The Mystery of the Vape Shop Kratom
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M for free. I'm going to try the substance even though i'm scared of scary movies. If you watch IT too many.

A few weeks ago, I tried to a search journalist's with a question. At the time, I wasn't sure whether he'd want to be ananimous or not. okay. So first, so do you aren't just say your name, like how you want to identify yourself for the purposes this recording?

Yeah, i'm Chris glen. I go by Chris. But uh, you know, I I don't I really thought about any kind of like an animated idea or anything like that.

Do you any anybody, if you want, offer IT, if you don't care, we don't need to.

I decided basically, I don't care. I would be happy to have my name attached. Anything I say is fine.

The reason I was being little cautious here was that Chris had written to us about an experienced had with addiction, addiction to a kind of drug that neither us was sure you were even first to call a drug. IT was hard to know how to talk about any of us, but i'd wanted to speak to him because the substance in question and Chris's questions about IT in the past year, a bunch of my friends had taken me aside privately with similar questions.

So you wrote us an email, and I, all the emails go to my phone and I read them all. But yours, I read quicker than most because had the word. It's really Crystal right.

I really don't know. I've heard cradock with a .

long a you hear cradock you more random? I was proceed with a cradock IT had the word create them in the subject which peaked my interest because we have been time out cradock for like a year in the office.

Okay.

can you just like tell me the story of like how creating cross your radar?

Yeah, absolutely. So I over the years have had struggles with addiction of various kind, mostly alcohol. And so it's been a couple years ago now.

I was really doing badly with alcohol and drinking a lot and decided to get into rehab, went to detox first, and then got into outpatient rehab program. And IT was actually there that one of the people in group, he was a lot like me, his main problem with alcohol. But any kind of substance that crossed his path, he might have problems with on the .

same way there's a work recovery. It's like a garbage head, which I have to be like this is a front recovery.

Yes, I heard that as well. So Chris is in rehab.

was talking about how he was strugling to quit cannabis. And this other guy mentioned that he had also had a bit of a problem with something called cradock.

And at that point I didn't even know what that was. My awareness of IT was basically like a sign light up on the window of the vapor. P, yeah.

Around here is the main place where you see IT and the wave shop, sir, as common as check cashing places. They're just everywhere. So my addict brain was like, on the one hand, oh, this is something to really avoid. And then on the other hand, something I didn't really know about that was really obviously easy to get kind of peaked the curiosity there yeah so did well with three hub and got back to work and was keeping clean enough everything for about a months and started back up with smoking pot. And around the same time, I popped into the wave shop to get tobacco or weed related stuff and was like, i'm going to try some of these cradles.

If Chris was trying to fight out what to expect from cradle, though its sold, makes that mission also confusing. He saw in a vb shop is also sold at convenient stores and gas stations. There's often a picture of crayon on the packaging, a grey Green erb, which suggests its natural.

It's also often sold near cannabis products, suggesting it's mood altering, but maybe not that strong. Sometimes it's behind the counter. Sometimes it's in the IOS with the Candy. If Chris is wondering, while this work is IT safe, is IT more like a medicine or a drug? The cultural signaling around IT was just mery, but you wanted to try IT to .

be about some. So the way that I got IT initially was in capsules. But IT looks like an earth powder in the capsules. They could be vitals, or you can also get just like a powder or liquid form of IT. And it's just really nasty, very bitter.

What is the high of IT feel like .

it's not very pervasive. IT doesn't get all over you like even like smoking cannabis for anything. But main things that I noticed pain completely gone. All the like, body aches and all that stuff, just not there at all. Nervous eating, nervous, all kinds of things that deal with all the time were greatly lessen. But honestly, as soon as those beneficial things started showing up, IT came right along with IT, where I noticed, if I didn't take for a while, I just felt crappy.

And what do crap feel like?

Like emotionally low, really, casey, just like in a really bad mood. And then my pain would come back to.

Craddock had briskly gone from a substance crisis, curious about to a substance tea fat was giving him a nice high to a substance he was pretty sure is leaving him in withdraw. So now he needed to make sure he was taking freedom often enough to stay ahead of that withdraw feeling. So his consumption, one up, which made him feel shamed. The shame may be compounded by the fact that some people just don't consider quahog to be a very classy drug, whatever that means.

People that I worked with, the cannabis people, and they all thought that I was just completely lame. We just feel like, why in the world than anybody ever take that when you couldn't just smoke, curse things like that? So yeah, I started doing stuff like, I would go to different shops because I was like, and I want to run into my co workers by stuff and stuff like that.

I was just embarrassed about IT, but I asked a guy at one of the shops. So I was like, I usually get this stuff. What's the best? What do people like to get? And he was like, this one guy gets this every week, just loves IT, swears by IT.

And this was a smaller bottle of specials again. But this was branded tiana. And I didn't even look at the small print there anything.

