My point isn't that it "isn't fun or felt strange". My point is that it's dangerous and addictive. It's not honest to equate it to the minor hepatotoxicity of over-the-counter NSAID painkillers. Ibuprofen does not have a 25-thousand-member subreddit for addicts trying to quit (https://www.reddit.com/r/quittingkratom/).

Fair. Therapeutically, it's a pain killer, plain and simple. When people look for more in ANY medication, then they usually start to abuse it and dependency develops. Abuse can be as simple as overuse. I'd consider taking any psychoactive drug daily to be overuse.

Patients have dependency issues with opioids, anti-anxiety drugs like benzodiazepines, or with ADD drugs like amphetamines, modafinil, or phenidates. Even antidepressants like SSRIs have extreme dependency and withdrawal which patients are often not informed of. That's why I'm focusing on dependency, not psychological addiction. Mental fortitude can usually defend against psychological addiction - but dependency on the other hand, is purely physical and a function of the dosing regimen and properties of the drug.

Many patients use the aforementioned drugs responsibly for decades. It's not too far from the case of drinking problems. If one fills a void in their life with alcohol, they'll end up addicted. If a businessman imbibes alcohol occasionally before speeches as a relaxant, without becoming overly reliant on it, they won't develop dependency or addiction.

Being an addict has probably scorned you regarding the therapeutic nature of neuroactive chemicals. And that may be for your best.

I agree, most people are too weak to take even a mildly addictive narcotic like morphine or xanax. But kratom is not in the same league. And it is a joke to taper off of. I've done it multiple times before.

Any street drugs are going to be of dubious physical effect, and cause confusing withdrawal symptoms as they are often inaccurate, impure, or adulterated. Do you think a large majority of /r/quittingkratom knows what's in their kratom - did they buy lab tested product? Most are buying from local shops without any understanding that everything we put in our bodies should be of stringent quality and purity.

Half of the subreddit could be withdrawing from Fentanyl without even knowing, while putting all their blame for their horrible withdrawal symptoms on kratom. The unregulated market severely distorts public knowledge of the plant's real properties.

May I ask, did you ever take prescription morphine? Did you get your kratom from a cGMP lab-testing vendor that publicly releases labs? If not, your experiences with these chemicals may in actuality be experiences with other chemicals.

Anyhow, you seem extremely in opposition to the notion of responsible medicating so it's doubtful you will have a discussion with me. But in the case you do, I appreciate it.

I'm happy to have a discussion if you're willing to accept that kratom is addictive.

Suggesting that the 25k kratom addicts on that subreddit all took fentanyl-laced kratom, and kratom itself is absolutely non-addictive, is delusional nonsense which I'm not going to engage with.

If you want to engage on the basis of reality, I'm very happy to chat. I think you'll find I'm a hell of a lot more open to healthy opioid use than 99% of the people you'll find on this planet, but I'm not going to enable you in your delusions.

I don't deny it being addictive. It's just not as addictive as the prescription opioids. I'm sure a lot of those users on /r/quittingkratom just took too much of it and dug a hole too deep. What exactly do you hope to accomplish here? I am not telling people to do kratom for fun. All I really stated was that it's a good alternative to prescription painkillers. Which I really do believe based on my own experience as a pre-med student and as a chronic pain patient myself.