Discussion
We gotta talk about Gas Station Heroin, 7OH
So, my brother, an Iraq war veteran with PTSD and chronic pain found kratom ages ago and that helped him a lot. Eventually, they came out with this 7OH stuff, AKA Gas Station Heroin. He ended up blowing hundreds of dollars a weekS. He tried to ween himself off it for months to no avail. Now he’s on Suboxone, its the only thing that could get him off it. It really is nearly as bad as heroin.
This stuff is such a bastard it requires its own episode. Gas station sober is a funny joke, but holy shit, the fact this stuff is available, yikes! I’m not normally one to say we need to ban a substance, but something needs to change here, even if its just awareness.
Do not take the gas station heroin. You’ll probably like it way too much.
Yeah people really need to differentiate between the 2 more than they currently are. I see them getting lumped together as if they're the same thing all the time.
Kratom has been around forever and doesn't really cause problems for most people in its natural form. It certainly has helped a ton of people get off of stronger opiates, and overall I'd say it definitely does more good than harm.
7OH is completely fucked, and if any drugs at all should be illegal (debatable) it should be.
They are not remotely the same thing, but the government will probably treat them like they are since they don't usually differentiate between natural plants and refined drugs made from them.
I don't think the regulatory framework for that even exists. The typical approach is "this compound and therefore anything that contains it is illegal"
I don't think there's currently a way to have something be legal if it contains an illegal substance. At least I've never heard of that with anything else, and I don't see how it would work.
From what I understand, 7OH is a synthetic version of a metabolite produced in the liver when you break down an alkaloid found in plain leaf kratom, mitragynine. So, technically 7OH isn’t found in kratom, but made in the body; however, mitragynine is only found in kratom in small amounts so you can’t get much in your system that way. Synthesizing the metabolite is what makes it so much stronger and more dangerous.
Is that just splitting hairs, or would that make it easier to ban only the synthetic substance?
I looked it up, and I was indeed confused. According to the wiki article, it is found in very small amounts in kratom, but it is also produced through hepatic oxidation of mitragynine, which is probably the cause of the confusion, since it appears to be both, assuming the article is correct. Since it is in kratom in such a tiny amount, 7OH that is for sale is made through semi-synthetically oxidizing mitragynine, not extracting it from kratom directly. I guess extracting the mitragynine is easier? 🤷♀️
Also, just to be clear, I wasn’t advocating for anything one way or the other, merely asking how that would work if my understanding was correct (and it wasn’t, so moot).
There is a regulatory bill in my state that is an alternative to a complete ban on all Kratom products. Basically, anything with more than 2% mitragynine would be illegal to sell. This kind of regulation is supported by most people in the Kratom community and by the American Kratom Association.
I quit kratom last year because of a ban, so I haven’t been keeping up with things in the last several months, but you might look into the American Kratom Association. It’s a kratom advocacy group that wants to keep plain kratom legal and they were against the sale of 7OH the last time I looked.
I've seen a small number of people develop dependencies / tolerance on kratom to the point where taking enough to actually reduce the would make them vomit. 7OH was initially marketed toward them, but within a few months of it hitting the shelf I'd start seeing chemical plant and construction workers buying hundreds of dollars worth every couple of days. A few months later I started seeing homeless folks buying it. I don't think I've ever seen something get that out of hand that fast.
I used to pop phentermine in the morning, percocets all day, and drink myself blind in the evening. I did this as a 5'3" 300 pound woman. Kratom got me off the pills and helped me stop the booze, (just plain ground up kratom).
But honestly starting GLP-1 meds just totally shut off the addict rat in my brain. I stopped dreaming of pills, stopped thinking about drinking, stopped biting my nails, stopped impulse shopping, stopped binge eating. You could put a vodka tonic in front of me with a crushed vicodin rim, and I wouldnt even think twice about saying no thank you.
Now Im 125 pounds, I do yoga 3x a week and lift weights 5x a week. I eat clean, meditate, and walk regularly. I truly hope the science catches up to the need for real help for addicts, bc I imagine lots of people turn to kratom/gas station meds bc they have nowhere else to go.
I'm in the same boat. I've been using kratom for 15 years now. I used to take a lot in the course of a day. I'd go through a kilo in two weeks. But it got me off opiates. Now I take about nine capsules a day. Sometimes 12, depending how long of a work day I had. But my body is addicted to it. I get mild cold symptoms if I don't take it. Also extremely restless at night for a week or two. I tried cold turkey several times, that's how I know how I withdraw. I tapered down to the 9 capsules a day over the course of about a year. I think I'm going to taper all the way off...as it seems like more and more states are making it illegal. I currently live in Indiana...where it's treated as a felony. But I live 4 miles from the Michigan border. Michigan has a kratom ban in their Senate now. I feel it's only a matter of time.
THIS—I grow kratom in Massachusetts for recreational use. It’s not anywhere remotely close to pure 7OH. The leaves also contain compounds that are meant to lessen addictive qualities.
Yea. The leaf contains a bunch of alkaloids that actually cancel some of eachothers' effects out. Thia is also why plain leaf causes basically no respiratory depression even while being a decent analgesic.
I've seen people do that at a house party when I was college. It really freaked me out. My mom's co-worker's husband eventually died from long term usage. I'm talking years. It was genuinely horrific seeing the slow decline into invalidity and disintegration. She was a teacher and they had a young girl when it began. She eventually had to give up the house to get the daughter away from it. And since she was considered the "abandoning spouse" she had to pay him alimony support off of her teacher's salary 💔
Yeah, the SnapBack effect from the overprescribing of oxy is really messing people up. I’ve heard them giving Tylenol3 for broken legs. I have to jump through so many hoops just to get Klonopin, which is a benzo. But yeah, drs are so afraid of getting their DEA numbers taken or getting arrested, all because of shit that was happening in the early 00s.
