Friend,
I won’t sugar coat this for you; coming off kratom is brutal! I know because I have been through it. The suffering can last weeks or even months. Of course, many people don’t want to face this simple fact: kratom is an opioid and the withdrawal symptoms are similar to other opioids. For two months after quitting, I felt like the world had become a torture chamber designed for my personal punishment. Mother Earth didn’t approve of my foolish abuse of the Mitragyna plant, and now a harsh lesson was in store for me. There were days when my depression was so bad, the apocalypse would have been a relief. Come to think of it, I suppose this is why I watched the entire Walking Dead series as my tolerance grew and insufferable cravings took hold of me. Luckily for all of us, the world had not come to an end. There was no zombie apocalypse; and though I felt like a kratom-drinking zombie, I still had a lot of life left in me–I just didn’t know it yet. So how did I survive the suffering? At first, there was no method to the madness. I failed at quitting numerous times and managed to land in a psychiatric hospital for attempted suicide during the process. My mental health wasn’t good before I became addicted to kratom (PTSD, anxiety and depression), but it was infinitely worse while going through withdrawals and Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS). Nevertheless, I kept fighting to find something that could help me; and to my surprise, I did. Not a quick fix by any means, but I found the ancient wisdom and practices of Yoga to be very helpful during recovery. And though I no longer have kratom withdrawals or major depression, the wisdom of Yoga is still something I emerse myself in to find inner peace and tranquility. The techniques discovered thousands of years ago have proven to calm the storm within the mind. Unfortunately, there’s a stigma with Yoga. The practice has been commercialized, sexualized, and made to look very mystical and bizarre. In actuality, millions of Americans have tried Yoga (at least some aspect of it) and there almost never a cult initiation required (99999.9% of the time). It’s not witchcraft or new age silliness; it’s simply a time tested method used to calm our most unsettling cravings, aversions, and delusions. Fear and self-doubt can leave us frozen and Yoga provides a system to regain freedom from those feelings. Trust me on this, a crisis is the perfect portal to enter the practice. No need to change your faith or become a vegan…just breathe, my friend. Breathe. And breathe again…nice and slow. See, Yoga feels good, right? At this point, it would be beneficial to ask yourself some questions. To seek the honest truth about why you started using kratom in the first place. For me it was medicine. But for what? I was depressed and was having panic attacks at work. Why was I depressed and anxious? Could I face this question? Apparently not…so I used kratom to medicate myself and failed to deal with my mental/emotional hurricane. What about you? Do you have similar tangled up knots within your mind? Things that are lurking just beyond the comfort zone of everyday thinking? Regrets from your past or fears about the future? I would bet $100 you do, and it’s probably why you fell into the kratom trap like I did. Our minds are fantastic at creating excuses, delusions and all types of mechanisms to protect the ego. Because much of this brain activity happens on a subconscious level, we are unaware of it. Imagine our mind like a puppy with no leash. Its running here and there. Its distracted. Its untamed, untrained, and unable to evaluate or observe its own innermost workings. Its out of control. An out of control mind means there is a lack of focus or concentration. Distractions can easily lead us from getting to know our own afflictions and why our behavioral impulses arise. This state of mental chaos creates all kinds of challenges for someone who’s quitting an opioid. Within the practice of Yoga, meditation is used to observe the mind. By withholding judgment and observing, one can learn about an inner world over time. Rather than trying to fill a bottomless pit with things such as kratom, food, sex, or alcohol, we can learn to comfort ourselves from within. What we’re lacking and how to comfort ourselves. We start this process by training the “wild puppy” mind during regular, sitting meditation. And at times, we meditate while holding a variety of poses. It takes time and effort to train the those stupid puppies. When the mind starts running around like crazy, we bring it back to observing our breath or a mantra. This process creates a sense of stillness within the mind. We learn to focus our energy on observation rather than resistance and avoidance of pain. Eventually Yoga provides us the tools to calm ourselves without running, hiding, or turning away from our afflictions. There are no magic potions. No bad tasting green stuff from Bali, Thailand, or anywhere else will ever fill your emotional voids. We must stop running away from our pain. I suggest reading the book, The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seekers Guide to Extraordinary Living. Stephen Cope is a fantastic author and a psychotherapist. He’s also a senior Scholar in Residence at the Kripalu Center for Yoga in Lenox Massachusetts. In his book, Stephen breaks down an ancient Indian text known as the Yoga-Sutra, and he teaches us regular Westerners the eight limbs of Yoga. In short, Stephen shares thousands of years of research on how to achieve the optimal human living condition within 300 pages. Just taking some time to read will help keep you motivated and provide a positive activity while your brain heals from kratom addiction. Traditional Yoga is composed of eight important components and it’s not practical to describe all of them within a blog post. The important thing to know is, yogis have practical views on our ethics, behaviors, physical bodies and our minds. There are plenty of interpretations and various practices, but they all share a few things. And while going through this process of quitting kratom, I suggest you spend time in meditation, controlling your breathing, remaining mindful, and practicing all of those challenging poses and stretches Yoga is known for. I guarantee, your brain will thank you! Your mind will draw out many impurities in the process–and it will challenge you! But you’ll always find it’s better to face your demons and purify your mind than to live in denial and in mental chaos. I made it through the withdrawals and the torture of PAWS. If I can, I know you can too! Yoga has brought me inner peace by guiding my mind through introspection and stillness. Give it a try and see what you think. I have even included some useful YouTubes at http://www.quitkratom.com/?p=51#more-51. Namaste!