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snarpI've been trying out an herb called kratom as an antidepressant for the past week or so, out of frustration with the prescription drugs I've been put on. I was talking about the experiment under a lock, because I've been trying not to post too much in public about my personal gloom-and-doom, on the basis that most people are here for the nerd stuff.
But Tennessee is talking about banning the stuff, which is something of which I really disapprove. I live in Kentucky, so the legislators in question don't really have any reason to listen to me, but I thought I should make these posts public so that they're google-able for Tennesseans doing research. Also, obviously, in hopes of dissuading Kentucky from following suit.
I've read a lot of stories of people who can't afford prescription drugs using kratom to manage depression, chronic pain, and exhaustion - that's why I decided to try it in the first place. And I've also seen stories, like this one on Reddit, of people addicted to dangerous opiates like prescription painkillers and heroin, using it to taper off their use, because it acts like an opiate and helps them with withdrawal symptoms. Its own withdrawal symptoms are comparatively really mild, too.
This is a really big deal, because kratom seems to be nearly impossible to overdose on - as anyone who reads my blog knows, I'm pretty paranoid about taking even over-the-counter meds, so I did a lot of research before ordering the stuff. I really haven't found any stories of anyone hurting themselves with it; the only thing close is a news article about a guy ending up in the ER because he was vomiting. And that doesn't sound like an overdose to me. The stuff's well-known to cause nausea in high volumes.
If kratom is really as safe as it appears to be, and it helps people with addictions to drugs that can actually kill them, banning it would be unbelievably stupid. Opiate addiction, particularly prescription painkillers, is a terrible problem in Appalachia; I've dealt with a lot of addicts through work, and I've seen how hard it is to get off that stuff. Keeping people who genuinely want to get clean from accessing an inexpensive tool to help them would be really irresponsible.
And frankly, barring the stuff without having any good evidence that it's dangerous doesn't make any sense. Louisiana chose to deal with kratom by requiring that it not be sold to people under eighteen; that makes sense to me. A ban doesn't.
Okay, there's enough of me blogging at legislators who aren't reading this. Under the cut I'm going to talk a little about my medical history and explain why I've been doing this, as context for people who haven't read my depressing locked posts.
From fall of 2010 to the end of last year I worked full-time in my father's law firm as a paralegal. About 80% of it was getting information from desperately unhappy low-income individuals in terrible situations. I worked primarily on plaintiffs' cases, not criminal, and for various reasons most of the clients I dealt with were elderly or seriously ill. About a dozen people passed away while I was working on their cases, including one relatively young woman to whom I'd become pretty close. She had cancer and couldn't afford to get it treated.
So, probably unsurprisingly, last spring I had a depressive episode. I kept working (or, trying to) for the rest of the year, but finally decided that I needed to stop, because I felt I wasn't earning my paycheck. Not going to talk too much about this! Sorry, depression's not actually interesting, I just sit around feeling tired and awful a lot.
The medications I've been on are as follows. You will see shortly why I'm getting frustrated with prescription drugs.
* Zyprexa - Helped even out my moods so my bad days weren't as bad, but my good days mostly disappeared. The side effects were unpleasant, too.
* Prozac - Had very little effect and unpleasant side effects.
* Effexor - Worked pretty well, but the side effects were so terrible that I didn't get much benefit out of it. I stuck with this for the longest hoping I'd get used to it, but it just wasn't going to happen; it messed up my breathing and vision, and I couldn't sleep through the night. None of this was conducive to my goal of being able to work again.
* Lexapro - What I'm taking now. Doesn't work nearly as well as the Effexor, but the side effects are milder. It still messes up my vision and sleep, but I've had only occasional shakiness and difficulty breathing. I'm presently taking the kratom along with it rather than in place of it.
* Ativan - My doctor recently prescribed me a low dose of this to take when I'm anxious and/or can't sleep, but it makes me really uncomfortable, and doesn't help much with the insomnia.
So, I did some research on non-prescription alternatives. What everyone says is, of course, that the best natural antidepressant is diet and exercise. Yeah, well. My diet is so obnoxiously healthy that I've had doctors make fun of me about it, and I'm a normal weight and exercise two or three times a week. Before I got sick, I was five pounds underweight and exercised every day, but I don't have the energy for that anymore.
So, that stuff doesn't help in my case. People recommend St. John's Wort, but that's been studied and works about as well as a placebo, so forget that. Psilocybin is illegal and anyway makes me nervous. Kratom came next on the list, and that's what I've been trying.