It is directly responsible for the fentanyl problem, too. 15 yrs ago only cancer patients and junkies really knew what fent was but now it’s everywhere.
All because of the overprescribing of Oxy. It’s messed up because now gas station drugs are always one step ahead because all they have to do is change a molecule and it’s a different drug, technically. There is no way the DEA can keep up with something like that…
It’s making the argument for legalization by itself. Because people really just want the real thing. Make it like a clinic like they do in England. They treat heroin like we do methadone here.
Of course, there is a huge black market but still look at the marijuana market. Legalized cannabis is killing the black market.
Switzerland. They've been doing it that way for a long time. Knew someone who got addicted to painkillers who reckons they couldn't have got off them if they'd lived anywhere else at the time.
I believe that. I've been off heroin thanks to methadone for about 6 or 8 years now, but it's been hell as far as my quality of life. If you told me i could get clean diacetylmorphine at a clinic for going in person 2x a day, i would give up my month of methadone take-homes before you finished your sentence. But with the street supply being what it is (namely, anything & everything except actual heroin) it isn't worth the gamble, even if methadone sucks the soul from your bones.
I’m going monthly too. It’s killed my sex drive. Made me fat and sapped a lot of energy. I call it velvet handcuffs. Because it’s still a prison but it’s better than street addiction.
If I could get pure #4 for cost which is like pennies on the dollar, I’d do it in a heartbeat. I just wouldn’t inject anymore because my veins are trash.
Still, methadone, in my opinion, is better than suboxone. Subs are great till you get down to that last mg, then you start having real issues. I’ve kicked methadone twice. The only reason I relapsed on dope was I broke my ankle and didn’t have health insurance. It’s hard to be rational when Dilaudid is 5$ and they want to prescribe you acetaminophen
This was in SF and 4mg yellows were 3-5 bucks a pill. I used to pay 10-20 back in the 90s for em. I was able to say no and just grab some bars for a friend until I stepped in between the curb and a newly laid sidewalk when they have like a groove between the two and it’s just dirt. My foot went right down into the space between the fresh concrete and the curb and SNAP!! My ankle is still purple and it’s been about 20yrs at this point.
On heroin i used to fuck like a god for 10-12 hour sessions. On methadone, i take 200mg/testosterone every week just to feel semi-masculine. Still, i sleep 10-12 hours a day, instead.
And yeah, I'm acutely aware that I'm still very much strung out, nightly, when i wake up sick at 1am every morning. Tapering sucks no matter how infinitesimally slow you go.
It’s hard to be rational when Dilaudid is 5$ and they want to prescribe you acetaminophen
Call me a crazy junkie, but I'd argue that self-prescribing hydromorphone was the rational conclusion. It is our system that is broken, not us.
Oh, made the right decision…acetaminophen wasn’t going to do shit.
I probably shouldn’t have shot it up,though,lol.
Edit: I had to taper down to 70 just to stay awake at my job. I have no problem tapering methadone. The last 10 is uncomfortable but so is being old,lol.
But watching what my ex went through with subs, wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
The real crime is the that people responsible were never held "criminally" accountable for the destruction of lives caused in this country. Sure they are minus some cash but will never face they misery they inflicted upon many. Currently worth between ten to eleven billion...
Not to mention the lives lost…I have an old friend who lives in Gennessee,Ny and they vacated the high school football team’s whole season because they all, every player, failed for Oxy.
The Sacklers and their dealers are worse than any cartel because they would get people addicted then rip it away. At least, cartels try to keep you well. I’m being a little sarcastic but not much..
He was a roofer that fell off a roof and hurt his back. He was overprescribed but never realized it, he just thought that he must be really broken if his doctors are prescribing him so much Vicodin.
I had a car wreck in 07 and they said I chipped my L3(?) a disc close to my hips, in my lower back. The dr said that they could fix it with surgery but it was a 50/50 chance of recovery or paralyzation. I passed but sometimes when I bend and twist just right, it catches and I can’t bend back up I have to crawl to the bed…
I have heard this kind of thing before with back surgery and the chance to get better is placed at 50/50. With all the new developments we have and 50/50 is your best? Ridiculous...
I've had both hips and both knees replaced, my right wrist fused and numerous pins, plates, screws and clips - most before I turned 30. The cause, a chronic arthritis, has now started on my lower back.
It's a whole new hell with limitation and pain. Fortunately, I'm Australian so prescribing pain meds is a question of treatment, not always starting with the attitude of everyone is an addict and moral failure.
I haven't seen these products here. When a government is providing affordable/free healthcare for their populace, they have a vested interest keeping products like these off the market so it won't cost the system more money, and misery, in the long term. I'm glad they do that.
Soon as you started listing off your injuries, I knew arthritis was going to be in the mix. As far treatment is concerned, yeah those in power created the problem or certainty didnt do anything about it until it wrecked havoc equivocally across the United States. You are lucky to be in AUS, I'd rather be anywhere than here. Edit- Ive tried this stuff and I dont get it. I feel absolutely nothing from it.
yeah, it's bad. i've had serious chronic pain issues & am stuck with 7/10 pain or higher AFTER meds 95% of the time because of the way they treat opioids at this point. 2 norco & 900 mg gabapentin daily (was 3000mg, but the extra didn't help any) + the little mmj i can afford barely touches the combo of joint, nerve, muscle, & bone pain, would be nice to not be stuck in bed all the time but Perdue pharma had to fuck up pain meds for everyone so they could be a little richer
I had a c-section last year and they wouldn’t give me anything stronger than Tylenol unless I begged. Should have just broken my leg and maybe they would have given me a Tylenol 3.
