000LD50, we should probably explain to people, lethal dose at 50%, meaning if you take 50 rats and you give them a pound of this shit, 50 of them or, you know, 25 of them will die at a certain level.
00:08:54.000He was on or withdrawing from three different psych meds that have a black box warning that says, warning, if you're a teenager, you might commit suicide.
00:09:18.000And what I really call for with Kratom is just more research.
00:09:21.000Like, I want people to put in the money to do the research to make sure that this is safe and Let's see if we can solve this opiate epidemic.
00:09:29.000Let's see if we can crack down, basically lower the amount of opiate prescriptions we have in this country.
00:10:12.000Now, I can understand this woman whose son died being, I can understand her remorse and looking to point the blame at someone, and a lot of times people are reluctant to point the blame towards something that a doctor prescribed, and they'll automatically say, well, it probably wasn't that, it was probably this other thing that's not regulated.
00:10:45.000I feel bad for her in the fact that she can't just realize that, you know, she can't look at the research and see Because when I went and interviewed her, she said, well, I'm not even sure if Kratom killed him.
00:10:56.000And this is after a gigantic – they mount this gigantic media coverage of this story, right?
00:11:27.000He's the spokesman for the DEA. And when I talked to Melvin Patterson, what he told me is that they lean on the FDA a lot for these kind of decisions, right?
00:11:36.000So they go to the FDA and they ask the FDA, can you give us an eight-point – it's like some sort of – It's like an eight-point inspection to make sure that this drug is not dangerous.
00:11:47.000And if it is dangerous, it's deemed dangerous, they'll take it off the market based on the FDA's research.
00:11:53.000So the DEA had asked the FDA for that eight-point inspection.
00:12:23.000He speaks with all these ticks and twitches in his face due to, they think, maybe PTSD and some other problems that had affected him.
00:12:30.000And now he takes Kratom and those twitches all go away.
00:12:33.000He did a video on YouTube That was kind of amazing.
00:12:36.000He stopped taking it for six days and you can see all these twitches are evident and then he goes back on the kratom and they all disappear.
00:13:03.000They want to basically take this I don't look at it as being that bad, but why make the organic kratom illegal in order to turn this into a more powerful drug?
00:13:14.000They think that they can extract some of these alkaloids, right?
00:13:20.000There's two alkaloids, metagenine and the other one is like 7-hydroxymetagenine.
00:13:24.000It's like too technical for anybody to really care about, but there's two alkaloids that they really care about.
00:13:28.000That help with opiate withdrawals and help with pain.
00:14:22.000You know, I was hoping that maybe Trump would bring in some people that would be opposite of his thinking.
00:14:27.000And, you know, it just hasn't happened.
00:14:28.000Well, he was a Democrat for a long time.
00:14:30.000I mean, Donald Trump was always a Democrat.
00:14:32.000I mean, him running as a Republican is kind of odd if you look at his history.
00:14:36.000But he's going all in with a lot of these people.
00:14:40.000And some of them are deeply opposed to marijuana legalization federally.
00:14:45.000That stuff is very counterintuitive and counter-progressive.
00:14:49.000And the marijuana legalization, we've been reading a lot about that, and it's going to be what a lot of people think might be a mess because making it recreational opens it up to Marlboro and all these other companies that make tobacco products to now start selling cannabis and turning it into what we already have.
00:15:07.000Well, I'm not opposed to them making it Commercial because I feel like the more people do it the better.
00:15:14.000We're all gonna be sure I really I really believe that I mean people say oh you're a pothead thing like that, bro But I really think it's a it I think I mean you can call it a drug But whatever it is it is a component of life that makes people calmer makes people happier makes people more sensitive I just think it's better for people I was 100% against it ever since I was in college.
00:15:34.000Like, I just thought, like, marijuana, wow, that's the worst thing, you know?
00:16:38.000I think I've said that stat several times on your show, and it's just, you can't say it enough.
00:16:42.000You know, we have this giant opiate epidemic, and we have something here.
