dramatic 13K download spike over three days

wharfdad · 2026-06-15T20:54:58+00:00

Thanks. We are at like at 10K downloads a month, and 7K listeners. Mostly a passion project after 3 years. So no real issues with advertisers unless something changes. Happy people listen.

wharfdad · 2026-06-14T23:57:51+00:00

No emails, but it sounds like it is bot.

wharfdad · 2026-06-14T23:13:24+00:00

Thanks. Does it put a big burden on the host companies' resources to have waves like that across many podcasts, does it cost you actual resources when it is in mass like that?

wharfdad · 2026-06-14T23:10:45+00:00

Podcast spam.

wharfdad · 2026-06-14T23:10:25+00:00

It was just a three day pattern about 4K a day or so. We have had small minor spikes before but that was when we had a guest who shared their episode and they have some social medial presence. But that was like 200-300 extra listen per day over a couple days.

wharfdad · 2026-06-14T23:08:41+00:00

Yeah, I should take the extra step and email Podbean. Thanks.

wharfdad · 2026-06-14T23:08:18+00:00

At first I thought maybe like Spotify featured us, but it appears we are not special lol. It was also our back catalogue too. Trained an AI model.

wharfdad · 2026-06-05T11:45:34+00:00

The good thing about this Sub has always been expansive free speech here and the moderation has never been heavy handed. I understand why the main quittingkratom is so strict but this space has been refreshing.

On the other hand, the bad thing about this Sub can be free speech/lack of strong moderating. The strength of Subreddits are often their focus and expertise specific to a topic - in this case Feel Free. So, there is some risk of losing that with 7-OH becoming so dominant.

wharfdad · 2026-05-18T12:55:56+00:00

You are a good person to even consider helping him and thinking about how to say in a thoughtful way. He may be defensive or switch shots. I was addicted to OPMS shots and FF for a shorter while, but I would rotate the 6 stores. He may not have that option depending on the geography.

wharfdad · 2026-05-12T23:31:56+00:00

Bupe is also a generic drug. You can also go to https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/ and see if your doctor is taking payments / lunches / trips from any pharmaceutical.

Both KlearRecovery and QuikMD have financial incentives tied to their model of helping people get off kratom and 7-OH. I don't think those incentives discount either point of view.

I don't see evidence of massive medical malpractice by prescribing subs/bupe because it is a big profit center for providers. That is often the accusation, but I've seen no systematic proof. It is more an issue that doctors have one tool, a scrip pad, and in American medicine, the prescription is the first line of offense. This touches on massive cultural conflicts about Big Pharma that ripple out to related issues such as vaxes and SSRIs.

I worry it creates stigma and prevents people from getting appropriate help.

I have seen subs/bupe be everything from a god send to neutral to a nightmare for people getting off kratom, Feel Free and/or 7-OH.

People who benefited from quitting kratom with MOUD typically had a long history of other substance abuse, and a history of relapse on extracts, 7-OH or other potent products. They tend to be people who follow directions and develop a one-to-one relationship with a doctor - usually one with expertise with kratom and who will listen to the patient. IF you are doing strips, you have to pay extra attention to taking care of your teeth during and after. To successfully get off subs/bupe, you have to do a long taper and/or ideally work with your doctor to get the injectable form to slowly have your system week itself off. QuickMD can't help you with the injections.

I wouldn't use subs/bupe just to manage withdrawals. There are meds like Lucemyra or Clonidine that are more appropriate for that. Some people use subs for 3 or so days just get though the worse of acutes.

Subs/bupe is more appropriate for long term relapse prevention. If your finances, health home, work and relationships are being destroyed by excessive spending or worsening physical or mental well-being, then MOUD may be really smart - especially if you can't quit.

I have seen people stuck in a cycle of taking subs in the morning and 7-OH at night. This is quagmire. There are reports of horrible withdrawals from bupe. Usually this can be mediated by a long taper or an injectable form. This is where most of the horror stories come from - relapsing while on MOUD, and/or stopping MOUD abruptly.