I just thought another kind of craye. M, another brand of cradock. Yeah, but I was much more expensive. So whether I had been taken like four cryo m pills at a time, I got this stuff and I took two and I felt great pain was gone, pretty good kind of ethic by basically everything that the cryo m had done. But just like a .

little bit more Diana, another substance sold in america's unofficial al, or smoke shops, or delay, or gas stations, piani gets the same from its featured ingredient. T nf. Teen Chris thought this was another form of cradock. IT is not, well, get in twisted actually, as later, whatever you're guessing, I think you're wrong. But for now, what Chris knew is that the substance ce, he knew as piana seem to do more for him than crayon had maybe too much .

more before he could figure .

out what was going on. Christmas is having deeper withdrawal symptoms. He now had trouble sleeping without the pills, and when he would fall asleep.

I would wake up midway through the night, heavy night sweat, and have to take more of the pills. Before I can fall back to sleep again in the morning, I would take him into the bathroom with me and take three, four every couple hours at work.

IT doesn't a lot like an up. Yeah, I haven't taken open. It's recreationally, but I just was recovering from a surgery.

And so I been on them recently. Yeah, I the same way I I ve taken them for an injury, but never recreationally.

We're used surprised to find ourself in such deep water with something that you could buy at a wave shop.

absolutely. In the whole time, I was really struggling with IT because I was like, I knew I was hooked on IT and that I was having these adverse effects. And at the same time, I was like, I can be that big of a deal.

I'm struggling with something that everybody else would deal with very easily because it's just this casual babe store stuff. I feel embarrassed to try to get help about IT. This is not like alcohol. Everybody understands what a big problem that can be. And were you .

telling anybody that you are using IT? No, it's such a lonely experience, I think feel like when people have issues with substance. Ces, you're in a big community, people of these issues but when you you're having up with a something that's like more relatively unknown IT sounds like it's just like, yeah.

I mean, I went into detox for this eventually at the same center that i've been to rehab for alcohol. L and honest mostly found there that people knew just as little about IT as anywhere. Oh really yeah.

When you say people, do you mean like other patients? Do you mean practitioners like everybody was your side out of now?

Everybody yeah practitioners, the psychiatrist in charge of the place was doing research on IT .

that's such a crazy feeling talk and they're like, you know, i'm going to need to cool this one yes. And that IT is until .

I was having really serious withdrawal symptoms and I would describe those to the doctor or the intake people or not there like the something just like abuse. I had these box and joint pain and extremely anxiety and crawling skin. And yeah, I was at the same time hard to wrap my head around that IT was even a real problem, or that anybody was gonna knowledge IT. And then also in my face that IT was a definitely a big problem.

So it's like you're going to figure of you're the Kitty pool or drowning in the ocean end like when you're having opiate style withdraw at a detox center, you kind of have your answer.

yeah.

how are you now?

I'm good. It's been like six months since i've taken .

any of thanks.

I feel much healthier and happier.

And for you as a question, just like essentially like what was that? What was that drug? Is IT in oppoi?

Yeah, i'm curious about specifically what is IT? How is that made? How's IT get here in? I just I would like to know, are other people struggling with IT? Are their government or law enforcement or regulatory agencies they're working on IT?

Let me find what we can learn.

okay.

So I decided to try to answer Christi's question. And before we go further, I want to acknowledge that there are listeners out there who will not at all relate to the idea that someone would take a substance that didn't know very much about that they bought from a guy at a map shop. I mom, for instance, who is is to the show, is probably drafting a text right now asking me to promise her I would never do this.

So to give a little explanatory context to this choice Chris made, the truth is that we are living through a strange moment in american drug culture today, more adults are smoking cannabis daily than drinking. You can buy academy on instagram. You're seemingly not allowed to when I start up unless you're on I oka.

The old world is dying, a new one, strugling to be born. And nowhere are things more confusing than at vb shops and gas stations here at the source we know are not pharmacies. Many americans know by tobacco, weed and this new other stuff, stuff they gave Chris opioid.

Like with draws. I couldn't imagine a world where the U. S. Government would let you buy oppos from the guide, the wave shop, or they do at the gas station. And if that world existed, I certainly could not imagine being able to see that world's upsides. After the break, we learn quite a bit.

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Fast search to get fifteen percent of your lemon that's L U M E and dot me slash search for fifteen percent of your purchase. This show is sponsored by Better help. This month is all about gratitude.

And along with the person I just shut IT out, there's another person we don't get to thank enough ourselves is sometimes hard to remind ourselves that we are trying our best to make sense of everything. And in this crazy world, that is an easy here's a reminder to send some thanks to the people in your life, including yourself. That's where Better help comes in.

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Welcome back to the show. I really don't like asking questions when I suspect I already knew their answers. And at first this seemed like one of those instances. What I knew was a guy got hooked on a shady new substance from a map shop, got out on another and ended up in detox.

If pretty obvious me that this was the situation crying out for serious government intervention, why would this be remotely okay? Then I learned a bit, then learn a bit more, and I discover something pretty complicated, something that has fundamentally tweet how I think about drug policy in america. Bullets started the beginning.

The first place I liked to try to understand the crayon is the place. I imagine, Chris, we've liked online, the internet of twenty twenty four, we know, is a very decade place. By what you mean, reliable information about anything is pretty hard to find.

You're trying to eat, write the world to sell just straight hot dogs. If you're old, like me, you now tend to go to redit for answers, which isn't great. If you're Young, you got a tiktok, which doesn't see much Better. So create them.