My first three logs, which I initially posted privately, are below, followed by today's. I've made a couple edits to the older ones to make them more understandable, as I'm not always very careful about clarity in private posts.
Kratom Experiment 1 - May 13th
It turns out that doing drugs just makes me tidy the kitchen up and make tea.
I slept really hard until friggin' 1:30 PM for some reason, god. Either neither of my alarms went off, or I zombied over and turned them off. I was clearly running a much worse sleep deficit than I thought. I had a slight headache from caffeine withdrawal, because I'm trying to get off the coffee addiction, but decided not to take a Tylenol.
Anyway, I put a teaspoon of "Bali Indo" kratom in a smoothie at around 1:45, then decided to clean and do some cooking. I got a decent amount done, and I definitely didn't get tired as fast as usual; I kept at it for an hour, even!
But that may just be the result of being caught up on sleep for once. I maybe felt a little jittery, the way I do on Effexor, but otherwise I didn't notice anything much. It didn't make the headache go away.
I still felt okay when I was done, so I decided to go on the treadmill for a while, and put on an episode Coffee Prince on the crappy tablet, on the basis that that's not very visually exciting, and also on the basis that no one can feel sad while watching Yoon Eun-hye do stuff. I couldn't really keep my eyes on it the whole time, just focused on the subtitles when my vision started overheating, but I kept watching for about seventeen minutes. At that point I'd done a mile and couldn't really keep my eyes on the screen anymore, so I got off.
And I felt weirdly pretty pleasant afterwards? I don't get an endorphin high from exercise; maybe this is what that feels like. Or maybe I'm just imagining it! I mean, for all I know the stuff in the baggie was finely-ground parsley. It's not like there's any regulation on online kratom dealers.
Anyway, took a shower and walked the dogs, and am now sitting here typing this. Feel pretty okay, energy levels decent, but mildly jittery. I'm not sure how readable this post is, but I'm also too visually tired from all that strenuous TV viewing to go back and tidy it up. We'll see if I crash or anything.
(Postscript: I didn't, but the effects tapered off within maybe four hours, and then I was pretty tired the rest of the day. A potential problem with this log is that after the kratom wears off I just go back to my normal state, which is tired, gloomy, and unable to concentrate very well. This means I end up writing these posts while the stuff's still in effect, which may make them sound more optimistic than they should.)
Kratom Experiment 2 - May 15th
Putting at minimum one day between uses because of possibility of dependency. The world's timidest person experimenting with the world's mildest drug is not very interesting.
They gave me a free sample of something ostensibly stronger than the stuff I ordered: this is what I used the first time, and this is what I used today. Again, I used a teaspoon mixed into my breakfast smoothie.
I was talking to Mom right after I drank the thing, before she showered for work, and told her, "You know, this being an unregulated industry and all, I've got no idea whether this stuff's even what it claims to be. It might not even do anything."
She said, "Well, you don't seem stoned to me."
By the time she got out of the shower it was clear that the stuff was doing something - much more so than with the other kind. I started sweating, and felt alarmingly bouncy and warm. My joints, particularly, felt warm, the same feeling that I tentatively identified as an endorphin high the other day.
As of two hours after taking the stuff, I now feel an oppressive level of mellowness, so pleasant a sensation of being at peace that my swollen heart may grow to block out the sun and end all life on earth. Fear me.
I'm not good at being mellow, see. This makes me kind of nervous.
I felt energetic enough to do some cleaning again, and was able to shave without nicking myself, which has been hard for me recently; I've been having shaking again. I'm also breathing without difficulty, which has been enough of a problem that I've been thinking of going back to my inhaler. That's a nice bonus.
The stuff doesn't appear to be helping with my visual focus at all. I didn't have any reason to expect that it would, but I reserve the right to be disappointed every time my eyes don't fucking focus, thanks. It may actually be making it worse, as I'm having trouble re-reading this post to check for typos, and that's usually a problem I don't get until late afternoon. (Sorry for any typos, incidentally.)
Feeling very groggy now, so I may try to take a nap. The sleepiness probably isn't directly due to the kratom, as I slept pretty badly last night.
(Postscript: Yeah, that was clearly way too big of a dose.
After writing this post, I tried to take a nap but couldn't get to sleep, so I read for a while instead. As I said, I don't really think my sleeplessness is related to the kratom, as I'm a chronic insomniac.)
Kratom Experiment 3 - May 17th
See, this stuff feels really pleasant when I first take it, and I can't say I don't enjoy that aspect of this experiment. But that also makes me nervous, because I keep thinking of opiate addicts I've known. [Here I'm excising some details about a person I know. Sorry, that's not for public consumption.]