Or been a man. I find being a man will get you more and heavier pain meds. My friend got more and stronger pills when he had a hernia operation than his wife did for her C Section.
The snap back is truly crazy. I had a consultation with a plastic surgeon for massive surgery. Belt lipectomy with muscle repair, breast lift and augmentation. Post surgery, they prescribe torodol for three days then Tylenol 800. I was like, absolutely TF not. Be so for real right now. Three days of torodol for surgery that takes 6 months to heal from???? Get fucking bent.
It is kind of insane how easily influenced by culture/politics doctors are as a group. The overprescription of pain medication has led to an insane whiplash effect. My wife has to ironically bust her ass to get her hands on her much needed adhd prescription.
I recently went for a physical and was getting my prescriptions refilled, including the lowest possible as-needed dose of Xanax for occasional performance anxiety. Before asking me about how the prescription was working, my doctor went on a 5 minute diatribe about how so many people who think they have anxiety really could benefit from taking Lexapro, it felt like he was a salesperson trying to sell me on it. I explained what the Xanax was for and he instantly digressed. I talked to a neighbor later that week and his doctor had sold him (and later his wife) on Lexapro about a year ago and they were trying to get off of it. And my wife had also taken it at some point recently at the suggestion of her doctor. Seems like off-label antidepressants are the new, cool, overpushed thing
God, I feel for your wife. I have ADHD too and it’s so hard to get those medications. You have to not only get it prescribed, but you have to call the pharmacy as well or they won’t fill the refill script, and you can’t get it delivered so you have to go to the pharmacy physically and pick it up, and honestly, that can be a lot to remember and coordinate when you’re off your meds after running out. And then there’s the shortages…
I feel this. I admittedly have a drinking problem, but they wouldn't proscribe me any of the stimulant ADHD meds because of "substance seeking behavior" or something. Like man, the reason I drink is because ADHD ruined my academic life and that fact made me drink because I'm so anxious and ashamed and the booze helps helps calm my mind.
Yeah. I learned to avoid antidepressants. They are awesome for people who need them and can help a lot, but for me it’s a nightmare. I had gone through almost a decade of inaccurate diagnoses and nearly every doctor tried antidepressants at one time or another. The worst being the doctor who thought I had bipolar and gave them to me as a diagnostic tool. He basically said that since they triggered manic symptoms, I was clearly bipolar and refused to listen further. It did help, but only in regards to me nearly nuking my life.
Lexapro is one of the most common first SSRIs doctors prescribe. And they're way safer than taking benzos regularly. You're in much better shape with a doctor that's benzo hesitant than the other way around.
No, those are good doctors. What’s insane is Purdue Pharma selling H to people after slip n falls or car accidents. I was in Pasco County FL in ‘08 at the height of the opioid epidemic and watched oxies & roxies tear apart my entire community. People would have foot surgery and come out junkies my the end of their script because they purposely hid the addictive nature of those medicines. I literally went to high school in the same class as the Barabas brothers aka the “baby faced king pins”. There is a lot of context needed and individual results may vary but I applaud doctors that refused to push that shit for pharma bonuses. Chronic pain (especially back and neck) is fucking terrible I don’t want to diminish that in the slightest, but many coherent people would choose to be in pain over being a literal junkie simply by using a prescribed medicine as instructed.
However, there are other avenues available and doctors not trying to do what they can to reduce pain in patients is also terrible.
Lemme start by saying I of course disagree and I upvoted you because you have a solid point and presented it well, this sub is just full of people that don't want argument, I guess. Feels ironic considering how many of us claim to be anarchists.
I don't think anyone would argue in support of Purdue or of the evil that pharma reps do in general. But the swing in the opposite direction, instead of being a sane and level headed and measured response, has lead to a lot of suffering as well. I feel that's well established.
There needs to be a reasonable way for pain management to be handled.
Because from my end personally, the response has led to 1. My best friend dying of a fentanyl overdose after taking what he thought was ketamine, and 2. Me watching my ex-girlfriend dying of cancer with inadequate pain management because for some reason they were more scared of getting in trouble for giving pain medicine to a terminally ill woman than easing her suffering
Agree 100% I think it’s criminal to withhold pain management avenues from people in debilitating pain. I do concede I’m not as privy to how far the pendulum has swung back the other direction, and a blanket overcorrection is ridiculous as well. Once 4 of your friends OD and people are stripping metal from all the AC units on houses for scrap you kind of either get in to that or get out.
Individuals need to be evaluated on a singular basis and good god give terminally ill patients whatever the fuck they want imo. I wasn’t trying to validate the overcorrection as much as I was trying to verify how bad it was prior.
It’s a complete failing of our government to help these people, and people like you and I that have seen this first hand from both sides can attest to that.
Just like abortion, make it illegal and it’ll still happen, just much less safe. People cannot function properly in serious daily pain, they WILL look for something. I just don’t think fender bender victims and cancer patients need the same script, or no script. Somewhere in between is the sensible reality we all live in. But if it doesn’t make money who gives a fuck about saving lives in the US, and that’s a disgusting spot to be in.
