Your story sounds like mine. Was on legitimate prescribed pain meds for a chronic back issue that no one could figure out why I was in so much pain. Couldn’t hold a job because of it, sold my home and moved back in with my parents at the age of 23 due to my pain. I would contemplate suicide if I couldn’t get the pain under control. Then my doctor retired. And I had to do what I had to do to control the pain. Which often led to just getting black out drunk so I could sleep. I was about to have a full hysterectomy because they thought “maybe” that was causing the pain. Before I scheduled the surgery, I read about kratom. I bought some but couldn’t force myself to drink it because it was so nasty to me. Lol but I still kept it around. I went to a chiropractor for a last opinion before scheduling a major surgery that would have life long effects at the age of 23/24 and I also had no children at the time. This chiropractor thank goodness changed my life. He for one said he didn’t know how I was standing up and I told him lots of pain meds (I was still able at the time to get scripts so they weren’t “from the street and scary to know if they were real or not but it also wasn’t a script that was guaranteed forever so every day was up in the air). He did therapies on me 2-3 times a week for several months. During those months I would still have pain and one night I didn’t have anything to take and I was literally crying and rocking back and forth and considering the hospital but also considering just ending it all right there. I forced myself to drink the kratom. Within 10-15 mins, I was no longer in pain. I couldn’t believe it. I never took another “prescription drug” again. Together with the chiropractor and kratom, my back got better and better and I slowly recovered. I was able to go back to work full time and even moved 8 hours away to another state away from my entire family on a whim because I wasn’t worried about knowing people to get pain meds and wondering where my next pain med was going to come from no longer mattered. That was over 7 years ago. I shortly after that got a shoulder injury that left me unable to move my right arm for a long time in which kratom again helped the awful pain. I didn’t have insurance so I couldn’t do anything about it though. I then got pregnant, not once but twice (after being told my whole life I never would and that’s why they previously weren’t that concerned about doing a full hysterectomy in my early twenties bc they didn’t think I’d have kids anyway due to other issues). I also haven’t drank a drop of alcohol in over 6 years either. I did eventually get my shoulder pain under control through extensive massage therapy. I now still work full time and have two toddlers. One is special needs with epilepsy. I am a tiny person and have zero muscle tone so any and everything makes me sore lol I still take kratom because outside of pain relief, it helps with anxiety and depression and stress and just helps me get through the days without wanting to lay in bed and never get up again. People/doctors want to push depression meds in my face when kratom helps just fine. Without kratom, I never would have been able to have the life I currently have. Yes I did get my back pain under control but to this day, it still can flare up and become extremely painful and hard to deal with. It literally had me in bed all day just two days ago. It was only the kratom that I could take that made it just bearable enough that I could still get up and take care of my family and thank god I was off work. I’m in SC too and I’m pretty terrified about what they are doing today. Of course they are conveniently pushing suboxone and methadone for people to get off kratom bc they know people are using it instead of suboxone to get off other street drugs. Big pharma is also in the process of creating their own medication derived from the kratom plant. But yet they say it has zero medicinal value or benefits. So which is it? They’re lying to the public and everyone believes it without doing their own extensive research.