DOSE:

0.25 tsp

oral

Kratom

(extract)

I was a thoroughgoing square peg in my teens and 20s. I even broke off with a guy in college 'cause he'd used ecstasy at a nightclub. Still kinda kicking myself over that one.

Even today, I've toked only once (wonderful experience) and stay away from illegal stuff because, really, who needs a rap sheet? I am too damn old for a rap sheet.

I also regularly take Lexapro (escitalopram) and Xanax (alprazolam) for various psychiatric issues, so I have to be careful with my brain chemistry. However, I do dabble in legal herbs and whatnot when I'm feeling bored or adventurous. Did I mention I've been lucid dreaming since my early 20s? I'll get to that in a second.

Husband and I recently purchased a small vial of kratom liquid extract at a local head shop. The woman at the cash register said it was the most powerful product they had — just half a capful would do ya. At another head shop in another city, the clerk had recommended vitamin C to potentiate the experience, so we dropped into Wally World for a bottle of OJ.

Fast forward several days and I'm up extremely late as usual. I'm self-employed and have the luxury of keeping vampire hours. Usually I'd pop 0.5 mg of Xanax to nudge me into sleep. (I not only have anxiety, often I simply can't shut my brain off when it's time to sleep.) However, I decided to give the kratom a go. I poured about 4 oz. of orange juice and knocked back half a capful of extract, which I figure is about 1/4 of a teaspoon, maybe a little more.

I sat on the floor of my studio and watched TV, drinking the juice to wash away the taste of the kratom. It had a bitter finish but nothing awful like Calea Z.! I began feeling a gentle wave of relaxation come on. It felt a lot like just one pill of Xanax yet different in a way I couldn't quite peg.

As the sun rose, I slipped into bed next to my husband, waiting for his 6:30 alarm to go off. I could have slept but I wanted to keep enjoying the nice little ride I was having, this quiet relaxation with a touch of euphoria. The body feeling was a little deeper and 'warmer' than Xanax, if that makes any sense. In fact, it felt more like hydrocodone (which I've had several times in Rx cough syrup).

I'd read that smaller doses of kratom cause stimulation while higher doses sedate. At least with this experience, I certainly wasn't speedy but I wasn't knocked out, either.

My husband woke up and I told him about my experiment. We chatted as he got ready for work. 'You're chipper!' he said. Suddenly, I realized that I couldn't be anxious about anything if I tried. Yes, this was more like an opiate than a benzo. With Xanax, I get fuzzy and sleepy yet the anxiety might still be there — it's just turned WAY down. With opiates, I'm simply not anxious about anything. It's as if someone has turned off my amygdala completely.

This is why I don't screw around with opiates on the black market. Worried I'd like them too much.

The only other herb that has been this gentle while turning off the worry machine is blue lotus, but I've had trouble getting a good dose easily. Smoking it worked but was too fiddly. But the kratom extract was doing a bang-up job and worked better than the lotus.

Now here's the really fun part.

I eventually went to sleep after hubby left for work and slept well into the early afternoon. If I sleep long enough, I'm likely to have vivid dreams that are somewhat lucid, but this time, I think the kratom catapulted me to a whole new level.

I became lucid as my dream self was walking around what looked like a convention center. I realized it was an EDM convention (yes ... I'm 45 and love EDM) with posters and displays and tons of people walking around. I'm like, cool! I began to try to conjure up my favorite DJ, Armin Van Buuren. My dream brain sometimes doesn't like it when I try to take too much control and kept generating people who sorta kinda looked like AVB but not really. So I thought, 'Okay. I'll just look around for him.'

I walked around the convention floor, looking for a VIP area. I saw a raised area along one wall with a row of semicircular seating areas. I finally spotted him sitting with a few other people with three or four computer screens on a table in front of him, like a traveling studio setup. I walked over and he embraced me—I apparently was his special guest for the day. ;-) Then someone called my name, and I turned around to see Simon LeBon of Duran Duran standing there. (Talk about a blast from the past.) He gave me a warm hug as if I were a longtime friend.

Then I woke up. :-\

There's a big move on to criminalize kratom in various states. Of course. I live in a conservative area of the country that criminalized salvia a few years ago, so it's probably time to stock up on kratom. I can see how it could be a problem if you are addiction-prone or don't have much self-control, but I'm getting tired of buzzkills taking away plants that can offer rewarding states of waking and sleep when used responsibly by adults.

Looking forward to my next visit to kratom land.

Exp Year: 2015	ExpID: 106492
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 45
Published: Jul 2, 2016	Views: 2,048
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Dreams (85), Kratom (203) : Alone (16), First Times (2)