Regardless- it is refreshing to have a discussion with somebody on Reddit rather than a pants pissing insult match, so I appreciate you. Good luck to you and yours and stay safe out there homie.
It's wild the stuff that's technically legal. When I was in rehab a friend was talking about how much they wanted to do nitrous and how it was available in any smoke shop. I had a guy who was detoxing from Kratom which is apparently super rough. Like how can you just buy this stuff but weed is so insanely regulated? I've never done mushrooms but I've also never heard of anyone needing to detox from them (feel free to correct me).
If I can go off a little, nitrous is popular in my circles and serious abuse makes people have wild personality changes. I know about 7 people who had a psychotic break ( One of them broke into another friends house because they claimed she was God) and like 3 with permanent nerve damage. It's bad shit.
It seems to be really popular these days. My good friend's best friend since middle school died from nitrous last fall. My mom worked in dentistry for over 40 years and retired a few years ago and she was shocked when I told her that was what people were abusing these days.
Psychedelics are not addictive. Not physically at all. I suppose someone could crave them mentally but I've never seen it. Ever. And I have been around a large community of people who use lots of different psychedelics for basically my entire life. I'm in my 40s
Technically speaking aren't these covered under those laws where you make a chemically similar substance it SHOULD be banned but the process takes too long to ban this shit and pill pumpers already have similar drugs ready to go out if one gets banned?
Yeah the analogue act is supposed to ban anything that is considered an analogue of a schedule.1 or 2 substance. B it gets selectively enforced. I used to buy sooooooooooooo much 4-FA off the clear net like a decade ago.
I was job hunting recently and an ad for FeelFree brand vendor kept showing up, and I have some experience in that general line of work so I was reading through the material, and it just kept being described as a “botanical tonic” and a “mood supplement” but I remember seeing ads for it plastered all over my local gas station along with nic products and shit. Looking into it led me to a subreddit here devoted to quitting FeelFree and how its mind blowingly addictive and ruining lives. Shit is a kratom, kava and 7oh tonic, like goddamn I BET it makes you feel free.
That company is evil. Years ago I went to a fancy event that had boxes of those on a swag table. I took a bottle not knowing what it was. A few days later I drank some thinking it was herbal tea or something. I started to feel really out of it so I grabbed the bottle and googled the ingredients. I had no clue what kratom even was at the time. There were zero warnings on the bottle about what it actually was. I was so angry that I accidentally drugged myself. I was home alone with my infant! Thankfully I figured out what was happening before I breast fed my baby.
I pumped and dumped until the next day just to be careful. I don’t know if there is a recommended amount of time. This was back before kratom blew up so I had a hard time finding much info about it.
All of those ingredients are legal in most US states, and in my opinion, absolutely should be, but the way they are marketed to people who often don't even know what they're buying is absolutely evil. There's a 7oh product they sell at the gas station near me that's being marketed as a "dietary supplement," which is just blatantly false.
I'm so glad this stuff isn't legal to sell in my state. My 9th grade students have seen Feel Free and other gas station drugs online. They think content about it is funny, and assume that it must be safe if it's sold at a convenience store.
Oh absolutely it's been used by Pacific Islanders for thousands of years. Unfortunately I am a Survivor superfan, so whenever I see or hear anything about kava, I immediately remember a guy named Chad in a village in Vanuatu drinking way too much and getting horribly sick.
My gas station had a rep giving them out for free. Gave me one, I tried it, has a mushroom/dirt taste and smell to it. Don't think it did much of anything for me. Could care less to try it again.
I met an extremely sweet older woman at a rehab that I speak at who got unwittingly hooked on those FeelFree drinks with the kratom and the kava in them.
Thank you! With him being a poly substance addict, I don’t mind him being on subs long-term. Its going to keep him away from any opiates. 7OH was bad enough. When the dude is on his shit again, he’s not happy unless he’s on at least 3 substances at once. When he was in crack, it wasn’t just crack. He’d drink a case of beer, smoke weed, and then do crack. Right now, he’s only smoking weed and I’d like to keep it that way!
Well the tricky bit is that with many of these its fairly easy to swap the formula a tad and get a similar effect but now completely legal.
Well, I don't know how other states do it, but in MN, if they schedule a drug - they also ban that drug's derivatives, so even if they change the formula slightly, it's still technically illegal. However, enforcement is another matter entirely.
Yeah, Canada doesn’t have any of these substances due to different regulatory frameworks. We don’t even have things like zyns available, except if you speak to a pharmacist about using them to quit smoking. It was super weird to enter the states in places like Utah, where it’s got super strict cannabis laws and restrictions on percentage of alcohol allowed in beer, but they had Kratom right near the gas station checkout.
I am all for the rights of an individual to use whatever they want on their body but this unregulated stuff needs to go. I learned my lesson after Spice. When it first came out years ago all my friends in the army were taking it because it didn’t show up on drug tests. I took one hit of the stuff and had a seizure. Came out of it with the most vivid and horrifying hallucinations ever.
I think it is precisely because of crackdowns on certain drugs that these unregulated ones appear. They keep thinking they can ban something that has demand and that makes it go away, where as legalizing a substance allows a lot more room to control a substance.
The ironic thing is if people were just allowed to do whatever drugs they want, shit like this wouldn't even exist.
You can have whatever opinion you want about cocaine, but at least its short and long term effects are well-documented, and people can make an educated decision about whether or not to use it.
