You’ll mostly only hear about the good things around using kratom. How it’s brilliant for getting off opiates, quitting alcohol, and how it’s fantastic for dealing with physical pains, plus anxiety and depression. You don’t often hear people talking about how to quit kratom though.
Recreationally it’s also great for sharpening your focus, giving you an energy boost, lower your anxiety, and generally making you feel more confident.
But that’s not the whole story with kratom. You can get tolerant to kratom, and you can get dependent on it.
So let’s talk about how to quit kratom. Let’s talk about doing a kratom detox, what kratom withdrawal symptoms you could face, strategies you can employ, and how long it could take you to quit kratom.
How Bad is Kratom Tolerance?
Kratom tolerance doesn’t happen to everybody. But when he does start to happen, it can be a creeping thing that you don’t really notice until it’s too late.
You might start on a couple of grams of high-quality kratom. You might take it once every few days, but it starts to creep up in dose. Then you start to increase the frequency, and before you know it, you are taking several grams every day. That’s when tolerance and dependency have started to kick in.
For some people, it can get really bad. It can develop into a habit of 10 g or more every single day, with some people doing even more than that. That’s when the cure has become the disease, and why learning how to quit kratom before you get that level is essential.
Best Strategy: Avoid Kratom Dependence
Look I don’t want to tell you how to suck eggs or state the obvious, but the best way to avoid kratom dependency, and avoid kratom withdrawal symptoms completely is to not get tolerant and dependent in the first place.
That’s about being self-aware. It’s about spotting when you are not emotionally in a good place and could abuse kratom. It’s also about watching the dosage, and spotting when you are increasing your dosage, or the frequency you are taking kratom. It’s also about understanding why you are using kratom in the first place, what are you trying to solve?
You’ll also start to spot when you “need” a hit of kratom. It’s not just something you use in a matter-of-fact way to increase your performance, or deal with anxiety, or pain of some description, it’s when you physically and emotionally feel you need it that things start to get dangerous.
So you can avoid kratom dependency by keeping doses low, only using high-quality kratom, making sure you have more days free from kratom than on it, and maybe even keeping a log of your dose and frequency to spot when it’s increasing, and why.
Kratom Withdrawal Symptoms
Not everyone will suffer kratom withdrawal symptoms. Some people who are only taking small amounts of kratom, or not very frequently taking kratom, can escape with no withdrawal symptoms at all.
Other people can suffer from only minor kratom withdrawal symptoms, that last just a few days:
- Watery eyes and nose
- Hot flushes
- Insomnia
- Cravings
- Sweating
- Anxiety
However, if you have developed a strong kratom dependency, then your kratom withdrawal symptoms can then expand, and after 2-3 days, stronger kratom withdrawal symptoms can also kick in:
- Fatigue
- Restless leg syndrome
- Muscle aches and cramps
- Diarrhea
- Depression
- Tremors
- Panic attacks
What’s important to remember here is that most people don’t suffer from all those kratom withdrawal symptoms. And even if they do, it’s a spectrum, and most people only get those symptoms in a minor way.
However, if you are smashing large doses of kratom every day, it’s important to understand that you could get some or all of those major kratom withdrawal symptoms in a very strong way, that can last for as long as one week before they start to diminish.
Your Personal Kratom Withdrawal Timeline
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a standard kratom withdrawal timeline, no progression that you will follow, no certainty on where it will end.
That’s because it’s very personal. The frequency of dosing, how much you take, the quality of the kratom you are using, emotional susceptibility to being addicted to substances, mental health, there are lots of things feeding into it.
So how long it takes to get off kratom, and how bad that journey is, is unfortunately never the same for any two people.
However, for most people kratom withdrawal symptoms are very minor, and only last a few days.
In fact, one survey of 8000 respondents in the USA found only 9% of people noticed strong withdrawal symptoms from kratom. However, that’s slightly contradicted by other studies which have found that the number of people suffering significant withdrawal symptoms was far more than 9%. But it’s certainly not the majority of people.
But the great news for your own personal kratom withdrawal timeline is that most people only suffer minor side-effects from kratom withdrawal, and these diminish over 2-3 days until you are fine.
That may not be the timeline for kratom withdrawal that you follow if you are a chronic user though. That could require a lot of hard work, experiencing significant side-effects, and a tapering off of symptoms over several weeks, rather than several days.
Ways To Quit Kratom
When you looking at how to quit kratom, you’re really looking for strategies to help you. In fact, there are only two direct strategies for quitting kratom, three if you count a variation of the second.
What we are basically talking about is getting you clean from kratom completely. We’re not talking about lowering the tolerance level, lowering your dependency, or returning you to a position where you can use it occasionally with no issues, we are talking about ending your addiction to kratom.
So when it comes to quitting kratom, the three strategies you can use are:
- The quickest way is to just go cold turkey, but I would never really recommend that. If you haven’t been taking much kratom, and your addiction levels aren’t high, then brilliant, you can go for it. But I really wouldn’t advise going cold turkey unless you are in complete control, as it can trigger even more serious kratom withdrawal symptoms.
- The best way to quit kratom is to taper down on your use over several weeks. That’s the same with everything in life. Think about babies, and how they are weaned off their mother’s milk, well getting of kratom is no different.
The best way to taper down is to take a progressively lower dose of kratom, but using the same frequency as you do normally. That way you don’t upset your routine or damage your energy levels as much, but you gently ease down by half a gram a week, maybe a gram a week if you are taking a large amount (10 + grams for example).
- A hybrid strategy is to taper down and have kratom for three days. See you could start by tapering down half a gram a week, and then introduce a day when you are kratom free. If you are feeling good, have another day, or take a lower dose the following day. The idea is to just generally keep tapering down, and increasing the kratom free days.
Things You Can Do To Make Quitting Kratom Easier
So look, I think it’s pretty obvious that the best way to learn how to quit kratom, is to have a plan to taper down over several weeks. This will minimize kratom withdrawal symptoms, and allow you to do a proper kratom detox minimal side-effects.
But there are strategies you can employ to make that tapering down easier. Simple things you can do every day to minimize the effects of those kratom withdrawal symptoms:
- This may sound obvious, but walking is actually a brilliant solution to lots of problems. Depression, anxiety, many physical and mental health conditions, can be solved by regular walking. Getting off kratom is no exception. It removes stress and exhaustion, occupies your mind, get your blood moving and your oxygen levels high, and gradually increases your mental and physical fitness.
- Supplements can help. Magnesium, L-Theanine, Acetyl-L-carnitine, even multivitamins can really help.
- OTC medications should be utilized. If you have a runny nose, there’s something you can buy for that. You can get sleeping pills from your doctor, there are things you can take topically and orally for muscle pain. It’s the same with diarrhea.
- If you are suffering from muscle pain, get a massage, do some yoga, keep active.
- Alcohol can help with relieving kratom withdrawal symptoms. However, that’s not going to be the case if you already have alcohol dependency problems, or you are using large amounts of alcohol. But a couple of drinks can really relax you.
- Kratom withdrawal symptoms can be ignored better if you are keeping yourself occupied. There’s no point in planning to come off kratom if you are at home on holiday for a week. So plan it for when you are at work, and make sure your evenings are occupied, with people around you.
- Get yourself a support network. Tell your doctor and see what they suggest in terms of medications, and make an appointment to go back and see them after a couple of weeks to report on progress, and get checked out things like blood pressure. Tell your spouse, family, friends, make sure you are not alone, so that you are benchmarked and have people to lean on.