Anyway, details about the world's most boring person's drug experiment. I took a teaspoon of the milder stuff in a smoothie about two and a half hours ago, and was getting the nice kind of "burn" feeling and feeling more energetic before I finished it. I did my usual morning chores, then some extra cooking and cleaning, and I still feel pretty good.
The energy from this stuff only seems to last about four hours. I've been researching a little, and it seems as if the powder, which is what I've been using, metabolizes more quickly than do crushed leaves and stems. Which is not unexpected! So I may try getting some of those instead.
It definitely does help with my carpal tunnel and the pain in my left elbow, but I'm not noticing any real effect on the heat headaches.
(Postscript: Later in the afternoon I was feeling very tired, because I only slept five or six hours the night before, and took a quarter-teaspoon of the "Samsara" kratom to see if it would help me stay awake until evening; I didn't want to take a nap and throw my sleep schedule off even worse. That worked okay, but not really any better than coffee.)
Kratom Experiment 4 - May 18th
I'm going to try stepping up to once a day for a little while; online reports indicate that you can do that with small doses without too great a loss in effect, and I doubt the withdrawal will be any worse than Effexor was. And if I'm wrong about that, I'll at least have some experimental data to report here.
Anyway, I slept about eleven or twelve hours last night and felt really groggy when I woke up; I took a full sleeping pill instead of a half like usual, because I hadn't slept through the night in days and was getting loopy. One of the reasons I don't like to take a full sleeping pill is that the things give me nightmares; I had very unpleasant ones last night.
I took a heaping teaspoon (more than usual) of the milder kratom in my breakfast smoothie. This woke me up pretty well, but I had some coffee afterwards because, uh. I miss coffee. (I'm weak.)
Then I spent a while polishing some of Mom's silver and pewter stuff, which I have been trying to rescue from her terrible neglect. I finished a tray and got a jug halfway done before my wrists got too bad for me to keep going. Then I did some reading, but my eyes were bothering me, and I kept zoning out and brooding over my nightmares. Tried taking a half-teaspoon of the Samsara, woke up and felt better, and started writing the introduction to this post, at the very top there.
And that gets me up to date for the moment.
But Tennessee is talking about banning the stuff, which is something of which I really disapprove. I live in Kentucky, so the legislators in question don't really have any reason to listen to me, but I thought I should make these posts public so that they're google-able for Tennesseans doing research. Also, obviously, in hopes of dissuading Kentucky from following suit.
I've read a lot of stories of people who can't afford prescription drugs using kratom to manage depression, chronic pain, and exhaustion - that's why I decided to try it in the first place. And I've also seen stories, like this one on Reddit, of people addicted to dangerous opiates like prescription painkillers and heroin, using it to taper off their use, because it acts like an opiate and helps them with withdrawal symptoms. Its own withdrawal symptoms are comparatively really mild, too.
This is a really big deal, because kratom seems to be nearly impossible to overdose on - as anyone who reads my blog knows, I'm pretty paranoid about taking even over-the-counter meds, so I did a lot of research before ordering the stuff. I really haven't found any stories of anyone hurting themselves with it; the only thing close is a news article about a guy ending up in the ER because he was vomiting. And that doesn't sound like an overdose to me. The stuff's well-known to cause nausea in high volumes.
If kratom is really as safe as it appears to be, and it helps people with addictions to drugs that can actually kill them, banning it would be unbelievably stupid. Opiate addiction, particularly prescription painkillers, is a terrible problem in Appalachia; I've dealt with a lot of addicts through work, and I've seen how hard it is to get off that stuff. Keeping people who genuinely want to get clean from accessing an inexpensive tool to help them would be really irresponsible.
And frankly, barring the stuff without having any good evidence that it's dangerous doesn't make any sense. Louisiana chose to deal with kratom by requiring that it not be sold to people under eighteen; that makes sense to me. A ban doesn't.
Okay, there's enough of me blogging at legislators who aren't reading this. Under the cut I'm going to talk a little about my medical history and explain why I've been doing this, as context for people who haven't read my depressing locked posts.
From fall of 2010 to the end of last year I worked full-time in my father's law firm as a paralegal. About 80% of it was getting information from desperately unhappy low-income individuals in terrible situations. I worked primarily on plaintiffs' cases, not criminal, and for various reasons most of the clients I dealt with were elderly or seriously ill. About a dozen people passed away while I was working on their cases, including one relatively young woman to whom I'd become pretty close. She had cancer and couldn't afford to get it treated.