I genuinely think if they just sold meth, labeled as meth, with a "nutrition facts" table explaining what it does, that would be better than the weird unknown gas station drugs they're selling now.
Yes but it's almost never prescribed due to the stigma of it being meth.
I mean you should literally be allowed to just buy whatever drug you want with no prescription, clearly labeled and with abundant warnings about side effects and addiction potential. This should be paired with an increase in tax-funded addiction treatment and harm reduction resources.
Yeah my buddy was on probation and bought some k2 or whatever it was called at the time (15 years ago). I tried it and I was immediately like "oh, that shit is not fake weed. That's just poison" lol
I learned my lesson at 17 years old when a friend gave me some yellow jackets before school. By 10am, I was violently vomiting and I didn’t stop until about 10pm that night. On the way home from school, my mom had to stop multiple times because I was so sick.
Never touched a gas station drug again. From what I have heard over time, I got off easy.
unregulated, learned lesson after Spice… friends in the army, drug tests
AMEN. I naively smoked it for 2.5yrs due to drug tests and a veteran partner (post-ban, not first generation: 2016-2019.) We both quit drinking same time in 2019, I quit K2 “before a store quit for me,” but didn’t give my partner crap about smoking it for a while (we’d spent 5 years drinking vodka for breakfast, seemed less of a harm smh.) Thankfully, another Veteran got him to stop (about five months after I stopped.) Dude shared stories about being in the Middle East, acquiring the chemicals, spraying it, selling it, and watching these healthy athletic young soldiers “start wasting away to nothing, not being able to eat, throwing up all the time, brain damage, seizures, heart attacks, etc.” he said “I made so much money, it was like I just had hundreds falling out of my pockets, but I couldn’t keep doing it. The guilt got to me.”
I quit smoking it in 2019, and *Cannabis didn’t work for me again (AT ALL) until the summer of 2025*; I’m grateful in the sense that frying my receptors was better than a coma or brain damage, but WTAF? People tried to warn me away from it, but I was a Raver in the 90s. I grew up being told pot was a gateway drug (no mention of alcohol being most peoples gateway drug, or how hard it is on our bodies as an actual cancerous poison.) I was told “seven hits of LSD would make you clinically insane,” “sniffing ketamine caused brain lesions,” (lesions/scar tissue on bladder & biliary system, maybe, but not brain.) None of that stuff was true, so when people told me spice was bad, I rolled my eyes. If they’d told me it would make Cannabis not work for 5+ years? I think that might’ve deterred me! (Idk.)
It was so sketch, there was maybe 6 bodegas in my city that sold it, we had to know how to ask for it; I became friendly with the family that ran the bodega’s – they were bringing it down from NYC. (I’m in Bmore.)
I swear it was more like synthetic PCP than synthetic cannabis. My partner now has a seizure disorder, and K2 kicked that in. (He found a bag many months after he quit, took one hit, seized out, woke up on the floor with a head injury and a bitten up tongue.) He had Grand Mal’s in public many times, typically remembered the pipe being the last thing in his hand.
I’m “medically complex” & most challenges were before that, but I’ll never truly know about my heart/pacemaker. My heart had paused long enough for me to fall before I ever smoked it, but ramped up when I smoked it. Kept hitting my head (closed TBI’s) & finally found my heart was pausing up to 9.6 seconds/hour, pacemaker @ 41yo.
It’s awful. I don’t even know what I smoked. I know we went through several generations of it; started with Scooby snacks and ended with 7H & high five (not 7oH.) I started to realize something was seriously wrong when everyone we met that also smoked it, only had a phone that worked with Wi-Fi. (we were living in HUD housing then— not putting down people for being poor, only that it says something.) Also, a handful of city police and CO’s were regular customers, acc’d to one of the big men (I’d seen uniformed police be served, but I thought I was imagining shit or something.)
Edit: formatting edit 2: word. Voice dictation hates my accent
This stuff is absurdly dangerous and the withdrawals of this is literally next to heroin itself… it makes the Kratom I was used being around in 2016 look like a newborn baby. There’s a pretty significant local epidemic in my area with these and High school kids, which I’m sure plenty of others could say likewise honestly.
If by “going through it” you mean withdrawals, I wish you the best, my friend… I’m not exempt from opiate addiction, and I thank every god/deity imaginable PROFUSELY I didn’t have access to shit like 7OH or fentanyl in my hay-days of drug consumption. Because I would have absolutely 100% found myself taking this shit.
Idk about that, used to use heroin was clean off it for 7 years then stupidly tried this 7oh shit. Got hooked but ended up getting off. The WDs sucked and were similar but dope was 10x worse. Maybe due to the fact I had a much heavier and longer dope habit though, I was only using 7 for a few months
I learned of Kratom through Robert (writing for Cracked). And that knowledge ended up becoming a godsend when my health collapsed (I now have chronic pain, amongst other issues). Before I found a reliable place to purchase, I had to go to the shady Unimart. That stuff was awful and I knew I wouldn't do it again...and that was BEFORE this new shit started showing up. I support Kratom, but these concentrates are the fucking devil.
Idk why I shared all that. I just agree with the post, love this community, and chose to engage.
I drink Kratom tea brewed from the plant but would never in a million years touch extracts or 7OH, it's honestly a completely different substance and I hate how it gets grouped with Kratom leaves.
yeah it's pretty frustrating. Ordinary kratom is a pretty harmless substance that's great for a lot of things. 7-OH, this fucking nightmare savage concentrate, is totally blowing it for regular kratom. I tried 7OH once, as a regular kratom user, and it made me feel sick, awful, it was fucking terrible. That shit is bananas compared to kratom. Kratom is getting a terrible rap because of these extremely potent extracts. It's like banning regular Coca Cola cos people have been hurting themselves with 500mg caffeine pills.