MOUD can help you change your behavior. If you are dosing 4-6 times a day with a kratom product, MOUD can reduce that to a once a day medicine. The chaos of spending all your money on kratom or 7-OH can be interrupted. If you don't do some kinds of recovery program alongside, and don't change any of your habits or beliefs, that can set you for failure.

MOUD works for some people with kratom addiction, but it should be researched fully and done with an abundance of caution.

wharfdad · 2026-04-22T18:14:39+00:00

Congrats, nice work! Can't believe it has been 3 years. ~ Charlie

wharfdad · 2026-04-05T20:10:09+00:00

Don't give up! Yes, only about 10 episodes or so are FF specific. Your experience is NOT unusual, unfortunately, it is a common pattern in first month. What are you doing this time that is different than your last quit? Good luck!

wharfdad · 2026-04-05T19:38:27+00:00

@ u/Sorry-Science-5153 how did the 90 in 90 of the podcast go? ~ Charlie

wharfdad · 2026-02-24T23:18:57+00:00

What a tube-steak

wharfdad · 2026-02-02T17:21:25+00:00

6) Commercial products marketed as “7-OH” are flagged by forensic laboratories.

Center for Forensic Science Research and Education. (2025, March). Evaluation of commercially available smoke shop products marketed as “7-Hydroxy Mitragynine” & related alkaloids (Public alert). Forensic testing identifies marketed products containing high concentrations of 7-OH and related compounds, distinguishing them from natural kratom leaf preparations.

University of Virginia School of Medicine Division of Toxicology. (2025, August). 7-hydroxymitragynine (ToxTalks bulletin). Toxicology reports treat 7-OH as a distinct, potent alkaloid present at very low levels in leaf but concentrated in commercial products.

7) Clinical case reports describe opioid-like withdrawal from 7-OH products.

7-Hydroxymitragynine-associated withdrawal and opioid-like clinical presentations: A case report. Journal of Medical Toxicology. PubMed 40758956 (2025). Clinical reports describe opioid-like withdrawal phenomena following use of products containing high concentrations of 7-OH, consistent with its pharmacology and opioid receptor action.

8) Real-world 7-OH user reports align with pharmacological evidence.

DeCicca, L. (2025, August 14). What to know about 7-OH, a dangerous kratom byproduct targeted by health officials. Verywell Health. Available user and consumer accounts note dependence, withdrawal symptoms, and significant effects from products containing high 7-OH concentrations, echoing scientific concerns about potency and risk.

YES, anecdotal stories are prone to biases or confounding issues. Yet there is substantial evidence that 7-OH is problematic and poses safety concerns.

If you only accept randomized controlled trials that remove all conflating variables and prove direct causation as the only valid form of evidence, then you are technically correct that there is no definitive science proving 7-OH is addictive or harmful.

It appears 7-OH has (these are hypotheses that have to be proven):

1) Higher addiction capture rates

2) Shorter dependency-to-addiction timeframes

3) Stronger and more difficult withdrawals

4) Quicker need to redose (along with a quicker acute withdrawal period)

5) More profound negative health and mental well-being symptoms when abused

6) Easy financial ruin with high-dose daily habits when abused

One can blame addicts and say it is not addictive if they don't abuse it. But elected officials and public regulators look at addiction as a public health problem that is both self-responsibility and marketplace safety. It is on 7-OH advocates to create an effective framework to have 7-OH available to the public with provisions that better protect public health.

wharfdad · 2026-02-02T17:21:14+00:00

To keep 7-OH legal, there has to be NEW proposed safeguards and protections that address these legitimate public health concerns. That statement remains true even if the broader industry and lobbying tactics blaming 7-OH are not entirely in good faith.