If you want to find information that will tell you freedom is safe, fun and even useful, you will probably wind up at reddit board r flash free dom, our community, permanently behind the drop on the side bar a basic creative introduction tax about creators involving legality, academic studies on its use. When I was that when day in september, somebody was typically singing Crystals praises, quote, I can't believe how great awards for man, I don't clarify, have to some mistake, tolerance breaks. I don't clarify, become addicted.

Life is objectively Better with cradock. IT does what i've always wanted to drunk to do. Well, let me calm down, think rationally, be in a Better mood.

State of gratitude. You name IT and quote, this is like how meditation people talk about silent or treats. On the other hand, if you're create dom suspicious, there's an internet for you too.

On redit, you'll probably land on our slash crayton withdraw. Almost exclusively devoted to horror stories. Somebody says, quote, i've been a thirty grand per day user for about six months.

I've lost half my hair so depressing. I have gorgeous hair, almost like this stuff is eating me from the inside out. And tiktok and youtube as well, have tons of videos of people speaking on the horns of their crazy experiences.

I was taking them all throughout the day. I would wake up first thing in the morning, immediately feel like crap because of the day before I need. I tried to win myself off, and I went into full blown.

albeit with dry. I had herbal.

restless stars, flashes .

bathroom .

and. Hate IT how my .

body fell.

some depression.

I just wanted IT to end. Had eye been standing in a map shop, phone in hand, browsing these two internets while contemplating my purchase of cradock, I would have been confused. I would have had that familiar feeling of asking a question in a response, stabbing not into an answer, but an argument, one that had been rAiling for years.

I want to talk not to the internet, but to a human being. And so I called one first things. First, I just need you to introduce yourself. Can you say your name and what you do professionally?

sure. yes. hello. My name is all of a grand man. I'm a clinical professor and assistant dean at the college of pharmacy, university of florida.

I've done a lot of reading about Crystals since I spoke to realizing criss, and I kept running into references to and citations of data gunman's work. He's been studying cryo m for nearly a decade. So just like breast tax, what exactly is?

Yeah, some told IT cradock. Others called a crayon. What you say, I say craton, because in its native southeast asia is called cat home. So they put the emphasis on the last syllable. And I ve studied IT since two thousand sixteen.

I just want to say nearly everyone I spoke to pronounce this differently, which is maybe just a comment on how early we are in our understanding of this drug in america. For this story, I decided to just mire the pronunciation of whoever I was speaking to cradle.

So croton is a both the name of a tree that grows natively ly in south assia and malaysia, thailand, indonesia now and also the actual product crown, like the leafs of the tree that are being used to prepare a number of different products that are now on the market in the us. And traditionally, IT has been used for at least the last one hundred and fifty years, tracing IT back to eighteen and thirty. IT was first reported by a dutch button st. Who was traveling to tighten and malaysia. And his name is cross sallis, and courses is actually observed, the plan being used, both the fresh leaves being chewed to give a stimulus effect, as well as leaves being breed into a tea prepared into a tea cooked for like two to three hours, the freshest, and then that t being consumed by indigenous folks, native folks in southeast asia.

And so my understanding of cradle is that depending on the dose, you can either produce like stimulate effects or effect effect. Is that correct?

yeah. So the stimulus, the fact some people describe IT as when you get a little bit tips you on alcohol in the beginning, you kind of get more sociable, so more, uh, kind of releasing inhibition, releasing effect. Others describe a as the slight boost that they get in the morning from the cup of joe or from caffeine or coffee.

And then others sometimes compared to a little bit stronger stimulant effect. So I think that depends on the individual who is consuming IT. When we talk about uphill a, that is more related to its comparison with opiate. So the opposite, like uphill a, you would get at much higher dose, is when you kind of pass the relaxing incentitive stages and go into the more energy and opiate like effects.

So craw m, at a low dose feels like a stimulant, but at a higher dose feels you for c offers opi like effects. Opp, I like effects. Those three words in a way, our entire story lives in those three words. And so I want to dive into them for a moment.

Opiates are drugs, arrived from the poppy plant, herman, when we talk about, we talking about drugs that, mike, those effects in our body, but which are not necessarily drive from the puppy porton drugs like oxy, cotton purchase at and vacant or oppos, but technically speaking, we can call any drug that interacts with our opposite recept tors. In opposite, I ended up talking a doctor gunman about a odium the diary, a drug I knew from our final episode that the same chemist had formulated with a modiin. But I hadn't known that both those drugs are opioids.

dr. Grandma told me the modem is an opioid. Some opioid ads used to get high. Other s have taken so much, they and died cradock containing chemicals, alcove ids, which act on our opiate receptors, which means literally cry dom isn't opposite, and yet people shy away from the term. You are not allowed, for instance, on the crown separated to use the award.

That's because nearly everyone associated obviate with drugs that are highly addictive and can kill you by stopping your breathing. Calling a drug in opioid is like getting a big red button that submits a tanna. Cultural fear as well as the presence of american regulators.

