Kratom Science Podcast

November 11, 2021 is Veterans Day! We take a look back at four veterans of the United States military who had a kratom story to share. From episode #13, Drew Turner is a US Navy veteran who served in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. He appeared in the kratom documentary A Leaf of Faith . Drew discusses his injury inflicted by a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Meige syndrome, and cancer that may have been due...

Soren Shade visits Brian in Pittsburgh bearing gifts: mature kratom leaves and a kratom plant the Top Tree Herbs greenhouse in West Virginia. This is the 2nd time the Hamilton's Pharmacopeia producer and kratom entrepreneur has been on the podcast - the first time being #47 . Brian chews kratom for the first time, and we talk about the possibility of homegrown kratom in the USA, working with labs...

Dr. Fabian Pitter Steinmetz is a senior toxicologist from Germany and an outspoken advocate for harm reduction and science-based, rational drug policy. On October 11, 2021, representing the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies, Dr. Steinmetz testified against kratom prohibition for the World Health Organization's 44th Expert Committee on Drug Dependence . Dr. Steinmetz proposes...

PSYCHOACTIVE with Ethan Nadelmann https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/psychoactive?selected=HSW1919502170 My guest is one of the major critics of the War on Drugs and an advocate for science-based harm reduction policy. He is founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization that's been instrumental in marijuana legalization, and helped solicit comments for the 2016 fight to keep kratom legal, amo...

Mr. Boston, who chooses to remain anonymous, was pushed out of a tree at the age of 13 where he got a slipped disk and went on a regimen of gradually stronger and stronger opioids. Living with chronic pain, he later developed an even more painful autoimmune disorder, which he says feels like being attacked with a chainsaw every day, as well as multiple sclerosis. On top of that, he had three near...

Dr. Lance McMahon is Chair of the Department of Pharmacodynamics at University of Florida College of Pharmacy, a college that has been at the forefront of kratom research. Dr. McMahon studies the mechanism of action of the multiple kratom alkaloids and how they function alone and in concert on our various brain receptors. His lab also studies the effects and mechanisms of action of cannabis, nicot...

Maia Szalavitz is a journalist and New York Times bestselling author who has written about drugs, addiction, and neuroscience for 30 years. Today she talks with host Brian Gallagher about her new book, Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction , why drug policy has failed, how policy based on harm reduction has and can continue to save people. Also, her latest p...

Transcript available here https://www.kratomscience.com/2021/08/12/transcript-of-kratom-science-podcast-57-representatives-of-pphi-indonesian-farmers-co-op/ This episode is a result of an interview I conducted with members of the Horticulture Entrepreneurship Association of Indonesia (PPHI). Brian speaks to Mr. Fadli Ashari, translator for Mr. Suhairi Ery, Daily Chairman of PPHI and Mr. Jamaluddin...

Amanda Marie is a farmer and construction worker living in New Mexico. She had been severely injured due to a skating accident when she was 13, and later a car accident for which she developed lifelong chronic pain. She went on to develop Fibromyalgia, Multiple Sclerosis, and had a heart attack before she was diagnosed with "excruciatingly painful" endometriosis, then cervical cancer for which she...

Dr. Kirsten Smith is a post-doc fellow at National Institute on Drug Abuse. With a background in social work and working with communities with substance use disorder, Dr. Smith was instrumental in introducing kratom research to NIDA's Intramural Research Program, where she works in the in the Real-world Assessment, Prediction, and Treatment Unit. Dr. Smith is also open about her own past history o...

Jaclyn O'Shea has such a rich story that we couldn't possibly tell it all in this short conversation. She is a United States Army veteran who served two tours in the War in Afghanistan. Her husband fought in Iraq in the Battle of Fallujah. He became one of several veterans in that battle who suffered severe PTSD and ultimately committed suicide. Jaclyn shares her own story of PTSD, alcoholism, dis...

Nick Wing is currently editor of the nonprofit journal The Appeal (theappeal.org). He spent nearly 10 years as a journalist for Huffington Post, where he did extensive in-depth reporting on kratom, starting in 2016. In the course of his work, Nick Wing discovered that one of FDA's "kratom-related deaths" was a man who died of a gunshot wound. He also examined countless medical examiner reports of...

You may have seen HBO's documentary The Crime of the Century about pharmaceutical companies influencing doctors to prescribe an abundance of pain medication. But there's another story that may make for a sequel. CDC guidelines combined with DEA threats to doctors are now leaving chronic pain patients without the access to opioid pain medication that makes their lives worth living. It's an insane o...

