Kratom is a rare stimulant that makes you more productive. It is unfortunate that our culture chooses to only tolerate caffeine which makes you twitchy, and nicotine, which slowly kills you.

Kratom is currently neither a food, drug, or herbal supplement which puts it in a weird legal wasteland. Kratom is usually consumed as a tea. It is very palatable when sweetened with sugar and contains healthy anti-oxidants[1]. One of the active alkaloids of kratom, 7-hydroxy mitragynine is an incredibly strong opiate, 17 times as strong as morphine[2]. Kratom has been further tested as a drug on your average variety of small mammals. This study is on a guinea pig, where they didn't get the 17x number but concluded that 7-hydroxy-mitragynine is a dose dependant antinociceptive that is stronger than morphine.[3] They do a follow up study demonstrating cross tolerance with morphine. [4]

Erowid[5] is the authoritative list of studies[6] on the subject of kratom. You can read more than 50 personal experiences with kratom, mostly with regards to it as a recreational drug though some individuals there use it as a substitute for real opiates or to potentiate other drugs. Most of the negative experiences can be attributed to people incorrectly consuming kratom[7]. Kratom is properly consumed as a tea with lots of sugar and the extra kratom powder filtered out with a french press.

Kratom is completely legal everywhere except some of its native Southeast Asia: Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia, and Australia[8]. It is legally grown in Indonesia and India, though I haven't found any real Mitragyna Speciosa sold out of India. Most of the guys on Ali Baba are selling fake kratom, except PH. All of the kratom on the market comes from this mystery world landowner who owns dozens of legal drug plantations in all the continents. If anyone could undercut him for one of his major products, the second supplier would make a lot of money because a successful international kratom operation could source kratom 100 fold cheaper than PH. This would require you to grow your own kratom, in a warm, wet climate or travel to Indonesia and give people money to take you to the kratom, which would probably work. Unfortunately, I don't have any contacts in Indonesia or anywhere else where Kratom is legally grown. Maybe one of these days I can take a sourcing trip.

I'm not trying to push a drug here, I'm trying to tell the truth. This is a substance with a lot of potential and I would love to collaborate on research with anyone that is interested.

[1]The antioxidant alkaloids in Cats Claw ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db... ) and Kratom ( http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal2.shtml ) are similar. I'll write up a comparison eventually but here are the raw sources for now.

[2]http://www.thieme-connect.com/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-2005-837822

[3]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

[4]http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

[5]http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom.shtml

[6]http://www.erowid.org/plants/kratom/kratom_journal.shtml

[7]http://www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=36154

[8]http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/drugs_concern/kratom.htm