Cram leaves contain at least two different alcoa's that interact with their obviate receptors metric in and seven hydrox y meta gene. Seven hydrous y meta gene is very strong, more than ten times more talent than more fame, but there's not very much of IT in a crayon leave method in which is much weaker, is responsible for most of the effect crayon mies or feel. And what is your understanding of like crazy is used in a specific way in amErica right now? And sort of like, you know, the hundreds of years before today, what were the uses? What did what did people think credit was for?

Yeah, so there were a number of different uses for IT and has been used both as a slight stimulant by day labor's, who use IT primarily to water fatigue when they work in the hot son and h tropical humid climates to continue working, but also for pain relief, for fever, for diary by indigenous folks, specifically manages prepared as a tea.

Now, with the opium traits that happened in the eighteen th century or one thousand nine hundred century, eighteen thirties, eighteen forties, we saw a huge influx of opium from china as well as across the world. Really, that's what the opium wars of the british colonizers was about in the nineteen century. And whenever opium supplies were scarce in these areas of malaysia, thailand, people turn to quantum to use that as a harm reduction or as simply a substitute for opium.

We're going to come back to this later, this idea of crayon leaves as a natural substitute for opiate users. But crowden story in the united states, that begins much more recently. So recently that in twenty sixteen, deter gramm, one of our foremost cradle experts, had never heard of the drug.

What happened was that one of his students also worked in a south florida crime lab, and the student had come across the case where a person was found in toxic at the scene of a car accident. The cops stone crowd him on the guy. So the crime lab student comes in the school in assia runnin.

What's cradle that to running didn't know, but doctor gund men had a background in naturally occurring substances that affect our minds. So he was excited to learn about a new one. This drug which had arrived in the U.

S. From southeast asia. He decided to try to fight out how popular this new to him drug was. And so we design the survey. And how are you conducting the survey?

How are you finding the users? So at the time we had the american crowd association, which still exists to this day, I think they have evolved over time from the relatively really user driven and user advocated group to a little bit of a lobbying ARM as well.

But at the time I reached out to them and ask, k, would you be willing to just send out an email to your members to distribute this survey? So I didn't ask them for input on how to design the survey, but just to distribute IT and the first survey, I caped at ten thousand responses, thinking that, uh, maybe I got five hundred of I am lucky in like two weeks or so. And within two weeks, I got ten thousand responses and I had to end the survey. So I won't never have expected a such a huge response rate. So that was the first survey that was published on on crowd um use in the united states.

The survey showed that people were using cradle to treat a comically vast range of american malians, anxiety, depression, A D H D, P S D, chronic pain. And not just that, cat him as a substitute for people trying to break their relationships to other drugs, to alcohol defending to heroin, to benowm. Example s stimulus, like crater, was even being used by people who just wanted to win themselves off anti depression.

dr. Gunmen survey offered peak at cradles, quiet behind the scenes role in amErica a substance a lot of people's self medicate with because either they don't trust or can access our traditional medical system. Acknowledging this is not the same, the same cradle is an effective remedy.

That's actually been the question doctor gunning's work has investigated from us a decade. But with this first survey, he knew that effective or not, safe or not, cryder m had become popular. And I do not see exact same time the doctor gunmen was setting out his first survey.

A U. S. Government agency was squinting at cradle, the drug enforcement administration, the D, E, A. In amErica decides how much a potentially dangerous drug should be restricted, whether you need a doctor's prescription to use that, like a prescription pain killer, or whether it's used by citizens is completely illegal.

In twenty sixteen, when the da attic crawl, they wanted to know how addict ve is that, how dangerous is IT to the user and to the people around the user, and does IT have a legitimate medical use. What did those internal deliberations sound like? Is unclear that D, I did not respond to their attention request for comment, but we can guess the agency thought by what he did next. The drug is called crypto.

and IT comes in powder and pills. Ms.

on friday.

the dea is expected to make IT illegal.

The a plans to make IT a schedule one drug as soon as tomorrow that puts IT in the same categories, drugs like heroin in elsa, marijuana and xc. l. Authorities called the supplement an imminent hazard to public safety. Five s all this hub b surprised to doctor ground men, a researcher just trying to collect some survey data about a new substance .

he'd just learned of. I didn't know about IT until after my survey. I think right around the time that my survey was published and the fda recommended to the D A to place meta, gian and seven, eight drugs in metrogas, which were known at the time to act on on opiate receptors, to place them into schedule one, make them basically illegal, which would have prevented us, as researchers, as academic ons, to conduct research on IT, which has been a chAllenge for canada research for a very, very long time, because IT is very difficult to get A D A schedule one license to begin with. So from that perspective, from the research perspective.

we were concerned, crayon researchers were concerned, and my users were incensed. Ed raydon advocates .

have reacted with anger and fear to the federal ban on a natural analgesic they say is safer than the .

pain killers legally described by doctors. One of the push back the government got here was pretty extraordinary. Creative supporters are fighting to keep the plant base substance from being banned.

Last month, the drug, one hundred thirty thousand people nationwide who have signed this petition to stop the drug enforcement administration from banning ca. dom. The D. E. A petition saying, broadly, there are very few good options for oppoi attics, that this seem to be helping some of them, and that they didn't want IT taken away shop.