00:16:46.000You know, in our film, we're starting to make a documentary about this, and in the film, you know, we show a guy who has a, not a huge habit, but six Vicodin a day habit and he cuts that down to zero using Kratom and we watch that you know that process because I feel like that's important to show that like hey you can actually do this now if we have people that are really really addicted to heroin and really really addicted to these other drugs they might need something like Suboxone and then Kratom you know like we don't really We don't really know.
00:17:17.000My friend Kelly Dunn, who owns the company Urban Ice that we were just talking to, he actually bought a farm up in Washington, and it's his intent.
00:17:24.000If people don't have money to go to rehab or do whatever, they can come up and visit him and get Kratom.
00:17:30.000He's actually a licensed therapist and all that stuff like that.
00:18:27.000But for me, what happened to me is very interesting.
00:18:30.000I have a lot of friends in this world of fitness and whatever, and so I just end up talking to a lot of people that try a lot of different things.
00:18:39.000So after I got done with the opiates, I was on Dr. Drew's show, and he said, well, you should try Advil and Tylenol in combination.
00:18:46.000That's going to be better than an opiate for your pain, for your chronic pain.
00:18:51.000Then I get a phone call from my friend who lives in England who tells me he just had a kidney transplant because of all the NSAIDs he was taking.
00:18:58.000Oh, meaning non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, which are Advil.
00:19:01.000Sure, yeah, Advil and Tylenol and stuff like that.
00:19:20.000But I just thought, like, well, look, taking 10 Advil and Tylenol a day, because I was taking them in combination, that just can't be good for you.
00:19:49.000I had just been filming with my brother for like five hours straight and my arthritis was like at its worst point, like the worst it could possibly be.
00:21:36.000You know, I want to hear something really interesting.
00:21:38.000I was supposed to speak at an AA meeting the other day, and I got a phone call from somebody at the AA. If I took some right now, how much should I take?
00:21:48.000But, you know, like, I was supposed to speak at an AA meeting, and I got a phone call from a good friend of mine, and she said, well, I'm confused now because I'm not sure if you're sober.
00:22:31.000So is that maybe the same sort of concern that led the DEA to take a close look at this?
00:22:36.000Because, I mean, if you look at it, I mean, everyone wants to worry that the DEA is in bed with big pharma and it's all about business and they're here to screw over the American people and keep these legal, natural things away from us.
00:22:51.000But I had the same sort of reservations.
00:22:53.000I mean, I didn't know until you came in here today, I didn't know that you could operate cars on it and doesn't fuck with you and that you take it before a drive.
00:23:01.000Like, I would have never imagined that.
00:23:04.000I don't want to be here and be irresponsible.
00:23:06.000I don't think I don't want to say, oh, everybody should take Kratom and everybody, you know, but I feel like I feel like I know that it's safe enough to try.
00:23:14.000For example, I know it's safe enough for anybody to try.
00:24:37.000But if you just get a little bit high, you're gonna be alright.
00:24:40.000Marijuana and kratom are both, they're both miracle plants.
00:24:42.000They're both plants that are put here.
00:24:44.000You know, if you believe in God, I believe that, you know, these things were put here on the planet for us to use, to heal ourselves, to feel better.
00:24:51.000There's nothing wrong with feeling better.
00:24:53.000I think we have a big aversion in this country to people being able to feel better.
00:24:56.000Like anything, you know, taking Kratom, oh, it makes you feel better.
00:27:35.000I don't even know what those things do, but I know we, like, as soon as Kratom was banned, we were on the internet looking for, like, well, what else is like it because I don't want to have to deal without it.
00:27:45.000Well, I think it was you that tweeted something, and I might have retweeted or just read it, but you tweeted something about someone getting arrested Some big drug bust where they busted him for Kratom, which wasn't even illegal.
00:27:59.000That was a guy, I think maybe because that guy's neighbors had it out for him.
00:28:04.000They sort of had it out for him, and they saw these big green bags of what they thought was drugs at his house, and the cops went to raid it, and they were like, well, we're not sure what this is, so we're going to have to arrest you.
00:28:18.000You know, the thing was when they made it illegal, I had two giant boxes of Kratom sitting in my garage and all I could think about was like, okay, the cops are going to come here and they're going to bust me because they know I'm doing a documentary about it.
