You can find them on gas station shelves all over metro Atlanta: Kratom is touted as a natural pain killer.
But an Oconee County man says it nearly killed him.
“I want people to see what it did to me,” Glen Eddins told Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Sophia Choi. “And I want them to think about what it will do to them, not what it could do, that it will do.”
Eddins starting using Kratom at 52 years old to soothe his shoulder pain.
Kratom is the extract from the leaves of a tropical, southeast Asian tree.
It’s commonly used in southeast Asia as a pick-me-up tea, like coffee.
Here in the U.S., you can find it in a more concentrated liquid or pill form.
Eddins said he saw it at a Dacula gas station and says he thought it was safe, since the package said natural and organic.
“It helped me with the pain, it relaxed me, it just made me feel good,” he said. “It made me want to just continue.”
And continue he did, upping the dosage for years.
He ended up taking handfuls of pills — more than a hundred a day.
“I normally bought the 300 count,” he said. “On the third day, I was back to buying another.”
Six years and $100,000 later, Eddins says his body started shutting down in January.
“I was unable to have a bowel movement, urinating was extremely tough, and it was just bad,” Eddins said.
The federal Drug Enforcement Agency says Kratom is addictive, and at high doses it can produce opioid effects with 5-10 minutes.
The DEA tried to schedule it as a Class One drug in 2016, but dropped the plan after public input showed support to keep it legal.
Last year, Georgia put restrictions on Kratom. You must be 21 to buy and it must be behind a counter.
The FDA hasn’t banned Kratom, but it’s now targeting a derivative called 7-OH.
The American Kratom Association says it’s 7-OH and other synthetic versions masquerading as natural Kratom causing the problems.
And many times, consumers don’t know.
“if someone gets hooked on a Kratom product they think is natural Kratom, the truth is that it’s not,” said Mac Haddow with the American Kratom Association.
Haddow is a Kratom user. The former Chief of the Department of Health and Human Services said it’s safe if it’s natural and people follow the recommended dose.
Florida, along with six other states, banned 7-OH this year, saying the concentrated extract is dangerous.
“We start to increase the risk of something happening, whether it be developing an addiction or abuse of that substance,” said Dr. Christopher McCurdy of the University of Florida.
But 7-OH and other versions of Kratom are still legal in Georgia. A growing number of users are needing help quitting and finding it through online support meetings.
Kelly and Christina Galindo hold them weekly online from their Cobb County living room in Smyrna, at KratomQuitters.com.
They first joined the group after they kicked the habit themselves.
“I have detoxed from heroin in county jails a handful of times. The linoleum floor, the stainless-steel toilet, green baloney, horrible. I was detoxing off Kratom with the love of my life, our cats, in our home, eating whatever i wanted, and it was worse,” Kelly Galindo said.
“We need to help as many people as we can. We need to spread as much awareness as we can,” Christina Galinso said.
Eddins credits the online meetings for helping him stay off Kratom. It took 12 days in rehab followed by outpatient care to get him to quit.
Now, he and common-law wife, Lisa, are on a mission to ban it altogether in Georgia.
“We’ve got to at least get the word out,” he said.
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