I try crowder. This time I want to talk to about about something is deeply personal. Me pales. A poles are a big thing that red x and night time about heart piles are the ones that keep the sugar from taking you to make. Jesus ardly, I made my box with them to, but i'm talking about party pills at hail Billy hair.

one this video would particularly struck me from this youtube r tray crowder, A K. The liberal red neck. He's speaking from his porch and a sleeveless shirt of a course of scatters. At first I thought the video was a parity crowds, a comedian, but he quickly moves into this argument for cradd. At one point he holds up a little Green Mason jar of catamite.

It's a mile stimulate and some of the same part of your brain, that opiate though. And so a lot of addicts have been using IT to keep off the hard sheet, which does not sit well with the lizard to the farm companies. And so their lapdogs, the D.

E. A, have announced as a september thirty of curry. And will we buy? And in the us, this all natural urb, with hundreds of years of harmless human consumption behind IT, will be placed on the schedule. Warn outside drugs like harmony extasy and for million way people in the report.

I don't have to tell you that there are a lot of trade crowd's in america, people whose families have been ravaged by Operate diction. Another of them demanded the government back off here that the D, E A actually flinched.

Fifty one federal lawmakers opposed the plan by the D E A to ban rug that relieves pain and helps win add s off of oppos.

D E A is now back peddling, seemingly second guessing, is widely criticize, decision to ban something many say could help curb the nation's oppoa abuse epidemic claim is a plan. Fifty one U. S.

Representatives, twenty two of them republicans, banded together and wrote a letter saying the D E A should do more research before scheduling the drug. They decided work by scientists, including one of doctor grunts, colleagues. And surprisingly, their argument really mirrored the liberal red nex.

They did not call the people who worked at farmers, companies, lizards, but they said the government should not. Hasty bana drug that might help in any way with our massive over those crisis. Because what crayon is an opioid, or if you prefer, exhibits opioid like effects.

Overdoses from the drug pretty rare. From two thousand and eleven to two thousand and seventeen, thirteen users died. Eleven of them had other drugs in their system.

During that same time, over two hundred thousand users of other obviate died. The crowding ban was to take effect in september twenty sixteen. Instead, that october, the da posts this very unusual letter into the federal register.

IT was titled to quote with a draw of notice of intent to temporary place metro in and seven high draxy meta gene into schedule one. Those are the two predominant psychoactive ingredients and crayon both open ids letter is government speaks for my bad as a person who studies drugs, how unusual is this for the D A. To back off of a decision like this?

Yeah, I have not been involved with other drugs before that were at risk of being placed into schedule one. But IT doesn't happen very often that the da does not move forward with placing a drop into schedule, mom. So this was certainly very surprising for for a lot of people at .

the time after twenty sixteen, when the da backed off regulation of cradle was left to the the food and drug administration, we asked the fda if crayon was legal now to sell in the united states. A spokesperson for that agency told search engine the crayon is not approved for any medical use.

IT is an unsafe food additive, and IT is not appropriate in dietary supplements, which is a very funny way of saying, yes, that is the all the thousand united states. As long as you follow a few rules, in some states, the ingredients in your crypto product have to match the ingredients advertised, and technically you're not supposed to make medical claims. A rule as respected in wave shops as horne hacking laws are in new york city, the world these policies have created is one in which our listener, Chris, would walk into a store and see cram sold in various forms and under various brand names.

K shots M I T forty five super k owns advanced cram alcohols. Occasionally the packaging is the date like pain killers. You've get IT right, but usually it's designed to the click list drugs like trucker speed or at least one brand I saw packaged like a large bag of heroin with just a word train rack written on IT in marker phone.

The F, D, A pointed out to us that cradle is locally restricted or regulated in many states, which is totally true. But federally, there are no rules about how much cradling a person can buy, how old that person has to be, or rules placing limits on how strong crowd can be if IT is going to be sold. It's funny.

It's like for a moment the federal government treated a crypto as if they were too dangerous to tolerate, and then IT treated IT as something that he mostly just didn't want to think about. For someone like Chris standing in the wave shop. Bil, he could buy craft.

M, he could use that. But in a fundamental way, he would not know what he was taking. And the questions the government had said he wanted to answer was, the drug lethal was a addictive? Could IT be useful? Those remained, for most people, open questions curious, like as sub, how addictive is crap? What should I compare IT to? yeah.

So that's a good question, because only in recent years have a few nighter studies, national institute on drug abuse studies under kerton smith, who was a post dog at night a, and now is a faculty member, john's hopkins ins university kind of illness data, to some degree, what the symptoms of a potential crown used as order are.

And uh, when we look at the criteria for what constitutes dependence, tolerance, wift, drawl and some other behaviors, we really see crown at the lower end of meeting this criteria. So interesting. What people primarily report is tolerance, meaning they increase the dose of craton over time, and if they stop taking IT, they get wift wall symptoms. In general, these wift wall symptoms are relatively mild for most people, may be comparable to heavy caffeine use when you stop using IT. So doctor .

grandma's research suggest that withdraw from crying dom looks like headaches, anxiety and occasional G I distress, which basic sounds like my monday, or like what Christmas experiencing before he started taking that other drug T N empty. Of course, when anybody, me, you, the federal government is evaluating the risk ess of a drug like cradle, they're not just asking how addict ve is that. They're also asking how easily can the thing kill you?