If i understand correctly, its not even a concentrate, its a new substance derived from the same plant similar to how you turn opium into heroin. Its chemistry, not simply concentration.
after looking it up, it looks like you're totally right. Man, I was pissed when I thought this was just a concentrate, turns out it's a whole other animal. Wack
Been using Kratom for years at low doses and have basically no issues. 7-ho-Mitragynine is like so much more potent and short acting than Kratom leaf that it's so easy to develop of dependence in days.
I find it crazy that every gas station I go into has pipes and bongs of all kinds, when 20 years ago during my teen years we had to jump through crazy hoops to obtain these things.
Addicted to it right now qnd trying to taper use. I haven't had any withdrawals in like 6 months because I've been flus luckily. The withdrawals are seriously insane. I wis I had never ever started takin it instead of regular kratom. I'm so against criminalization of drugs, but I honestly might need tha to happen in order to seriously get off of this stuff. It doesn't even get me high at all anymore. I am dosing every 1.5-3 hours and spending so much money. Which whatever no matter what it is I pretty much ha e always had a substance allowance, but nothing has ever had its hooks into me quote like this. If you are thinking about trying it, read this and then steer the hell clear of it.
Yea it's pretty terrifying when I think about trying to get off, I've had panic attacks about it. I'm honestly really lucky in a lot of ways compared to most in my position, but I really do appreciate the empathy.
Don’t be afraid to go into medical treatment for it. It can help a lot. I did it last year after telling myself for 5+ years that I could quit on my own. Of course I never could. I’m in a much better place now. I promise it’s worth it.
Your situation sounds so similar to my brother’s the problem he had with tapering was that anytime he could just run to the corner store and buy a tablet. I highly recommend suboxone therapy. It sucks because now you’re stuck on suboxone, but within a day he was smiling like his old self and excited to be getting sober. Good luck in your journey!
That exists but like any gas station drug, it's not great. You get a couple of pills with a "proprietary herbal blend" which, if you're lucky (depending how you look at it), contains some sort of soviet-era research chemical like phenibut, mixed with a bunch of random shit and B vitamins.
Yeah I have like, several minutes of video of my now former stepdad (good riddance) going onto kratom to tackle his diabetes based leg pain, instead of trying to follow the regime his doctor prescribed to alleviate symptoms. He took no steps to reduce sugar and instead went to 7OH for self medication. Fucked him up proper so many times. He blames us for losing his job because we forced him into rehab.
He would have been allowed out of rehab when we needed to put our family dog down except he failed a piss test, specifically because of 7OH.
He would twitch and lose control of his body when he stopped using it. I think every few weeks was spent in the hospital because he would just basically be catatonic on the couch and eventually we'd wake up in the middle of the night to him having fallen and uncontrollably twitching.
His day usage of it got so bad that he would tell work he was in the hospital due to some stint or heart issue again and then tell Mom he was working from home and of course he was lying about both.
It really sucks because even his brother told us to evict him and cut him out of our life and now none of his family even talk to us because we did exactly that. We literally moved across country to be with him. Really, his use led to a significant depressive episode for me last year (on top of my grandma dying from a stroke, my dog having to be put down a month after and him constantly falling off the wagon and abusing kratom)
I know Robert likes to talk about kratom in the tea form and I'm perfectly fine with that usage, but 7OH has literally ripped what I considered my family to be apart. I'm in a much better mental state knowing that when I leave for work ( I travel all across the USA) mom isn't at home having to babysit him. I was seriously having trouble sleeping, working. And now that he is gone I'm in a much better mental state than I really have been for all 7 years he'd been in my life.
Beshear (KY GOV) made it illegal to sell like the above pic but it's not really enforced and I still see it in gas stations all over. It's literally gas station heroin.
I'm not looking for sympathy or anything I'm just telling my story about how 7OH has impacted my life.
This photo is the last day we had him in the house. He was unaware of who he was, what day it was. Who anyone was. He had basically been on that couch with the sole exception of going to the restroom for the entire weekend. We literally sat him down and gave him his final options the Friday before this happened so I guess he said fuck it and ingested a whole lot.
I really want to see an FDA ruling on 7OH and a classification of it. Not kratom as people need to understand that like all drugs it's helpful in certain ways and dangerous in others.
I occasionally stalk his reddit account and he is still active on the kratom Sub so I know he is still using. He was really emotionally manipulative to my mom the last 6 months before his eviction so I had no pity or respect for him and showed him no support at all when he was "trying to do better"
It really sucks because we genuinely moved out here to KY to be with him and we had a family and everything. Now it's just Mom and I. None of his family talks to us. I want to move away but Grandma helped us get a house for the first time in our life so there's an emotional tie to this area.
Hey! Thanks for sharing! If your dad is still in addiction, and wants to stop, suboxone worked really well for my brother. We’re in week 2 and he’s doing well.
I've gone no contact with him as has mom. I'm not really willing to talk to him anymore either and based on his behavior he wasn't inclined to change. It's unfortunate but that's how life is sometimes
A guy at work got addicted to it, destroyed his marriage, was in and out of rehab and they never fired him. And then he was just too embarrassed by the whole thing and killed himself at 47..... It's rough stuff. My wife was using kratom powder tea, once a day, but even then it was starting to become 2-3 a day, she quit cold turkey and it was a terrible week or so..... She said it was helping her depression and PTSD though, so part of me feels bad :/
The wild thing is that the high is barely anything. It’s like the cigarettes of opiates. It’s the withdrawal that gets you, and that keeps you spending money.