00:28:30.000I'm going to be the, you know, the marked man.
00:28:32.000But I decided that like, no matter what happened, I was going to keep those boxes in my garage and I wasn't going to worry about it because I figured like, what are they going to do?
00:28:44.000So I don't really have a fear that other people have because I feel like I put everything on camera and put everything, you know, out there.
00:29:35.000It has nothing to do with it being dangerous.
00:29:37.000Well, we're definitely more aware of that kind of greed and those kind of compromises where these companies compromise various branches of the government for their own personal interest.
00:29:48.000And this Kratom is a perfect example of that because so many people, including me, know almost nothing about it.
00:29:56.000You know, this is one where they almost got in Like, before people could understand what exactly it was, which is rare in 2016. There's something like that available.
00:30:30.000You can go there and you can leave, you know, up to a 5,000 word message, you know, about Kratom.
00:30:36.000And it doesn't have to be from somebody who takes it.
00:30:39.000Like you could just be like, hey, I think this should, I watched this podcast and I really feel this needs to be researched more.
00:30:45.000And, you know, whatever, whatever you feel, Needs to be said you can just say here so you know like I went on and I left a comment About why I use it and what I like about it And I feel like everybody that does needs to do that or they're not doing their job And what is that put that back up again Jamie please it says December 21st December 1st deadline submit your comments now.
00:33:07.000It's like the most entertaining video I've ever seen, so even if it's not real, I love it, but I think it was a drug that they were selling in hedge shops down in Florida and it got banned within like, I don't know, a couple months of it being on the market.
00:34:11.000But basically what it does is anything that was on the market before 1994 gets grandfathered in and is a legal supplement.
00:34:19.000So even if they didn't do the research on it or whatever, before 1994, and that's something that Orrin Hatch put in place to kind of keep the supplement industry, help the supplement Right.
00:34:45.000In Florida, they've been selling it for 30 years.
00:34:48.000You know, they've been selling it before 1994. So I actually went to the Freedom of Information Act and we summoned the records for importation of kratom.
00:34:59.000Now, if we can prove that kratom has been imported to the United States before 1994, we have a pretty solid case to say, you know, look, this gets grandfathered in just like everything else.
00:35:11.000I mean, I'm sure they're going to make it harder than that.
00:35:13.000You know, I'm sure like if we have the proof, but I'm just going out at full blast.
00:35:16.000You know, I feel like if you go at something with everything you got and you look down every avenue, you're going to find something, you know, it's kind of like a, I feel like a lawyer right now.
00:35:28.000It's very unusual that there's something that's this well loved by the people that are taking it, but so little is known about it by most people, including me.
00:35:36.000I have to say something that's very important.
00:35:38.000The people that are against Kratom are just against the fact that they don't know a lot about it.
00:36:06.000Yeah, I interviewed her down in Florida.
00:36:07.000And she told me that, you know, look, when you talk to a mother whose baby was born addicted to Kratom, she's like, that's going to change you.
00:36:16.000And I said, can you get me that mother's name, address, and phone number so we can contact her?
00:37:09.000I take it usually every day, but I can give you some anecdotal evidence that I went to Thailand for two weeks a couple months ago, and I had been taking Kratom for four months straight.
00:39:16.000Well, not only that, if anybody would have an interest in not promoting something that's addictive, it would be a guy like you who has an intimate knowledge of what it's like to be addictive and under the spell.
00:39:27.000I think addiction needs to be looked at in a certain way, though, where you look at addiction and you go like, okay, I'm addicted to coffee.
00:40:07.000And the number one opiate addiction study they did was at University of Ole Miss, whatever that, Mississippi.
00:40:17.000So Ole Miss, Christopher McCurdy, he's a guy there doing the research, and he really feels that this could be the savior for the opiate epidemic.
00:40:26.000He feels that they need to make it stronger.
00:40:28.000He feels they need to extract it, make it stronger, and that would be used for the opiate epidemic.
00:40:33.000So that's why I said, I think there is potential for it to be studied as both a dietary supplement and as a drug.