Yeah so it's interesting that we have this discussion today because just the other day yesterday, literally I was giving a presentation at the north american congress on clinical toxicology gy on craton, together with a few other folks. And we are not yet sure how somebody can get to very high concentrations in the blood of meta garan that would cause or would contribute to a fatality.

In other words, doctor government says it's unclear how someone would take enough cradle to die from IT. Nearly every compound has something called l, fifty, lethal s fifty. The dose at which half of the labs died after taking the substance alcohol has an L D fifty told his salt.

So as water, the l fifty for a tragi ing the star alcohol of cradle is high enough that people should not be able to get that much into their blood by taking crayon. Any of the ways we know that they take cryder m, and yet there have been dozens of deaths in which the only substance found in the person's blood was a high levels of the tragically. So this is a kind of a mystery.

One theory for what might be happening here is that in an unregulated grey market, cradle manufacturer are essential ed to make stronger and stronger formulation of the drug, because there will be customers who want a stronger effect, and there's no rule stopping them. So it's possible that the people who are dying of cradle overdoses are taking cradle capsules somehow formulated to give them a way higher potency. Oppoa, high than the norm. What's interesting here, and quite sad, is that cram leaf has been used internationally for hundreds of years, but IT appears that is only when the drug reach amErica that we discovered how to make IT, in some instances.

lethal with this evolution of the crowd m market, where we see, except concentrates, isolates emerging, that might be a driving force behind these these the outcomes, which we have not seen in southeast asia, we've just chewing on the leaf or making that tea. So it's clear there is a strong suspicion that these these high potency extracts and isolates are driving the.

It's only I mean, it's sort of to me, what IT reminding of a little bit is the current gray market cannabis system in where people both, like broadly speaking, socially. We've agreed that cannabis has social upsides and that its criminal ization has real social downsides. But because it's a bit of a patchwork, people who are buying kind of us products can't entirely be sure that they immediately in the state in matter life like they don't necessarily know that they are buying what is being advertized. And there's this market incentive for higher and higher and higher concentrations, which can be a really different drug experience.

Yeah, I actually think that what is happening now in the crowd market is accepted mirror what is happening with cannabis, right? When you look a decade ago, we had T H, C concentrations that arranged from like maybe five to twelve percent, maybe fifteen percent in in high quality cannabis products. And now we have concentrates or edibles that contain forty percent tig c so very different ball game, very different amount that you can get into your body from sometimes interesting, much smaller amounts.

So let's return to our listener press. Here is part of what I think went wrong for him. The first time in your life, you try a drug, whether it's your first cup of coffee or your first step of wine.

You probably have a conversation with somebody about what to expect and what the risks are. Chris did not have as full a conversation about crayon as you might have. Wish ed, he'd had forty do in.

But if you'd had that conversation, what we now know he might have learned is that crab is an opposite, but is not particularly later. IT can give you withdraw symptoms you want to enjoy, but nothing like what you could get from a prescription pain killer. And something to watch you out for is that he comes from the gray market, which means the drug itself might be adult rated or you might be getting more potent month by month.

So all of these calculations could be changing. Of course, Chris really got in trouble, not with crayon, but with another drug he mistakenly thought was a kind of cradle tee nappin. And the story of t native, what IT is, how we got here and how much fault lies with the country of france? The answer surprised me. Mondo, we will continue our story after her break.

Welcome back to the show. So what does the internet have to say about ten acting the drug that Chris have found after cradle, which causes them his real problems? The vibe on redit in the tune of the community is much darker than IT is in the craddock sub ddt.

I ask when asking the question, many people who wondered, after consuming some exciting new substance, quote, how many days in a row can take this before I get addicted? The have voted reply. Quote, I did research.

If I tried IT thinking i'd be able to control what many others couldn't. Nope, I was fully addicted. After a couple of weeks, I ended my addiction at six to ten bottles of td read a day.

I spent twenty thousand dollars. This is redit. Of course, anyone can say anything they often do, but you do notice here many more vivid warnings and celebrations, many addicted users cautioning new people from following them down the path.

OK T N F T gas station here. Let's talk about IT.

And it's similar over on tek tok.

This right here is solving gas stations. Can you believe what .

they're doing is they're selling IT in gas stations in his shops under the named tea red or SaaS.

A lot of time is labeled as zzz in the gas station.

and people are becoming addicted to them.

Zzz at the gas station do not start taking this stuff. If you do, you will regret IT.

We're gna return to doctor all over grandma with more questions. But for teen and fifteen, I want to start by speaking to a different kind of chemist, someone whose work i've been falling for a long time.

my named hammer. Tomorrow I am a chemins st. Of a podcast that's about IT chemistry and pharm colophon patron. I made a documentary series about psychoactive drugs called hamiltons formose pia for many years, which you can watch for free on my imo channel are a lot of other places, and i'm generally very interested in the chemistry and pharmacology of psychoactive drugs.

The listeners I present to you, hamilton Morris, i've never shown to him before, but I have listened to his hynd ally drive voice for maybe hundreds of hours. I've hurt him.

