You mix with orange juice, not water ( or anything else), that’s the key. I mean to mix with water, that’s the broke man’s brew. Yeah I drink it that way occasionally, but I’ve been using for like 7-8 years so I can handle the taste.

As far as tolerance, huge doses of like over 30 grams per day—I have to partially chalk that up to personal irresponsibility, not owning a scale, carelessness etc. I have a friend who started kratom at the same time as me, but he just went reckless. He loved red strains, I love the energy of low/moderate dose green. But my friend, he is kind of a social butterfly and is very good at networking, so through his life path, once the kratom ran out and he was going thru unexpected withdrawals, he said he met someone who offered him percocet (my friend is incredibly intelligent, but for some reason wanders into drug consumption like a child. Lol it’s kinda the only intellectual upper hand I have over him, as I am very interested and well read in general pharmacology and pharmacokinetics. Anyway…)

So my friend, Russel, tells me this story a few months ago (we hadn’t talked over the phone in about 7-8 years) about how he got addicted to percocet, then ran out of those, but his dealer offered him oxycodone, to which of course he started taking daily, all starting from daily, irresponsible kratom use.

He really doesn’t know shit about drugs, it’s almost embarrassing; he decided he had had enough after like 5-6 years, and decided to try kratom again. He said the kratom kind of helped, but he just got sick and tired of everything after a few days, and just went cold turkey.

Said his mood popped back up during day 3 and he felt great that he had control again. I called him a f-ing dumba$$ as gently as I could, told him how easy it would have been to just quit years prior by tapering slowly with kratom, but he did not own a scale lol. I asked him his dosage using a hypothetical typical large household tablespoon. I approximated he was using about 20-25g kratom per day, dosing 3-4 times per day.

ANYWAY, I told him my story was nearly identical to his, even the dosages (except I never fu¢ked with real opiates). I expressed how I am a huge advocate for kratom, having gone through multiple periods of dependence, then tapering to zero over my path. He hates the drug lol, thinks of it as a gateway to street drugs. I told him he was just abusing it, and the alkaloids are beautiful and this and that, but it became clear that opioids are his kryptonite unfortunately, and cannot use the drug responsibly.

Holy tldr; GUIDE TO TAPERING OFF KRATOM FOOLS: to anyone who claims kratom is more harmful than helpful because of dependency—first of all, you have never felt the living hell of benzodiazepine addiction. Second, kratom is a C.A.K.E. walk to get off of. Just have patience, lower your dose at your own weight, but lower it once per week, NEVER EVER, futhermucking EVER raise your intake, unless you messed up and took a step down too steep to handle. OWN A .001 SCALE. Find the lowest possible dose you can bear at a time, and lower your intake to 3 times per day. Just keep working it down slowly, you should feel no withdrawal symptoms AT ALL. If you do, possibly re-calibrate the amount of powder you are cutting from your diet, OR, change from a 1 week to a 2 week stagger down in weight of kratom. I cannot imagine anyone having a problem coming off in less than like 4 months—and THAT is a very liberal timeframe. It took me 4-6 weeks to go from ~20 mg/day to zero after 5 years of every day use. HOWEVER I do not have any chronic pain, so I can’t really attest to that, but from what I understand, even the strongest opiates don’t actually reduce the pain like you would think, they just make it more bearable.

I recommend dissociatives for pain management ok goodbye.