00:40:39.000Because if you can make something out of kratom that's going to help a lot of people, I don't really see it as a big problem if it could be both.
00:41:44.000You know, when you think about it, like in Prescription Thugs, you're making this documentary on pill addiction, and then you get hurt during the middle of it, start taking pills, and become addicted to pills during the middle of a documentary on pill addiction.
00:42:08.000Well, the reason I'm doing that, the reason I do all my documentaries is because, like I said, we have the power to change the way people think and we have the power to open up people's minds about things that they might not know about.
00:42:25.000That's so important in today's day and age because it's so hard to know why a person's promoting something in one way or not promoting something in another way.
00:42:37.000It's like what is the interest behind it?
00:43:21.000Big, you know, big documentaries that are smart.
00:43:23.000Well, it's interesting as life goes on and, you know, you change and evolve and, you know, your motivations change.
00:43:30.000But I recommend your movies to a lot of people, man, particularly the prescription thugs because of this.
00:43:36.000So many issues have come up over the last, you know, it seems like the last couple decades in this country are just unprecedented numbers of people that are addicted to pills.
00:46:13.000A big problem with Kratom is most of the Kratom that's on the market, this is the only company in the entire country or world that packages Kratom like a dietary supplement.
00:46:23.000Every other supplement, if you look on the back, it'll say right here, not for human consumption.
00:47:21.000To make something a, you know, dietary supplement is a long, arduous process.
00:47:26.000And I feel like Kratom may need to go through that process because, like, we don't have enough information on it and it hadn't been studied.
00:47:33.000It's sort of something that slipped through the cracks.
00:47:51.000Soursop, I think is one of them, and Akiyuma, which is like, I don't think it's Japanese or something, but Akiyuma and Soursop, I've never tried them.
00:48:05.000But they haven't been as popular, so maybe, you know, like, I feel like they're not as popular because they're probably not as good or strong, but I don't know.
00:48:14.000So, have they isolated, like, what is the pressure to try to get it illegal?
00:48:22.000Yeah, we've kept trying to isolate, you know, and we've talked to the people that are against it, and there are Congress people that are against it.
00:48:30.000There are grieving parents that are against it.
00:48:33.000You know, like, nobody in Big Pharma is going to come out and say, hey, we're going to make this a drug and screw all of you.
00:48:38.000Like, they're not going to really say that, so it's really...
00:48:41.000When you get into Washington, like we were just in Washington for a week and everything's so shady and underhanded in my mind, like all these people are working together.
00:48:49.000They're all in cahoots, you know, like everything seemed to be like, I don't know, just the congressman that I talked to, Mark Pocan from Wisconsin, marijuana and Kratom are both illegal there and he's kind of fighting for it to be legal.
00:49:03.000And like I said, he's one of the only congresspeople I met that was like, Willing to go to bat for these kind of things.
00:49:08.000And I think we need more congresspeople like that that are looking out for the citizens.
00:50:24.000When you try to do research on it, you try to find out who's doing what or whatever, there's not a whole lot of transparency.
00:50:29.000And that's why documentary filmmakers like me have to use the Freedom of Information Act, where if we request something from the government, You know, they have to give it to us, and that's something that really helps us.
00:50:41.000So this is a, I mean, we're talking about what a rabbit hole this is, but this is a weird rabbit hole for you to have started this out as something like you're finding this plant to be beneficial, you see all these people that are benefiting from it, and you're like, hey, this is a great subject, I'm going to let the world know about it.
00:50:54.000And then as you're doing it, you start feeling this dark push for it to be Schedule 1 and to start making it legal.
00:51:47.000I mean, they've shown marijuana to cure some forms of cancer.
00:51:51.000To say there's no medicinal value for it is completely ridiculous.
00:51:55.000We need to start dumping our money into researching these plants, Because, like, look, you have these pharma companies, and I don't know if you've seen this show on Discovery where they show you how they come up with new drugs.
00:52:07.000They basically take, like, there's a machine, and it's like this fucking robot, and it takes, like, every fucking substance in the world and combines it until, like, it makes millions and millions of different...
00:52:17.000Different kind of fucking, like, things, you know?
