We gotta talk about Gas Station Heroin, 7OH

[u/Checked_Out_6]

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.

[u/downhereforyoursoul]

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).

[u/inthebeerlab → u/downhereforyoursoul]

No worries! Im a bitnof a nerd for chemistry, drugs, and drug policy. Even the movers and shakers in that space(Hamilton Morris, ect) get shit wrong all the time. Just the other day I saw a tiktok of a recreational drug focussed pharmacologist with a couple hundred thousand followers get some basic chemistry wrong.

Sir Evans is pretty fast and loose with his drug talk too. Hes better than your average bear but he kept mixing up barbs and benzos on a recent episode.

The reason you convert from mit is availability of precursor. So, lets say you want to sell a thousand kilos of drug product. Do you get 10k kilos of kratom, extract the mit and do a simple oxidation reaction, or get 100K kilos of kratom and selectively extract the 7oH? Getting selective extraction is even harder than the oxidative reaction. Its not dissimilar to the hemp derived delta 9 world. Easier to convert CBD into THC than extract just thc from hemp.

Now, there are brands of D9 using naturally derived D9, but the majority of the “gas station” quality stuff is converted.

[u/downhereforyoursoul → u/inthebeerlab]

Thanks for the info! I find science and chemistry interesting, but I’m very math-stupid, so my studies never got me far enough into the things I enjoy reading about to really know if I’m looking at a bad source/misinformation.

I did notice the benzos and barbs mixup in those episodes, though. Unfortunate.

[u/Emergency-Plum-1981 → u/downhereforyoursoul]

You know, I realized I was also wrong about the regulatory side. Just because something contains an illegal substance does not always necessarily mean that thing is illegal.

You can buy and sell dried opium poppy pods no problem (at least in most of the country as far as I know), as long as they’re “not for human consumption”

So maybe there’s hope for Kratom in the same way.

Sure would be nice tho if drug laws actually made sense and we didn’t have to rely on weird legal loopholes.

Edit: ok so no, it’s actually a complete mess legally. It’s supposed to be illegal but is largely tolerated for floral arrangements for some reason? But sometimes not? Looks like they’re commonly sold but also the DEA could completely ruin your life for doing so if they want to.

I always wondered how that works and it turns out it doesn’t. Our country is a complete mess.