So, probably unsurprisingly, last spring I had a depressive episode. I kept working (or, trying to) for the rest of the year, but finally decided that I needed to stop, because I felt I wasn't earning my paycheck. Not going to talk too much about this! Sorry, depression's not actually interesting, I just sit around feeling tired and awful a lot.
The medications I've been on are as follows. You will see shortly why I'm getting frustrated with prescription drugs.
* Zyprexa - Helped even out my moods so my bad days weren't as bad, but my good days mostly disappeared. The side effects were unpleasant, too.
* Prozac - Had very little effect and unpleasant side effects.
* Effexor - Worked pretty well, but the side effects were so terrible that I didn't get much benefit out of it. I stuck with this for the longest hoping I'd get used to it, but it just wasn't going to happen; it messed up my breathing and vision, and I couldn't sleep through the night. None of this was conducive to my goal of being able to work again.
* Lexapro - What I'm taking now. Doesn't work nearly as well as the Effexor, but the side effects are milder. It still messes up my vision and sleep, but I've had only occasional shakiness and difficulty breathing. I'm presently taking the kratom along with it rather than in place of it.
* Ativan - My doctor recently prescribed me a low dose of this to take when I'm anxious and/or can't sleep, but it makes me really uncomfortable, and doesn't help much with the insomnia.
So, I did some research on non-prescription alternatives. What everyone says is, of course, that the best natural antidepressant is diet and exercise. Yeah, well. My diet is so obnoxiously healthy that I've had doctors make fun of me about it, and I'm a normal weight and exercise two or three times a week. Before I got sick, I was five pounds underweight and exercised every day, but I don't have the energy for that anymore.
So, that stuff doesn't help in my case. People recommend St. John's Wort, but that's been studied and works about as well as a placebo, so forget that. Psilocybin is illegal and anyway makes me nervous. Kratom came next on the list, and that's what I've been trying.
My first three logs, which I initially posted privately, are below, followed by today's. I've made a couple edits to the older ones to make them more understandable, as I'm not always very careful about clarity in private posts.
Kratom Experiment 1 - May 13th
It turns out that doing drugs just makes me tidy the kitchen up and make tea.
I slept really hard until friggin' 1:30 PM for some reason, god. Either neither of my alarms went off, or I zombied over and turned them off. I was clearly running a much worse sleep deficit than I thought. I had a slight headache from caffeine withdrawal, because I'm trying to get off the coffee addiction, but decided not to take a Tylenol.
Anyway, I put a teaspoon of "Bali Indo" kratom in a smoothie at around 1:45, then decided to clean and do some cooking. I got a decent amount done, and I definitely didn't get tired as fast as usual; I kept at it for an hour, even!
But that may just be the result of being caught up on sleep for once. I maybe felt a little jittery, the way I do on Effexor, but otherwise I didn't notice anything much. It didn't make the headache go away.
I still felt okay when I was done, so I decided to go on the treadmill for a while, and put on an episode Coffee Prince on the crappy tablet, on the basis that that's not very visually exciting, and also on the basis that no one can feel sad while watching Yoon Eun-hye do stuff. I couldn't really keep my eyes on it the whole time, just focused on the subtitles when my vision started overheating, but I kept watching for about seventeen minutes. At that point I'd done a mile and couldn't really keep my eyes on the screen anymore, so I got off.
And I felt weirdly pretty pleasant afterwards? I don't get an endorphin high from exercise; maybe this is what that feels like. Or maybe I'm just imagining it! I mean, for all I know the stuff in the baggie was finely-ground parsley. It's not like there's any regulation on online kratom dealers.
Anyway, took a shower and walked the dogs, and am now sitting here typing this. Feel pretty okay, energy levels decent, but mildly jittery. I'm not sure how readable this post is, but I'm also too visually tired from all that strenuous TV viewing to go back and tidy it up. We'll see if I crash or anything.
(Postscript: I didn't, but the effects tapered off within maybe four hours, and then I was pretty tired the rest of the day. A potential problem with this log is that after the kratom wears off I just go back to my normal state, which is tired, gloomy, and unable to concentrate very well. This means I end up writing these posts while the stuff's still in effect, which may make them sound more optimistic than they should.)
Kratom Experiment 2 - May 15th
Putting at minimum one day between uses because of possibility of dependency. The world's timidest person experimenting with the world's mildest drug is not very interesting.
They gave me a free sample of something ostensibly stronger than the stuff I ordered: this is what I used the first time, and this is what I used today. Again, I used a teaspoon mixed into my breakfast smoothie.
