The Joe Rogan Experience - #876 - Chris Bell

Episode Date: November 16, 2016

Chris Bell is a director, producer and writer, known for his documentaries "Bigger, Stronger, Faster*", "Trophy Kids", and "Prescription Thugs" and his latest project is on the controversy surrounding the plant Kratom.

That's sweet. I'm just now getting over the hurricane of Shannon Briggs that came through this with a storm of let's go champ. He's a maniac. Yeah, he is a maniac. So I'm glad we can get you in here today because explain to everybody, first of all, people don't know, Chris produced and what did you direct it and produce it? And Bigger, Stronger, Faster and Prescription Thugs. And Prescription Thugs, which is particularly important because a lot of it was about the prescription industry and how many people get hooked.

And you've had experience with it. We've all known people and lost people that have had problems with prescription pills. But you wanted to come in and talk about Kratom. Sure. Yeah. You know, a while back when I was actually hooked on pills, I was looking for a way to get off them. I would search the internet every day on a way to get clean and sober. And I came across this thing called Kratom and they said, they sell it at these head shops and different things. And, you know, back then I wasn't really familiar with the head shop scene or anything like that. So I actually, I never found it. I never went out and sought it out. And then after going through rehab, I had heard about it a couple more times from some people. I've heard about people

taking it to get off of opiates. It's a plant. It's a 100% natural plant. Comes from, you know, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia. That's where they grow it. It's been used for like 2000 years. Basically, it works sort of like an opioid, but it's not a drug. It's just a plant, you know, and it has these properties that have helped people bridge the gap when they get off of opiates so they don't have withdrawals. What it also does is help relieve pain. And it also helps with anxiety. It helps with, you know, elevates your mood. And it does all these great things. But the government now wants to make it a schedule one

drug. But so you're saying it's not a drug, though? Well, you know, that's I guess it's semantics. It's like, how do you classify something? It's been around for 2000 years. No one's ever done any studies on it being a drug and no one's ever done any studies on it. Well, there's been some there's been actually a lot of studies on it being a supplement, but they aren't like these FDA approved, you know, double blind placebo studies that they're requiring for it to be on the market as a normal supplement. But it, um, does it, it has psychoactive properties? Well, it'll, it'll elevate your mood. So we're just talking about alpha brain or some, you know, nootropics, it'll work like that and it'll elevate your mood.

I mean, I don't know where the real distinction is between high and elevation of mood or where, you know, what the difference is really there. But it doesn't make you feel like it's not like I smoked pot. It's more like I had a good cup of coffee, you know, fired up. Back in the day when I used to take pre-workout supplements, caffeine and ephedrine. It kind of feels like that. I just feel like fired up and ready to go. And I don't feel pain. That's interesting. The Kratom gets you fired up. I would have thought it would have mellowed you out.

I have zero experience so that you have some here now. And you could drive in this stuff? Well, they tell you not to operate heavy machinery and things like that. But I've never had a problem with it. I actually take it to drive. So, you know, tomorrow I'm leaving for Thanksgiving. I got to drive six hours. So that's your ass. I'm taking Kratom before I get in the car to go because it actually helps me focus. It relieves the pain. Wow. That sounds crazy. So it mimics the effects of opioids, right? Opiates.

But it also elevates you? Well, sure. So like if you, I don't know if you've ever taken Oxycontin or Vicodin or any of those things like that. No. A lot of times when people take that, they feel like they're indestructible. I took Vicodin, I think it was Vicodin once when I had my first knee surgery in 93. I fucking hated it. I took it literally one time.

And I guess for me, you know, I guess it's different for everybody. I think it was Vicodin. It might have been Percocets. But whatever the doctor gave me for pain, I took the pills. I was like, oh, my God, I feel so fucking stupid. I'm like, I'd rather be in pain than feel this dumb. Sure. I think a lot of times, like, what happened with me is I came out of anesthesia from a

surgery and I was all doped up on the drugs and I didn't even know it so it just kind of like just kept going you know what I mean like I never I never stopped getting high from the time I was in the hospital for like six years you know right so for me it was like you know opiates were a real big problem they were ruining my life. They were destroying me. Now that I got sober two and a half years ago and I started taking Kratom, I feel great. Like everything in my entire career is going, you know, skyrocketing. Things are going great.

My relationship with my girlfriend's great. Just everything's been good. So I can't really see the bad in it. So when they decided to make this a Schedule I drug, we decided to make a documentary about it and show the world what it really is. That seems really bizarre that you would have a problem with drugs and then this would help you. Like I would think that if you have a problem with drugs, you would want to stay away from anything that's sketchy. Sure. But a big part of addiction, you got to remember, is that we relapse.

People relapse. If you can have something, it actually helps with alcohol withdrawals and alcohol cravings. So if we have something that will help me to not crave those things or even think about them and also not feel pain, like why should I have to be in pain? Like there's no, you know. Now are you in pain right now? Not right now because I took Kratom before I came here, but I would normally be in a lot of arthritic pain. Okay. Just, and you have arthritis just naturally, right? Double hip. Yeah. Double hip replacement surgery. I need both of my knees done, my shoulders shot, you know, kind of everything. I'm kind of pretty beat up. And so for me, it just works. You know, my brother, who's also a power lifter, he takes it as well before he

trains and he really loves it too. Takes it before he lifts weights. Yeah. Wow. And he's trying to bench 600 pounds. So he's not, so it's not like he's using a little bit of weight. No, your brother's a gorilla. Yeah, he's pushing it. That's so strange to me. I'm glad we didn't talk before this podcast because I had a thought in my head of what this stuff is, and you're changing it right now.