Use IT to soberly and method ally describe what is like to consume the Venus of a psychiatry tode to participate in an I boga ceremony to observe a bunch of math heads stumble through a math cock in a kitchen while wearing for some reason environment comments he's seen that teenager was subscribe to me but either suspicion be old hat to hamilton Morris. What is T N F T like? What is its time of conservation?

What is IT and what is IT? yeah. So tnf, a unusual substances not chemically related to any of the bet opiates or defendant.

It's its own chemical structural class. It's a try cynic that is seer to a lot of anti depression, and that is actually the area where IT was developed. There was a french pharmaceutical called servia that was expLoring these python c antidepressants, pe structures. And this pharmaceutical company company survey had a bad reputation already. They were the major supplier of fan fan in europe, which is a very cardio toxicity and potentially neurotoxic diet drug.

So first of all, t napping is not a naturally occurring substance like craybas. IT was synthesized by a company called survey I survey ais bad reputation partly comes from their role in france as a major supplier of fluorometers half of the drug fen fen, the famously little diet trug survey. The company was also convicted for deception and mansarde ter in french court over a different diet drug which killed approximate two thousand people.

T N, aps path to its current life as american gas station heroin IT starts to survey I in the thousand nine and seventies survey I synthesize T N T inserted as an anti depression called stable on the drug made people feel you fork in opposite likeways. But for decades the company insisted IT was not an opiate into this swing. Morris of uncertainty, step, hamilton. Morris, so the first .

time I tried to n apt was probably around the first time that I tried my train, probably around two thousand and nine, and to order a box of pharmaceutical able on tablets from france. And I had a kind of similar.

I just say you're male, man. These are .

both, to this day, legal and certainly legal, that no one idea ever even heard of this stuff really outside of people really interested in this at that point, and was a widely used anti depression. And right, crucially, at that time, nobody knew that I was an opposite. So I took you and I thought, wow, this makes you feel pretty good, is interesting.

I, I get IT. This is a great anti depression. I wonder. I followed the name with interest after trying IT. And what I noticed was an increasing number of reports of people abusing IT using massive, massive quantities, taking hundreds of these twelve point five milligram tablets.

And there were some posts on various forms and read IT with people saying these things like, I used to use heroin, and I swear that this stuff feels just like heroin to me. My pupils are pen points. I get this euphoria noting effect. I really wonder if this stuff is an opposite.

To be clear, some users suspected that this french drug was opposed because they had taken opiates before, but knowing in the general public or scientists knew the actual mechanism the drug was using to have its effect, if survey knew, they are not telling people, and so people are taking drug that may have been an opposite, but the official story for how was working on its users was different.

The mechanism that was considered, the explanation for its effect, was that I was a serotonin in reuptake enhancer, not in hair enhancer.

I even wrote in an article for playboy years ago that described all this like g is is in its strange that two drugs with diametrically opposed mechanisms, one that enhances the ceretani react taken, one uh inhibits serotonin reuptake, or both antidepressants the brain insure, is weird, right? right? So there is something about this that was paradoxical.

And then more, more people keep taking higher and higher doses. The evidence that IT seem to exert some kind of opa type of fact was continuously accumulating. Then there was a medical case report, somebody that had overdosed on tin, opting tablets, and their overdose was reversed, with naoko .

on nara blocking medication.

a strong indicator odd that the serotonin reuptake in cancer is blocked by an oppoa blocker. Yeah, like what's the deal with that? So IT was pretty clear that there is something going on, but no one had firmly established.

Finally, in two thousand seventeen, a student at home MBA university, feared out, had to solve this chemical mystery. Hamdan told me that the student set a sample of tempting to U. N, C. Chapel, ill, which has something called the psycho active drug screening program. Chemistry can take a drug exposed to clone human or one central nervous system receptors, actually tell you when then this drug is put in your body here. Other receptors that attacks on, since we know that we defined an opposite, not by its chemical structure, but by whether or not IT interacts with our oppoa septr, this would be the definitive test to prove T N. Apt was, in fact.

an opposite. And the answer was kind of the obvious answer that everybody expected, which is that IT was a full agonist at the new obiit receptor.

a full agonist at the new obiit receptor. A full agonist is a substance that bind to reception and fully activate IT other full agonist at the new opiate receptor. Oxhey cotton heroine.

This rug was not as potential, but IT was an opiate by anybody's definition. Some untold number of people have been taking and opioid without ever knowing that. And we know how we feel about opposite in country.

They are highly addictive substances that often kill their users. But a strange thing about tn, native and opioid is that, well, he does seem to be a quite addictive substance. IT doesn't seem to be as little as other drugs .

in its class for reasons that aren't fully understood. There are opioids that don't cause profound respiratory depression, relatively speaking, and for that reason, they don't tend to cause fatal overdoses because that's the mechanism through which avoids exert their effect in terms of killing people, is respiratory arrest.

Few americans lives would be improved by the addition of an addictive opiate. But the question you'd hope the federal government might look into is whether those americans were already addicted to a lethal might benefit from. My last little, little one, I asked hamilton about this tnf relative to heroine. If somebody were recreationally deciding to prince, like, stop using heroine, T, N, F P might be a good option for that person. Because they be replacing something they gave them a high, they want IT or needed with one that would be less liked to kill .

them in an overdose. That would be my guess. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want to make that claim. I wouldn't you say, hey, if you're struggling with oppoi dependence issues, transition to do something that is not something i'm saying, but conceivably that would work. And that's also one of the things that cradle is very popular for is getting off of oppos.