I was talking to Mom right after I drank the thing, before she showered for work, and told her, "You know, this being an unregulated industry and all, I've got no idea whether this stuff's even what it claims to be. It might not even do anything."
She said, "Well, you don't seem stoned to me."
By the time she got out of the shower it was clear that the stuff was doing something - much more so than with the other kind. I started sweating, and felt alarmingly bouncy and warm. My joints, particularly, felt warm, the same feeling that I tentatively identified as an endorphin high the other day.
As of two hours after taking the stuff, I now feel an oppressive level of mellowness, so pleasant a sensation of being at peace that my swollen heart may grow to block out the sun and end all life on earth. Fear me.
I'm not good at being mellow, see. This makes me kind of nervous.
I felt energetic enough to do some cleaning again, and was able to shave without nicking myself, which has been hard for me recently; I've been having shaking again. I'm also breathing without difficulty, which has been enough of a problem that I've been thinking of going back to my inhaler. That's a nice bonus.
The stuff doesn't appear to be helping with my visual focus at all. I didn't have any reason to expect that it would, but I reserve the right to be disappointed every time my eyes don't fucking focus, thanks. It may actually be making it worse, as I'm having trouble re-reading this post to check for typos, and that's usually a problem I don't get until late afternoon. (Sorry for any typos, incidentally.)
Feeling very groggy now, so I may try to take a nap. The sleepiness probably isn't directly due to the kratom, as I slept pretty badly last night.
(Postscript: Yeah, that was clearly way too big of a dose.
After writing this post, I tried to take a nap but couldn't get to sleep, so I read for a while instead. As I said, I don't really think my sleeplessness is related to the kratom, as I'm a chronic insomniac.)
Kratom Experiment 3 - May 17th
See, this stuff feels really pleasant when I first take it, and I can't say I don't enjoy that aspect of this experiment. But that also makes me nervous, because I keep thinking of opiate addicts I've known. [Here I'm excising some details about a person I know. Sorry, that's not for public consumption.]
Anyway, details about the world's most boring person's drug experiment. I took a teaspoon of the milder stuff in a smoothie about two and a half hours ago, and was getting the nice kind of "burn" feeling and feeling more energetic before I finished it. I did my usual morning chores, then some extra cooking and cleaning, and I still feel pretty good.
The energy from this stuff only seems to last about four hours. I've been researching a little, and it seems as if the powder, which is what I've been using, metabolizes more quickly than do crushed leaves and stems. Which is not unexpected! So I may try getting some of those instead.
It definitely does help with my carpal tunnel and the pain in my left elbow, but I'm not noticing any real effect on the heat headaches.
(Postscript: Later in the afternoon I was feeling very tired, because I only slept five or six hours the night before, and took a quarter-teaspoon of the "Samsara" kratom to see if it would help me stay awake until evening; I didn't want to take a nap and throw my sleep schedule off even worse. That worked okay, but not really any better than coffee.)
Kratom Experiment 4 - May 18th
I'm going to try stepping up to once a day for a little while; online reports indicate that you can do that with small doses without too great a loss in effect, and I doubt the withdrawal will be any worse than Effexor was. And if I'm wrong about that, I'll at least have some experimental data to report here.
Anyway, I slept about eleven or twelve hours last night and felt really groggy when I woke up; I took a full sleeping pill instead of a half like usual, because I hadn't slept through the night in days and was getting loopy. One of the reasons I don't like to take a full sleeping pill is that the things give me nightmares; I had very unpleasant ones last night.
I took a heaping teaspoon (more than usual) of the milder kratom in my breakfast smoothie. This woke me up pretty well, but I had some coffee afterwards because, uh. I miss coffee. (I'm weak.)
Then I spent a while polishing some of Mom's silver and pewter stuff, which I have been trying to rescue from her terrible neglect. I finished a tray and got a jug halfway done before my wrists got too bad for me to keep going. Then I did some reading, but my eyes were bothering me, and I kept zoning out and brooding over my nightmares. Tried taking a half-teaspoon of the Samsara, woke up and felt better, and started writing the introduction to this post, at the very top there.
And that gets me up to date for the moment.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-19 08:10 pm (UTC)Please feel free to ignore this question, but I was wondering if you were also doing talk therapy.
no subject
Date: 2013-05-19 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-19 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-19 11:16 pm (UTC)(Basically, if you ever want to open a practice, move to eastern Kentucky, because we've got a constant shortage.)
no subject
Date: 2013-05-20 06:03 am (UTC)