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My wife Lee and I live in the beautiful Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas near Hot Springs. We hike the Hot Springs National Park 2-3 times per week. Sometimes I forget to think of how grateful I am that my once very painful and chaotic life turned out to be one I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’m also blessed and lucky just to be alive. I have experienced totaled car crashes/thrown through windshields, walked through a sliding glass door, two small plane emergency landings, depleted my immune system for not being prepared properly in the one of two International Rice Festival Marathons that I ran, and finished; 26 miles from Lafayette to Crowley, La. Add to major heart attacks with that, dangerous surgery for one of the worst cases of sleep apnea the medical community had ever seen, and a painful/dangerous ruptured appendix which was removed. For a long time, I was homebound, for the most part, except to go to the grocery and a myriad of doctors which I continue to do. But neuralgia (very painful in the gums) and carpal tunnel/and/or tendonitis has set in, which made it impossible to even do that every week. For about 4-5 years, after I’d recovered from the less painful but serious ailments, I was hit by the painful things like neuralgia etc. which prevented me from doing the things I love; hiking, walking etc. I went through a lot of dental work including surgical extractions of three molars. I felt surely that would take care of the mouth pain (which I did not know was neuralgia at the time) but of course it did nothing but cause more pain and get me put on prescription pain meds which worked for a few weeks, but in order for them to keep working, I had to take more and more of them, which meant I not only had to recover from the pain, but also the toxic effects of the drugs. All this most recent medical activity was occurring during the big “legal spice” influx which mostly teens were using and abusing, but there was one the media threw into the batch as if it were a chemical spice called “Kratom”. I had heard about kratom for many years, and understood it to be an organic herb, indigenous to Thailand and S.E. Asia, harmless, and in the coffee family, with virtually no side effects, but extremely potent analgesic effects. My experience with medicinal herbs has been “hit or miss over the years”. But the pain was so intense, so unbearable this time, I was willing to dip into my bank account to buy some (besides it is not that expensive) if you buy the pure kratom leaf, and not the kratom extract. I don’t buy the extract because it is not actually kratom anymore. The methane gasses and chemicals used to make it 15x and 30x etc, to me, are not worth the risk; besides, even if it work better, faster, my feeling is that for me it would be more habit-forming, and given the higher price, I believe I get a better deal and don’t put toxins in my body. My wife and I are strict vegans and whenever something enters our system that doesn’t belong there, our system lets us know. I could wax poetic about the wonders of kratom forever if I had the room. I’ve seen a lot of ethnobotanicals do some pretty amazing things, and medicinal herbs prevent diseases and address symptoms, but I’ve never seen any of them do what kratom does. Kratom does exactly as it is billed; actually a bit better. The profile of the plant says it is a mild analgesic. There are many strains of kratom from different regions, with some having stronger analgesic properties than others. For instance though red-veined Bali might make one a bit drowsy, the analgesic properties, to me, are stronger than morphine. If I take kratom before bedtime, I never bolt out of bed at four in the morning in severe pain. I used to every night. In the day, I can hike/climb the mountains with Lee and come home with mild aches thwarted by a few maeng da or white Sumatran capsules for at least 4 hours. Within 30 minutes I forget the moderate to severe pain I was in just 30 minutes earlier. I am not one of those people who say, “Hey go try out some kratom and you’ll be happy the rest of your life” though it does also seem to be a much more effective anti-depressant and anti-anxiety that Prozac or Xanax without the cloudy head or hangover the next day. Still, I would not drive under the influence of any kratom that was/is not white veined which tends to be more energetic. In my college days a millennium ago, I might have had a different attitude and made sure all my buds got an ounce if they needed it. Now I think it’s important to know that kratom is not a spice. It is not a chemical. Though it has alkaloids than can “perform like drugs”, so does chocolate, cheese, coffee and a lot of other things we ingest. It acts on the brains opioids just like chocolate, chees and other foods do. That does not make it dangerous or addictive. But I’d guess it is habit forming as it is in the coffee family, which also tends to be habit forming. I have noticed the government is pulling a “déjà vu all over again” with its campaign to demonize kratom, very similarly that they did to marijuana in 1930. There may be a lot of ignorant people left in the world who really do believe marijuana “eats away at the brain” and I know I believed it for awhile because the government and schools told us so. But here’s the sad news. While they were spouting all that venom about marijuana, they also secretely obtained a U.S. Patent for it. Guess for what it does….”Protects the brain from damage”. Don’t believe it? Google “U.S. Government Patent Marijuana”. Most sites even show the patent number which you can check at the USPTO (Patent & Trademark Office). Now that we know that marijuana is not only not a drug, but a most useful medicinal herb, does it not make your heart break over all the people now in graveyards, many alive and still suffering who could have used it, but thanks to Big Pharma, the drug czar etc have been unable to get it. Now they are trying it with kratom, and it has already been criminalized in Indiana and Tennessee. But people can readily get opiates from their doctors that kill ever 17 seconds. There has never been a report of an overdose or death from kratom. We Americans are smart, very smart. But sometimes we need to look at our lawmakers (after all they are our employees) and let them know, “You’re not going to make another generation who can benefit from affordable plants and their alkaloids just because a few teens are abusing it in its extract form. We’ve all seen that movie and it was called “Reefer Madness” but we’re more savvy now, more aware, and know the motives, and frankly we are not going to let you do that with a wonderful medical herb called kratom and we’re working very hard to get marijuana to people who need it and if you happy to legalize the “father plant” of pot called “hemp” with all it uses, America would be out of debt in 3 years and free of foreign oil and probably domestic oil too. Too many people have suffered needlessly over the years because the government demonized a very valuable herbal medicine (not a drug called “marijuana”). Now they are attempting to do the same with kratom? We the people know better. The job of the U.S. government is to keep its citizenry safe, not to torture them. And that is exactly what happens when an adult human being is unable to purchase the alternative medicine (that works) and he/she desires. Please, if ever there is a vote in your state, before you do anything else, for the sake of your brother, your neighbor, or elderly uncle, vote to keep kratom legal and of course marijuana too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rick London is an author, musician, designer and cartoonist. He is also an outspoken activist for medicinal herbs and one in particular is a potent analgesic called kratom. He says the best is at an online shop called Kratom-K.com. London says the prices are right, excellent selection and if one types in “kratom” as the coupon code at checkout, they receive another 15% off the already affordable prices. London is best known for his Google #1 ranked offbeat cartoons and funny gifts, Londons Times Cartoons or LTCartoons.com
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