David Oakley is a stand up comedian from Atlanta. Previously addicted to heroin, Dave discovered kratom and it changed his life. He became active in kratom advocacy and attended the historic protest in Washington, DC in 2016 that helped keep kratom legal. Later, Dave began a career in stand-up comedy and moved to the small town of Durango in Southwestern Colorado. There he started a comedy product...

Brian welcomes Julia Brose, graduate student at Michigan State University and lead author of the study "The Mitragyna speciosa (Kratom) Genome: A resource for data-mining potent pharmaceuticals that impact human health". She's joined by Dr. Robin Buell, MSU Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology, who co-authored the study. We talk about the Rubiaceae family of plants, the process of studying the...

Shane Mauss is a stand up comedian who has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Joe Rogan Experience, WTF with Marc Maron, Comedy Central, The Green Room with Paul Provenza, and Getting Doug with High, just to name a few. For the past 7 years he’s interviewed scientists on a wide range of topics for his science podcast Here We Are . In 2018, he starred in the documenta...

Take the new anonymous kratom survey! tinyurl.com/kratomteasurvey Hamilton Morris, creator of Hamilton's Pharmacopei a, and producer Soren Shade talk to University of Florida scientist and past Kratom Science Podcast guest Dr. Oliver Grundmann about his new anonymous research survey on kratom tea. All kratom consumers are invited to participate. Plus, how an overly positive kratom narrative can be...

Andrew Tait from Vancouver BC Canada got his PhD in chemistry at the University of British Columbia and founded Tait Labs in 2011. He studied traditional Chinese medicine and "realized a need to apply scientific rigor to traditional medicines in order prove their potency, safety and efficacy in the treatment of a wide range of ailments that are plaguing the world today." Tait Labs developed a prod...

Soren Shade grew up in the woods of West Virginia. Through a program for low-income, high-achieving students, he studied philosophy at Columbia University in New York. In his senior year he worked research assistant for Hamilton Morris and ended up as a producer on Season 3 of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia , released earlier this year. Soren is a co-founder of Top Tree Herbs. We talk about Soren's exper...

Dijon Evans is a survivor of severe chronic pain, and as past Kratom Science Podcast guest Nina Ajdin refers to her, a warrior. At 16 and working as a lifeguard, Dijon injured her leg trying to save a little boy from drowning. Doctors applied a cast too tight, and despite days of pleading, they would not listen to her, and this led not only to an amputation but blot clots and several other complic...

Dr. Abisheak Sharma studied pharmacy and pharmacokinetics in India before coming to the United States to research under kratom expert Dr. Bonnie Avery. He now researches kratom with Dr. Christopher McCurdy at University of Florida as part of the Translational Drug Development Core. Dr. Sharma addresses the concern with kratom and other drug interactions, improved chromatography methods of identify...

My guest is Dr. Walter Prozialeck. Originally from Johnstown, PA, Dr. Prozialeck is a biomedical educator and researcher at Midwestern University in Chicago, where he served as chair of the Department of Pharmacology from 1997 to 2018. He’s been studying kratom since 2012. We talk about one of the first research reviews published on kratom that he worked on in 2012, osteopathic medicine, kratom as...

My guests are two addiction psychiatrists, Dr. Cornel Stanciu and Dr. Thomas Penders . I responded to their webinar in episode 38. I thought they overstated the dangers of kratom and wondered why you’d prescribe buprenorphine for kratom withdrawals. We talk about that, and the topic of kratom addiction and addiction in general. Studies referenced to in this podcast: "Best Practices in Managing Pat...

My guest is Maxime Ruel from Quebec Canada. Max was a construction worker who was electrocuted on the job.. This led to extreme chronic pain that put him out of work. He eventually became homeless. After trying several medications he discovered kratom, which he says saved his life. This is Maxime Ruel, and this is his kratom story... Music: Risey, "Memories of Thailand" Written and produced by Bri...

Dr. Oliver Grundmann is a Clinical Associate Professor with a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a masters' in Forensic Toxicology, and expert in the study of kratom. University of Florida College of Pharmacy, where Dr. Grundmann works, has been a recipient of nearly $7 million in NIDA grants in 2018 and 2019 for the study of kratom. Disclaimer:  There is no content on the Kratom Science Podc...