In 2007 my husband and I invited a young man, his wife and three children to live with us.  They had hit a rough patch, he was unemployed, fresh out of jail having served time for non-support, and his wife was 8 1/2 months pregnant and couldn't work. They had no place to go.  When he came to live with us we did not know he had a pill problem. 

Overtime, child support was caught up, drivers license was reinstalled, and he had different jobs that were almost enough for he, his wife and his now four kids to move out.  But success was always lost at the last minute.

Something would go wrong;  the boss cheated him out of a paycheck, cheated him out of hours or he lost his wallet. We were just naïve as to the obvious signs of drug addiction. 

Then came the day he took me aside and told me he was again addicted to opiates (unbeknownst to me, he’d been through this before) and he was going to quit, but he needed help.  To avoid watching him wither in the pain of withdrawal, there were times I would give him money and take him to meet his pill pushers, who usually turned out to be old ladies supplementing their Social Security.  

Finally, he started on methadone which seemed like a godsend. But in reality methadone is no different than opiates or heroin, and he was soon abusing treatment. Again, we didn't recognize what he was doing. Taking all his weekly doses at once For a GREAT Monday-Tuesday high, then followed by a sick in bed low, that he convinced us was a flu or side-effects of methadone.  Suboxone was no better and withdrawl  even worse than methadone. 

When that behavior was figured out, and we were watching his “treatment” intake much closer, he began sneaking out and supplementing with pills. When that was discovered and his money was closely monitored, he began supplementing with meth as that is much less expensive.  Meth was pure hell, and when we later found out, all of us thought we had lost him.

Available rehab for uninsured people is nothing more than a  dehumanizing group lock up that lets one suffer cold turkey in the most painful way imaginable. We couldn't do that to him, but if he ever got caught and put in jail, that's what he was facing. 

He avoided that.

As the nature of methamphetamines goes, he went into a psychosis (the unknown meth usage was adding to this), being sure that the government was spying him, and all of us were against him.  He started gathering large knives, talking of killing people he caught following him and generally was a very scary person.

It was during that time that in desperation I actually Googled "homeopathic cures for opiate addictions" (the meth usage was unknown at that time) and came across the term kratom.

It wasn't quite overnight, but he is now over six years opiate free. He and his wife and now five kids are living on their own, supported by his 40+ hours a week job in construction/home repairs. When he’s straight, he's a very talented person.  

He is still a regular user of kratom, and from what I have come to understand, it helps him with his underlying depression and gives him the energy that depression robs from a person. 

By the way, if there were a way to get high on kratom, I firmly believe he would've found it and abused it.  Kratom seriously just took away his cravings for opiates leaving him with the energy and will power to abstain from meth and have a good life.

I personally am not a regular user of kratom and would be fine if it were banned, although my kidneys would see an increase in the use of Ibuprofen.  Inspite of my wholehearted belief that kratom should not be rescheduled or reclassified as harmful in anyway, I would welcome purity test and quality rules. 

I have seen the difference kratom makes, and I am a firm believer in the freedom of one’s right to choose their own treatments. 

I implore you to not ban or reschedule kratom. 

Sincerely,

Iris Lillie Fields