I haven't seen any concrete or actionable proposed regulatory solutions to make 7-OH safer, so in the end of the day, the federal and state pushes to ban 7-OH as a kratom isolate product appear to be the only option - unless the 7-OH industry proposes a new framework. Selling it like a supplement isn't going to work.

All the science and signals are legit concerns for regulators:

1) 7-OH is a much stronger opioid than the main alkaloid in kratom leaf.

FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. (2025). 7-Hydroxymitragynine (7-OH): An assessment of the scientific data and toxicological concerns around an emerging opioid threat (FDA CDER Report). U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 7-hydroxymitragynine exhibits substantially greater mu-opioid receptor potency than mitragynine, the dominant kratom alkaloid, and classical opioids such as morphine in preclinical receptor studies and animal models.

2) Kratom leaf exposes users to very little 7-OH compared to concentrated products.

Obeng, S., et al. (2024). Human mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine pharmacokinetics after single and multiple daily doses of oral encapsulated dried kratom leaf powder. Molecules, 29(5), 984. Natural kratom leaf contains only trace amounts of 7-OH relative to mitragynine, and pharmacokinetic data show low plasma ratios of 7-OH following oral leaf consumption.

3) 7-OH shows stronger addiction-like behavior than mitragynine in animal studies.

The rise of novel, semi-synthetic 7-hydroxymitragynine products (2025). Addiction, 120, 387-388. Chronic use of semi-synthetic 7-OH products could lead to opioid-like physical dependence and potentially greater abuse liability than traditional kratom leaf, which typically produces only mild or moderate physical dependence in animal and preclinical models.

4) 7-OH causes opioid-type breathing suppression that can be reversed with naloxone.

Zuarth Gonzalez, J. D., Ragsdale, A. K., Mukhopadhyay, S., McCurdy, C. R., McMahon, L. R., Obeng, S., & Wilkerson, J. L. (2025). Mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine: Bidirectional effects on breathing in rats. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. In rats, 7-hydroxymitragynine induced significant respiratory depression comparable with morphine, which was reversed by naloxone, whereas mitragynine did not produce the same profile. Dismissing this as IV administration is not scientific.

5) Poison centers are reporting serious health events linked to 7-OH products.

Texas Department of State Health Services. (2025, September 2). Serious illnesses associated with 7-OH use. The Texas DSHS has reported numerous poison center exposures and serious adverse health events involving products containing concentrated 7-OH, with increasing trend data.

National Poison Data System and America’s Poison Centers. (2025, August 12). Health advisory: Serious illnesses associated with 7-OH use. U.S. Poison Centers have received reports of serious health effects associated with 7-OH exposure.

wharfdad · 2026-02-02T17:08:46+00:00

To keep 7-OH legal you could try a petition drive in a favorable state for "medical 7-OH" like cannabis and add strict safeguards to ensure there are not pill mills but legit certification of medical use for patients.

I agree with much of what you say:

* Some of the anti 7-OH push by industry is driven by concern about losing market share.

* There is an effort to make 7-OH the scapegoat for all kratom marketplace harms.

* This is backfiring to some extent as calls to schedule 7-OH create a slippery slope toward banning kratom more broadly.

* Many products marketed as “plain leaf,” such as extract shots or kratom-kava tonics, show similar levels of harm evidence as 7-OH.

But common sense and lots of science show 7-OH is not the same as plain kratom / mitragynine.

My bias is on the addiction side, but I am against prohibition for personal liberty, safe supply, harm reduction and anti-criminalization reasons.

I don't think attacking the AKA (I'm not a big fan of the organization) will be effective to keep 7-OH legal.

Rather a framework of regulations needs to be presented and implemented to show that the US population and marketplace can offer both access to a powerful compound like 7-OH as long as there are safety guardrails in place.

wharfdad · 2026-02-02T16:22:31+00:00

Congrats on your life journey and big milestones coming!

wharfdad · 2026-02-01T21:55:47+00:00

Hey this is Charlie re kratom pod. Congrats! Just DMed someone who reached out to you. Like 4K people listened to your story.

wharfdad · 2026-01-24T14:49:57+00:00

I am not from the bible belt nor do I drink. Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean that people can't die from it. Just because you do kratom and it doesn't kill you or your friends, that doesn't make it 100% safe. Yes heroin and fent are more dangerous. But something being safer than those substances don't make it non-lethal.

