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Comment by hn72774 | Hacker News Reader

If anyone is trying to quit, the StopDrinking subreddit is a godsend.

Kratom was a valuable tool to step away from alcohol, but it has concerns of its own. In my case it was without a doubt worth it. YMMV.

Isn't that just drug substitution?

(hope you're doing well btw)

Harm reduction can still be a valuable first step if the substitution is indeed less harmful.

I know people who switched to cannabis and found good success with it. They've since gotten help with the underlying addiction issues, and are in a much better place.

Probably not a good idea to see substitution as a long term solution though.

Substitution can be a valid part of a harm reduction approach, if it allows someone to begin a process that otherwise feels impossible. Or if it is simply less damaging to the individual and those around them than what they're using now. It can be a step, if not a solution.

But I hope no one is trying to roll their own addiction recovery program out of the HN comments today. If anyone thinks they might need it they should get competent help.

I thought I was quite reasonable in my comment: I spoke about what worked for me, noted that it's not without concerns, and that it's not for everyone (aka YMMV).

And while it is technically an opioid, the safety profile is significantly different than traditional opiates. I used (and at time abused) it for years and am now taking a break as it has significant trade-offs. Getting off of it was way, way, way, easier then quitting cigarettes.

Can't speak for the OP but having watched family deal with addictions before, my answer to that question whenever it came up became "So what?". A dependency on something might be bad an and of itself, but usually the real reason why an addiction is bad is because of the negative effects it has on your life beyond just being dependent on the vice. If someone went from a dependency on alcohol to a dependency on coffee, no one would blink an eye because coffee's other problems aren't nearly as bad. In my opinion, anything that's even a little less bad than whatever addiction you're trying to break is a step in the right direction. You can worry about not having an addiction at all later when just having an addiction is the worst thing you're dealing with.

It is. But I'd argue it's a net win in that alcohol is far worse for you.

I'm doing quite well in this regard. I have low-level chronic pain and it did wonders there too. Took it for years and only recently have stopped to do a reset/reevaluation. Tapering/quitting was rapid with the only impact of sleep issues for a week. It was definitely worth it.

I'm glad it worked for you but I'd be hesitant to recommend it to people with substance abuse issues. It's also anecdotal on my end but when kratom first started taking off and getting big I knew more than one person who switched from drinking/smoking to taking kratom recreationally before getting addicted to it and having to go through opiate like withdrawals, and another person who got addicted to it and graduated to harder opiates after a few months.

I don't think they would have ever gotten addicted to heroin otherwise, too far out of their comfort zone to just jump into, but the lack of stigma around kratom and way it was marketed online gave them a taste for it and made it easier for them to take a more lax approach to opiates in their own mind.

It's like recommending someone take morphine or codeine to cure themselves of alcohol addiction.

I noted there were caveats. I also know that others have used it with similar success.

My brother got addicted to heroin when previously he had only used alcohol and cannabis (it killed him). My mother drank herself to death. How about those for counter anectdata?

Most brain altering chemicals come with risk. Doctor prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depressants have long lists of warnings (including death).

Your last line is disingenuous -- there's a significant difference.

And let's go back to alcohol, the socially accepted and celebrated form of "taking the edge off"

https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-death....

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-to...

So 178,000 deaths from excessive alcohol abuse per year in the US. Yes, everything is fine.

I'm not claiming alcohol is (physically) less dangerous than kratom. I'm well aware of how damaging alcohol is despite its prevalence.

Brain altering chemicals do come with a risk but there's a big difference between being prescribed a drug by a doctor and deciding to use it yourself without supervision. You mentioned in another post of yours that you ended up abusing kratom as well, that's where the "risk tolerance" you railed against another poster for bringing up comes in. I'm very glad it worked out for you, I just said that I personally would not recommend replacing one substance with potential abuse for another as a means to quit, because I personally think it can have adverse effects in sidetracking people into harder drugs (and new addictions).

I don't think comparing and opiate to an opioid is disingenuous at all. Kratom may be "safer" than morphine or codeine at first glance but it produces comparable effects, induces a comparable addiction, and we also don't have the thousands of years of feedback through history of people taking it the way they take it now to compare to like we do with alcohol or traditional opiates. The full safety profile just isn't there yet. For example, it's wasn't unheard of for people to develop issues with their liver, or other physical problems after months/years of use though it's not very clear to me if it's from the kratom alkaloids themselves or that some of the early suppliers had issues with heavy metals / pesticides in their crops. And that's not something we tended to see recently or historically with traditional opiates being used by long time patients in moderate doses, but it pops up in kratom after just a few years of it blowing up and becoming more commonly used at recreational doses.

Replace alcohol with opiates?

You have quite the risk tolerance.

You drink alcohol? You have quite the risk tolerance.

Social drinking is endemic the world over. Pray tell where opiates are as ubiquitous?

You moved to shame me on my coping mechanism. Kratom worked quite well for me and I simply shared that fact, along with the fact that it has caveats and is not for everyone.

Now you shift the goal posts to be about social acceptance. Your moralizing on your superiority of drug choice has only demonstrated that you have nothing to offer in this conversation accept your smugness.

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