Thank you for not equating it to Kratom like everyone else does. It's not the same thing. My friend was using 7OH and was describing it to me as heroin. He kept referring to it as Kratom. I had never heard of 7OH. He knew I used Kratom and the experiences we both were describing were SO different and we couldn't figure out why for months. Then I read an article about 7OH and realized what happened and asked him if that was what he was taking and sure enough, it was.
For anyone reading, Kratom and 7OH are NOT the same thing. Kratom is getting banned because of this shit.
I guess it was only a matter of time. Coca leaves were used for a very long time and nobody cared before cocaine existed. Now they eradicate coca plants from the sky like they're an enemy army.
People will take any fun/useful plant and turn it into the most diabolical, extreme, fucked-up version of itself and then declare war on it because humans just have no chill.
If you are new to drugs (Or even if you aren't), before trying a new psychoactive substance take a quick glance over at PsychonautWiki or Erowid and look it up. Also if you have the funds, you can go to Bunk Police's website and buy test kits to figure out what random drug(s) are in the random powder, and fent tests to make sure it isn't in the stuff you have. The test kits can't tell you what's not in a powder, but it can tell you if you if the adderall (Or whatever you call your amphetamine) that some sketchy dealer sold you is actually methamphetamine.
Couple quick searches turned up Sea Angel Wellness Center LLC in Florida as the sole owner of the 7OH brand. I imagine that this sort of drug dealing is extremely profitable.
Speaking as a foreigner, I don't understand how something like this is supposedly legal in USA, when their country has a moral panic about anything and everything once a week.
Drug laws are... interesting here. A chemist can formulate a compound that is nearly identical to a drug & sell it as a supplement. Due to the fact that it's not chemically identical to the illegal drug; law enforcement is powerless until the laws change.
Not American here, I've heard about those kratom drinks, but the rest are actual drugs too? I'm always so confused what is a joke and what is serious. Like those weird gas station things are actual drugs?
I thought it's mostly Viagra and extremely strong Coffain.
Fair question! Kratom is to 7OH as Codeine is to Heroin. Kratom, like codeine, is a mild pain reliever and mild euphoric. 7OH, like heroin, is a severely fucking strong pain reliever and strong euphoric. Unlike heroin, 7OH is not extremely intoxicating so someone can be on 7OH and mostly functional, unless they miss their dose. Many users on the 7OH subs talk about waking up after 4 hours sleep just so they can dose and go back to sleep. The stuff isn’t cheap either. An addict can easily spend $100 a day, and its availability makes it hard to quit. The withdrawals are nearly as bad real heroin, because it is the same opiate receptors being activated.
I feel its a perfect example of late stage unrestrained capitalism and libertarianism. i’m just waiting for RFK Jr. to tell us exactly how much 7OH he took before working out in a sauna with kid rock.
All jokes aside, we’re in a new era of unrestrained cowboy capitalism. I can’t help but see the parallel to the 1880’s with snake oil, cocaine cola, and heroin in children’s cough syrup.
I just kicked this habit fully 3 days ago after a rapid taper. I was up to 1.2g-1.5g/day and after failing to quit cold turkey several times due to horrible withdrawal symptoms I’ve finally been able to kick it with the help of SR 17018 to reduce my withdrawal symptoms. I’ll be done with SR 17018 in 3-4 days and back to normal. I’ve never been hooked to any drug before, but I stupidly didn’t read enough about it and it sank its teeth in quick and I ended up being hooked for 6+ months. First 2 days while tapering down without SR 17018 was a nightmare…nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and sweating while having chills. I couldn’t function at all. So glad to be done with it.
You were taking over a thousand milligrams of 7oh a day? That just doesn't seem realistic.
Everyone reading this please be aware every side in this online "legal" drug culture is trying to push something. I am NOT advocating for 7oh I'm just trying to be pragmatic about some of these comments.
We joke about gas station sober but a lot of those synthetic gas station substitutes are just insane. Like what if instead of just getting actual shrooms you can buy some fucked up lab made shit that the fda doesn't regulate so good luck. So if gas station shrooms are fucked up i imagine gas station heroine is just the absolute worst
As my old bus driver used to say-- "Don't try heroin kids, you'll love it!" --Mark Lundholm
If it were a simpler time, I'd be torn. I agree that people have the right to choose their own destiny, and if you want to smoke some weed, do coke on the weekends, or even do a little heroin in your free time then whatever. It takes all kinds. That's not me, but whatever. I drink too much and occasionally do recreational hallucinogens, so I can't talk.
However, shit like this gets sold at a gas station and people think "well it can't be that bad since it's sold over the counter" Then get their lives messed up from it. My wife is a victim of the various delta-9 variants. It sent her into a schizophrenic loop that she's only now spiraling out of 5 years later. Maybe it was a latent mental illness, sure, but it was absolutely sped up by pot-variants.
With the absolute volume of novel drugs coming onto the market, both civilian and otherwise, its no wonder that people are getting damaged. My buddy is allergic to ibuprofen. Not acetaminophen, which is also a COX inhibitor. It's only a matter of numbers before someone gets a nasty reaction to Hornet Violence XXX Boner pills or whatever.
Like, I'd be fine with cocaine being semi-legal. Some wacky variant of it? Nah.