00:52:21.000And then they start testing it on, like, every different disease to see if it works.
00:52:25.000So it's like, it's like shooting in the dark.
00:52:28.000It's like, they have no, like, they're like, there's a machine that'll just make a drug, and then they figure out if it works on something.
00:52:34.000Rather than, like, we already know that Kratom works for this, this, and this.
00:52:37.000And we already know that marijuana works for this, this, and this.
00:52:39.000Why not put the money into studying that, rather than shooting in the dark, making some weird, you know...
00:53:35.000The fact that people are going to keep that from somebody who's in pain is ridiculous.
00:53:39.000Well, I'm hoping that as time goes on, we're slowly starting to understand that it is impossible for your doctor to know all the ramifications and repercussions involved in any drug.
00:53:50.000I was just on the show, the doctors, with a doctor whose son was taking kratom.
00:54:23.000One of the dudes from Intervention was on the doctors with us, arguing like, yeah, people get addicted to Kratom all the time.
00:54:28.000And it's like, dude, you're a marketing guy.
00:54:30.000Like these people in rehab, like you gotta understand, The reason why if you Google Kratom, rehabs come up is because rehabs have marketing teams.
00:54:37.000They're trying to get as many people into the doors as they can.
00:54:41.000So they tell you Kratom's bad and they put it on their website.
00:57:37.000It was my dad being disappointed in me.
00:57:39.000It was like that conversation that really sort of shook me to the ground.
00:57:43.000Like somebody telling me I had a problem, it like kind of shook me to the core because he yelled at me when he said it and he never yelled at me.
00:57:49.000Well, sometimes that's all you need is one person's opinion who you really love.
00:59:34.000When I was doing Bigger, Stronger, Faster, it was this dude that would always hit me up online about stuff, and he kind of knew everything, so I hired him to work on this movie as a researcher and a writer, and he's been teaching me a lot about how to find stuff.
00:59:47.000Let's see what the Narconon people have to say about it.
00:59:52.000So it's narconon.org, the effects of drug abuse.
00:59:56.000It says, Kratom is a relatively new drug to the U.S. and Europe, and has been used for many years in Southeast Asia as an anti-diarrheal medicine.
01:00:12.000Kratom is the popular name for a tree, and the drug comes from its leaves.
01:00:16.000The drug may be bought in leaf form, but in this country is more likely purchased as a capsule with a powdered leaf material or chopped up in the form of a leaf that can be used for a tea or for smoking.
01:06:22.000Well, every drug has different effects.
01:06:25.000Oh man, the route back to sobriety is much the same from person to person.
01:06:30.000Recovery must include relief from incessant cravings near the beginnings of rehab.
01:06:39.000You know what we said about, we were talking, I actually heard your podcast and you brought me up on another one of your podcasts and we were talking about time, the amount of time it takes to get sober.
01:07:06.000Yeah, you go to counseling, you go to a therapist, and you talk to them about why you couldn't get off the drugs, and you tell them you're taking this, and you say, hey, let's see if we can solve this problem, you know?
01:07:18.000Like I went to the doctor and I got, when I was addicted to opiates and I would drive around my car crying, I would be crying, saying, I just want help.
01:07:27.000You know, my brother was dying from this.
01:09:56.000You know like what's great is I've actually become friends a lot of people in this Kratom community and it's not the kind of people that you would think like I feel like when I went to the Kratom March in Washington, D.C., I didn't know what kind of people I was going to meet, but I met mothers and grandmothers and all these people that were like my mom.
01:13:37.000I like this stuff better because I'm just so used to taking things like that.
01:13:41.000And I also feel like I don't want to get back into the whole...
01:13:44.000My girlfriend would flip out if I started smoking pot.
01:13:47.000But to use some edible stuff and play around with this and see if it works for pain and stuff like that to me is something that's very viable.
01:13:54.000Isn't that funny where people worry about, like, smoking is like, oh, he's smoking drugs.
01:13:59.000But if you're spraying breath spray under your tongue, it's like, ah, he's just relieving pain.
01:14:04.000You know, I just think we need to open our minds to a lot of these substances that are out there that can help us, you know?