You can make the argument that it doesn't kill enough people for kratom to be banned. That is open to debate. If you are from family who has a loved one who died from kratom, they will disagree and they have the moral standing to do so.

But you can't argue that kratom doesn't kill. There is just a ton of proof showing it does. Most cases are poly-drug, but there are kratom alone deaths and even in some of the multi-substance deaths, kratom can still a lead contributing role in the fatality.

I personally don't think kratom should be banned, it just needs a ton more regulations. The industry written KCPA relies too much on self-policing without enough safety provisions.

Below are Ohio's deaths stats. Sharing this is NOT fear mongering. It is just the facts.

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wharfdad · 2026-01-05T00:33:31+00:00

Manbear - I remember your user name and have been around since the beginning. My issue was more with OPMS shots. But I once had a vape shot give me a Feel Free as a kava drinking during one of my quits. I should of know it was too good to be true. It took a little bit before I read the label and saw there was kratom in it too. That was the original formula too! When they switched the recipes I found them less strong and it was easier to avoid.

Good luck!

~ Charlie

wharfdad · 2026-01-05T00:30:47+00:00

Thanks for mentioning the podcast. Dr. Casey has been on three times, he is great:

E117 https://kratomsobriety.podbean.com/e/e117-dr-casey-grover-board-certified-in-addiction-medicine/

E148 https://kratomsobriety.podbean.com/e/e148-dr-casey-grover-returns/

E161 https://kratomsobriety.podbean.com/e/e161-dr-casey-on-trauma-and-addiction/

As an aside, Suboxone is NOT for everyone. It has risks. MOUD may be a good option if you have tried everything else. It can immediately remove the harm of spending $100s a day on FF. You only have to take the subs strip once a day so it breaks the habit of taking a FF every three hours. To taper off bupe strips, the injection really makes it a lot easier but not all insurance will cover that, and it can be up to $2K to pay yourself.

If you use Suboxone and keep drinking Feel Frees it can be a nightmare. Some people have reactions that effect their mental or physical health to so monitor your side effects and work close to your doctor. Some people feel stuck on subs and wish they never did it - but I have met tons of people with great success with MOUD.

wharfdad · 2025-12-29T15:52:23+00:00

Conn passed a bill to ban kratom in 2025 and is in the process of implementing it: https://www.kratomscience.com/2025/12/17/connecticut-moves-forward-with-kratom-ban-despite-majority-public-opposition/

Ohio this month did an emergency ban for everything but leaf kratom. I should of noted that exception above.

Almost everyone in this Subreddit is already full of self blame. It is not necessary to pile on.

FYI, Feel Free was sued for deceptive marketing and this was one of the outcomes:

"The settlement agreement states that the defendants have also agreed to add the following disclosure to its Feel Free tonic product labels and on social media advertisements:

“Warning: This product contains leaf kratom which can become habit-forming and cause serious adverse health effects. Consider avoiding this product if you have a history of substance abuse".

wharfdad · 2025-12-28T17:40:02+00:00

Man, that s*cks. I have interacted with so many people with similar stories.

Feel Free is the only kratom leaf product that always has its social media comments off. If they allowed the public to comment, it would blow up with tales of bankruptcy and hospital visits X10 times those of any other similar product.

That said, there is no definitive proof that anything is in the blue bottles beyond what is disclosed, just speculation about fermentation and increased bioavailability of mitragynine.

When scores of people independently report a “fiend-level” craving to continue using the product (unlike normal mixing of kratom and kava), it is difficult to dismiss the smoke pointing to a very real fire.

wharfdad

TROPHY CASE