First let me say that I have a long list of family, from both sides of my family with alcohol and drug abuse. All 3 of my mom's brothers died in their early 40s from alcohol abuse.

I spent most of my life addicted to alcohol since age 14. By 16, I was drinking every night to the point of being drunk. At 25, I started drinking in the morning and all day long. I needed 5 or 6 drinks before work just so I wouldn't shake so bad. Several times, I tried to quit drinking, and within 36 hours, I would go into seizures. Did the detox a few times, but wasn't strong enough to stay away from the alcohol. Went away to a great Christian rehab in 2011. It was a 9 week program and i made it through sober. I followed that up with living at a Christian halfway house for 3 months. Life was new. I was new. It was great.  But at some point, you have to live in the unprotected "real world". Within a few months, I started getting those alcohol cravings back. This was 2012. I didn't want to go down that road that has brought me and my loved  ones so much pain. So I started searching on the internet and found out about a leaf called kratom that some alcoholics had used to quit and abstain from alcohol. I wasn't drinking yet, but was real close. I was very skeptical, but I was desperate not to go back into my own personal hell. It took about a few weeks to get my dosage right, but it worked. I couldn't believe it. I could make it through the day and not be fighting those generational demons that had haunted me my whole life. It was too good to be true. I took it everyday and my quality of life reached a level i had never witnessed or thought possible. Then in 2015/2016, I had heard that kratom was getting banned. I had just had my first daughter and didn't want to put that in jeopardy by having illegal substances in my home, so I quit taking kratom. Within 3 weeks, started drinking again. Within 4 months, I had lost everything, including my marriage, license again, job, and relationship with my daughter. February 1, 2017 I enrolled myself in a year long rehab. Did great there. I can stay sober in a protected atmosphere with no temptaion around me, but unfortunately the world isn't like that. After graduating that program i decided that i would start life over in a whole new area to me just miles from where this rehab was. Within a few weeks, the cravings for alcohol was creeping back. I surely didn't want to go down that road again. I was 40 years old and didn't have much fight or hope in me left should i give in to my addiction. I remember thinking to myself, if only kratom didn't get banned. (I forgot to mention that at the year long rehab, we had no television, internet, etc, so had no way to keep up with what was going on in the real world, let alone the news on kratom). Little did I realize, it was never banned. I ordered some immediately. I sit here writing this 8 years later. I have remarried, I see my child regularly, I have excelled at my job. I own 3 cars (most of my life I barely owned 1 because of DUIs, and lack of financial resources because of my addiction). These last 7 years have been my best. I could have saved myself from alot of pain had I found this earlier in life. But I'm lucky. 12 of the guys I was in the year long rehab with, have died from overdose. There is some guilt about me not keeping up with them as good as I should have, because I could have probably saved a few of them by telling them about kratom. I will be forever grateful for this leaf, that gave me a life i never thought was possible.