DOSE:

2 g

oral

Kratom

(capsule)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

I'd chatted with a good friend about their recent experiences using Kratom. They'd enjoyed using it at low doses for a stimulant effect and recommended I try it. At the time [four years ago], it seemed like a low-risk recreational drug to experiment with and I was curious about its opiate-like effects and treatment for anxiety. I'd been applying to jobs at the time, so wasn't using any cannabis out of good measure in case I needed to pass a drug test.

At the time, there wasn't much research publicly available on Kratom's potential hepatoxicity. Before I purchased any Kratom leaf powder drugs, I'd done my research, of course, and talked with my friend extensively about how he'd been preparing it. I think at the time there were a few experience reports about Kratom's potential hepatoxic effects, but not much mainstream info available about it. I really wish now that I hadn’t stupidly overlooked that info.

My friend had been preparing Kratom tea using about 2g of dried leaves per day. I was concerned I might not like the taste, so chose to go the route of pills instead. I extensively researched the most reputable online Kratom retailers and purchased about 40 grams of premium Kratom powder capsules.

Mind you, I’ve had my fair share of experiences with opiates and prescription drugs, having dabbled in recreational use of just about everything from Ambien to Morphine and Oxycodone. I wasn't expecting much of a strong narcotic/sedative effect from Kratom in comparison to my prior experiences getting knocked out cold after chugging half a bottle of codeine cough syrup (I was a fun teenager, wasn't I?). I’d been in recovery for about 2 years and had only been using cannabis semi-often and alcohol occasionally at that point.

If I was expecting any opiate-like effects from the Kratom, I expected it would be something that would slowly creep up on me. I started by swallowing about 2 grams, poured myself a big glass of water, turned off all the lights in my apartment, and settled into bed to watch Futurama and wait for the effects.

About 1.5-2 hours after taking the capsules I started to feel a nice, warm, and floaty sensation. It was a head high sorta like I’d just taken a painkiller, minus the annoying side effect of being relentlessly itchy and restless. It was a nice feeling.

That nice feeling wasn’t worth nearly as much pain it caused me later, though. I spent the next couple of hours just relaxing on the couch before I felt so nauseous and dizzy I chose to just try to sleep it off. I woke up feeling like I had one of the worst hangovers - nausea, fatigued, and generally feeling just a lot of malease. I moped around that day waiting for the effects to subside, but they never did.

I spent the next few days laying low, suspecting I’d come down with the flu. I don’t remember if I had the week off work and school or I’d taken it off, because I mostly remember spending most of this time either sleeping or waking up feeling constipated and nauseous. That gradually started to subside later that week.

About two weeks after taking the first dose, I decided to try 2 grams of the Kratom powder capsules again. I figured the first time was just spoiled by that suspected flu or food poisoning or whatever I’d had. As with the last time, I reserved taking the Kratom for a time I could stay at home and really feel the effects.

This time, I vomited about 1 hour after taking the pills. I figured it just hadn’t settled well and stupidly decided to take 2 more grams after drinking a glass of water. This time it stayed down, but I felt increasingly more nauseous the more time went on. I felt unbearably nauseous and after trying to fight through it for the next several hours, elected to just go to bed instead.

I woke up feeling feverish, weak, and with a dull, throbbing pain in my right side abdomen. It would cycle between 15-35 minutes of intense pain and 30-45 minutes of dull pain. I tried to go to work 2 days later, but ended up needing to go home before I even left the car to go vomit. I sat in the floor in my bathroom sweating and racking my brain as to what had been causing this. This time I chalked it up to food poisoning. I think in the back of my mind I knew I really screwed up something with the Kratom.

Less than a week or so later, my symptoms were only getting worse. I couldn’t keep anything but gatorade and water down. I was constantly nauseous and the pain in my abdomen had been getting worse and more frequent. I couldn’t even lie on my right side without being in pain. I was constipated, and my excrement was completely pale; almost white.

After one fun evening spent writhing around in pain on the couch and realizing I hadn’t eaten in 3 days I finally called a cab to take me to Urgent Care , suspecting either appendicitis or some severe case of food poisoning which they could diagnose for me. The physician asked me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the worst). I gave it an 8. She did an abdomen exam, and said I needed to go to the ER so they could do a CAT scan.

The first time I went to the ER, they shot me with some morphine and sent me home with a prescription for Odensatron (Zofran) for my nausea. The ER doctor had infuriatingly chalked up my intense pain to PMS cramps. I’d already had my morphine when I spoke with him, so I was pretty amicable to just wait it out and see if things resolved themselves.

The second time I went to the ER was 2 days later, and this time I saw the same ER doctor. “Oh, in again, huh?” He mused. No shit. I was in intense pain and still hadn’t been able to eat - at this point I was operating on about 6 days of only Gatorade and the 1/2 cup of rice I was able to keep down.

This time he ordered a CAT scan and they found my liver was so enlarged it was pushing up against my other organs and my ribcage, which was probably what was causing some of my discomfort. They immediately ran a blood test and found basically all my liver enzymes - my bilirubin and ALT levels, particularly - were abnormally high. My bilirubin was somewhere around 3.9 (normal total bilirubin should be less than 1.9). The doctors were mystified as to what caused it. They kept asking if I was a heavy drinker - I wasn’t and never had been. It didn’t look like liver cirrhosis, but all I could think was that my history with abusing opiates - or like, the handful of Tylenol I’d taken in my life - had finally caught up with me.

An ultrasound came out all clear for my kidneys. I saw physicians who did several abdominal examinations and the only thing they could come up with what that I’d had a recent gallstone that passed or some sort of gallbladder blockage into the liver. I had tested for Hepatitis, A, B, and C and was all clear.

The physician had me come in for a blood test to monitor my liver enzymes every day for the next two weeks. The bilirubin gradually dropped to normal levels, and my physician more or less chalked it up to an unidentified liver blockage. It took about 7-8 weeks for my nausea and pain to fully subside. I flushed the remaining 30 grams of Kratom down the toilet.

I haven’t gone back to check up on whether that whole ordeal caused any permanent liver damage; I’m too scared to find out. It’s now years later that I’m seeing plenty of other people online share almost identical experiences to mine.

Whether I’ve just got a gene that makes Kratom completely toxic to my liver or the Kratom Powder I’d purchased contained something else in it, I probably won’t know. As far as I know, the online retailer I'd purchased my Kratom from is still in business. I’m never taking Kratom again, and would strongly urge anyone considering Kratom as a safe plant to reconsider until there's either more regulation of Kratom products or more research done.

Exp Year: 2014	ExpID: 112623
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Dec 12, 2018	Views: 5,358
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