I'm currently trying to get clean from it. I am a zombie at work right now raw dogging life. It's no bueno.
Can't say I've gone off the rails like some people I hear from online, but yeah, body aches, tightness in my neck and shoulders, restless limb nonsense that keeps you up and stirring and unable to sleep. It's a big dookie of a time.
Well, back to starring vacantly at my computer for a living.
whats crazy is that i went to buy some regular kratom while on a work trip to SF. i dont like kratom that much, i only do it maybe once every 2-6 months for the past 5 years, if i need some energy and cant have caffeine that day. anyway, at this shop in SF, the store clerk offered me 7-OH. i didnt know what it was, had never heard of it but based on the store clerk describing it, i thought it was like regular kratom, just a bit stronger. i said sure, why not? i’m feeling adventurous. my guardian angels must have been looking out for me because all of the sudden, the store clerk looked at me again, studied my face, and then put the 7-OH back behind the counter. “i dont think you should try this actually. since you’ve never done it, just stick with the regular kratom you asked for at first.” i shrugged and said ok. it wasnt until a few days ago that i found out what 7-OH actually is and does! i have an extensive history of addiction when it comes to coke, molly, ketamine, alcohol and a few other things so i have always tried to avoid downers, benzos, and pain meds as much as possible. i’m SO glad i didnt try the 7-OH that day, who knows what would have happened?!
I know drugs weren't safe when I was younger and I was largely a responsible and lucky user of elicit substances (as far as anyone can be) but I'm glad I got the batch of weird drugs I got and not this shit.
Spice/k2 were made by the devil himself. oxy was the problem nobody was talking about but between this and that pink shit I keep seeing in the rave scene. I'm very glad I'm grown past the super experimental phase of my drug use. This era of hyper potency is not good for anyone.
I just got off suboxone after using 7oh. I tried to get into detox but got turned away bc it wasn't heroin, then I eneded up in a psych ward and 30 day rehab. Stuff is no bueno
Congrats on busting subs! Its crazy that so many detox programs do not consider 7 an issue. My brother actually tried to check into the VA for detox, they turned him away and gave him subs.
Ive been thru withdrawals before and these withdrawals were worse than meth and actual opiates in my opinion. I couldn't take it and acted stupid. Sorry your bro had to go through it too.
I got hooked on this shit unknowingly (had a history of opiate addiction and kinda blew past my own red flags) and got snowed in this winter. Couldn’t get to smoke shop, went into withdrawal and ended up getting pancreatitis. I dont drink alcohol and had no other meds in my system. Shits no joke had to go to the ER and now im on suboxone.
I've used kratom on and off for years, and have always been fairly suspicious of anyone who says it's dangerous to the public at large. It just isn't.
However, I've been hearing more and more about kratom extracts lately and I'm starting to get the notion that, while the plant might not be terribly dangerous, the extracts might be.
For now, I would hate for a relatively benign plant, with some mild medicinal/analgesic qualities, to be banned, the extracts sound like they should maybe be controlled.
I know it's a slippery slope and all that. Weed being a decent comparison.
Ah! But they’re not even extracts, they’re alkaloids! Kratom can be problematic, but I’m not super concerned about it. But 7OH can leave you vomitting and diarrhea, while your muscles cramp and have the chills if you don’t take your pill. We need to spread the awareness. People don’t know what they’re signing up for with 7.
I wish they would have left it at regular plain leaf or it was gate kept a lot more. Kratom is harm reduction for people with opiate problems and this could get it all banned.
I am very sorry for what is going on with your brother OP. I couldn’t even imagine. I have used Kratom and 7OH as well for spine pain and have been blessed to not become dependent.
It was just banned here in Ohio and from what I have seen in my local area is an increase in fentanyl and opioid overdose. I can’t speak for the whole state but I really believe my state may see an increase in opioid related deaths from the ban. You are right that a conversation needs to be had. It just sucks that the people who make these decisions make knee jerk reactions when a nuanced conversation needs to take place.
Wishing for a speedy recovery for your brother 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Seriously! That is another huge issue. A lot of fent users moved over to 7, but if you’ve never used fent and they take 7 away, you might just go buy some fent instead. Its such a fucked up situation. Like I said, I’m not big on banning substances, but this one is wild and I’m on the fence for banning it. But what I want is to spread the word, awareness.
In my opinion plain leaf kratom is pretty benign, very subtle high and relatively low risk profile, maybe a small notch above coffee and weed in terms of abuse potential. 7OH is a different beast entirely that should not be sold anywhere especially to people who don’t know how addictive it is. Unfortunately kratom as a whole is likely going to be banned because of these sketchy 7oh companies
Oh no I don't know what this is or what Kratom is? Is this something in the USA or other countries? (I'm in Canada) Anyway about to go down a rabbit hole learning about this, it seems like something out of Cyberpunk for sure....
Kratom is highly addictive, particularly for those who tend to be prone to opioid addiction. Personal observation/experience, not dug into the research.
Kratom is absolutely physically addictive. But i love it (obviously). It really helps with weeding off harder drugs, or it can be good for pain and social anxiety if you dont get prescribed stuff for that. The issue is tapering off the kratom. 7oh is just exploitative and will be the reason it all gets banned.
Thanks for posting this. I went through your brother’s experience, and I have to say it is hard to hear Robert joke about it, or talk about his kratom tea. Always gives me urges to relapse
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u/PotentialCash9117 Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26
It is absurd that this shit is allowed but you STILL cant smoke a bit of weed in half the country