Because when IT comes to our methodology for treating oppoa addiction in the united states, pretty much the name of the game is simply replacement therapy that you know, if you go to a doctor and you say I have a problem using heroin, they'll give you methadone or they'll give you duper morphine, both of which are oppos. And the idea is, just here is a safe, regular supply of an opposite that you can take every day. That is considered, David, slightly lower abuse potential, but that's pretty much IT.

Tell me it's interesting and tell me this an energy feels fast. You it's like one way you could understand him everything is that it's almost similar to naked tane vapor where the idea with naked tine vapor was okay. For people who are addicted to cigarettes, this can be an off rap from cigarettes. But what also happened is that there were a lot of people who didn't smoke cigarettes, and naked tine babbin was an on rap, like, instead of getting them off a drug to something less interests, IT got them onto a drug like, is a possibility, and I think could work the same way.

Oh, certainly. yeah. I think that's very much a possibility. One really important distinction that I want to make is that I think there is a huge difference between giving someone in opioid that they recognize is an opposite and providing something deceptively where they don't know what they are consuming that is unacceptable. And unfortunately, IT is incentivised by the legal framework. So if you were to say, hey, this is an opposite and IT has this or that risks associated with its use, and you should use IT in the following way, that would potentially make IT impossible to sell.

Hamilton is pointing to a pretty extraordinary contradiction here, a policy problem. I don't know how you begin to fix. Obviously, consumers should know what drugs are taking.

Do you know that cradock is a partial obviate agonist that TNFF1， ideally, the government would regulate the concentration and purity of these opens. And yet, if everyone widely understood these drugs were opiate, it's very hard to imagine that they wouldn't be out right, prohibited or severely restricted. Our listener, Chris, had wanted to know if other people were strugling with these drugs and if the government was going to do anything about IT.

Some people are strugling with these drugs. Others say they are being helped by them. There are people who are addicted to more dangerous opiates who appreciate a less lethal substitute.

That's the problem. I don't know how effects doctor grand men seem to think that T N F T will likely end up as a prescription only drug in america, just like in france. But cradock is tRicky. There are people who feel that claim is a medicine for them, a medicine that today they can access without having to rely on a health care system that may have gotten them diced to lethal opposite in the first place.

Looking into situation, it's hard not to wish that we had some other tour, some way to get these complicated substances to the people that help some option beyond prohibition, prescription or vb store free for all. I asked that her grandson, if he had any bright ideas, if you had to guess, like, given the research we have right now, I feel like a reasonable thing to say is that the best way to distribute these drugs is not in unknown quantities from anon manufacturer at gas stations. What would not thinking about the political realities of life in america? But given how people use them in what we know about the risks and benefits, what would be the best way for these drugs to be distributed based on the available information?

Yeah, so I like the way you phrase that because I wouldn't fit in the current regulation scheme or how this would ever be realized.

But you look, for example, at some of the effort in suu, effort in products that we're kind of pulled from the market and regards to just being over the counter so you could just buy them from the pharmacy without any questions being asked because we know that two effort and effort, an and like products are being used in the manufacturer of, and instead they now behind the counter and you can get a certain amount without requiring a prescription. But you still need to present some form of identification that has been done in all U. S.

States by now. So I think that crayon and or t an epson would qualify for something like that because then you need to interact with a pharmacy store, a pharmacy technician that cannot ask you, or do you have any underlying health conditions? Do you have A A prior substance use disorder to kind of provide a little bit of counseling and a little bit of information and actually utilizing the pharmacist?

I realized i'm advertising for farmers this year because I was a college of pharmacy y and not just being pill counters because, to be honest, farmers are a lot more and they can provide a lot more, and they remain the most accessible health care professionals out there. If you want to go to a doctor, you need to make an appointment. If you need some help with figuring out, is this medication safe to take, or is this this substance safe to take? You can go into a pharmacy and there will be a pharmacist.

Is, is that our working europe?

So I grew up in germany, and I trained as a pharmacist there. And yes, we don't necessary. We have over the counter, although some medications are now available like a thailand so that you can buy in small amounts, small packages in a grocery store.

Uh, but most of even of what is considered over the counter here in the us is behind the counter. So either a pharmacy technical or arma iy needs to grab IT at least and put IT on the counter for you in order for you to purchase IT. Addition to that, we have certain supplements that I considered supplements, he is and john word ginko that you can actually get as a prescription from your doctor. And IT is paid by your insurance, by your health insurance. So we do have a different system where we value more the expertise of a pharmacists beyond their ability to compiles.

Sometimes as you ask a question and you get actually a pretty good answer, empowering pharmacy to do more than we currently ask them does not seem like a bad solution, even if, for now, that does seem like Alice in amErica and unlikely one all. Thank you so much. I feel, guy, understand that as much Better than I did before we started talking.

Certainly my pleasure.

Doctor Oliver gund, men, clinical professor at the university of florida college of pharmacy and president of the american college of clinical pharmacology.

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