What did you think it was? Well, I felt like it was probably just a good way that people could relieve pain naturally, but I felt like if someone was going to describe it to me, I thought they were going to tell me about an opiate type of effect, that it just mellows you out, but it doesn't hurt you. There are different strains of it. There's a strain called Bali, which is supposed to be good for anxiety and kind of calm you down. There's a strand called Green Melee, which is

like sort of good. That's the one that is a good pre-workout. But they're all kind of the same thing. You know, they all have the same alkaloids. Kratom has 27 alkaloids. So when you look at it, it actually has alkaloids that work like opiates. They attach to opiate receptors, but not in the same way. If you look at Oxycontin, when it attaches to an opiate receptor, I mean, it's like, you know, it's stuck in there. It's like screwed in, basically. If you think about like a screw, that opiate, it's screwed in there so tight that you could never just pull it out. You'd have to, you know, unscrew. So with the Kratom though, it kind of like balance, it kind of like drifts around the top of that opiate receptor. It doesn't attach nearly as hard. They say that opiates attach a thousand times greater to the opiate receptor

than anything found in nature and kratom is found in nature. Oh, wow. But what about heroin? Like the actual poppy seed is found in nature, right? Yeah, and they have to do stuff to it to make it heroin. They have to do stuff with coca leaves to make cocaine. to make it heroin. They have to do stuff with coca leaves to make cocaine.

They have to, you know, it's like marijuana and kratom are probably the two most similar things. And when I went to interview Senator Mark Pocan last week about, he was the one that wrote a letter to the government. He wants to keep kratom legal. He thinks that, you know, it should be allowed for everyone.

And I said to him, what do you think about marijuana? And he was like, I just think it should all be legal. And it was the first time I was ever in the presence of somebody that works for the government saying that they think that weed and kratom and all this stuff should be legal. And it's because he had a good head on his shoulders about the problems that people face every day. You know, it's not black and white. Like I live in this gray area. I don't, I'm in a lot of pain, but I don't want to take opiates. I shouldn't have to take opiates. So where's the pressure coming to turn this stuff into a Schedule I drug?

If there's no negative response by the body, you're not having people die of overdoses, is there an LD50 rate on this stuff? Well, if you look at, I mean, you're saying where is the... LD50, we should probably explain to people, lethal dose at 50%, meaning if you take 50 rats and you give them a pound of this shit, 50 of them or, you know, 25 of them will die at a certain level. We've heard about, you know, there's been no deaths from marijuana, right? Ever.

Kratom is the same thing. No deaths. There have been zero deaths and there have actually been 15 deaths that have been brought to the FDA and the DEA's attention. Those 15 deaths, I actually went and interviewed one of the mothers. The kid was on three psych meds. He was on or withdrawing from three different psych meds. I have a black box warning that says, warning, if you're a teenager, you might commit suicide, basically. And this kid committed suicide. He didn't die from a Kratom overdose. He died from committing suicide. And

his mother wants to blame Kratom. She doesn't think that the psych meds had anything to do with it. And I don't want to say that Kratom had nothing to do with it. We don't really know. And what I really call for with Kratom is just more research. I want people to put in the money to do the research, to make sure that this is safe. And let's see if we can solve this opiate epidemic. Let's see if we can crack down, basically lower the amount of opiate prescriptions we have in this country. I just read an article the other day, one in seven people in America are going to be affected with addiction problems. Wow. That's crazy. One in seven. Yeah. That means somebody in

your family. That's insane. Somebody in your family will be affected by it. That's more than 10%. Yeah. That's weird. That's weird. Right. And not everybody, it's not that everybody gets addicted. They're affected by addiction. My girlfriend was really affected by addiction because when she met me, I was taking drugs and drinking every day. And that's a big effect on, especially on women. It's tough. It's a tough thing to handle. Now, I can understand this woman whose son died being, I can understand her remorse and looking to point the blame at someone. And a lot of times people are reluctant to point the blame towards something that a doctor prescribed. And they'll automatically say, well, it probably wasn't that. It was probably this other thing that's not regulated.

You know what she said to me? She said, Chris, I'm going to pray for you because I know you're taking Kratom. And I'm going to pray for you that you're okay. And I was like, you know, lady, you don't need to pray for me. Like I've been taking it for a year, you know. And I think that people just get it wrong. And I feel bad for her. I feel bad for her in the fact that that she can't just realize that, you know, she can't look at the research and see, you know, because when I went and interviewed her, she said, well, I'm not even sure if Kratom killed him.

And this is after a gigantic, you know, they mount this gigantic media coverage of this story. Right. Like this was all over. And now like two years later after the damage has been done, she's kind of coming back and saying, well, I don't know if it was Kratom. But she already did the damage. These deaths are the reason why the DEA wants to ban it. Well, the DEA, though, is going on what kind of evidence? I mean when they do a scientific analysis of Kratom and they break it down, they don't find anything toxic in it, do they? No.

Well, I talked to Melvin Patterson. He's the spokesman for the DEA. And when I talked to Melvin Patterson, what he told me is that they lean on the FDA a lot for these kind of decisions, right? So they go to the FDA and they ask the FDA, can you give us an eight-point? It's like some sort of thing that they have in place. It's like an eight-point inspection to make sure that this drug is not dangerous, you know, and if it is dangerous, it's deemed dangerous, they'll take it off the market based on the FDA's, you know, research. So the DEA had asked the FDA for that eight point inspection. The FDA never went ahead and did it. So the DEA

got upset and said, well, we're going to ban it anyway, because we're waiting on you guys. And then there was a big uproar. There was 100,000 people signed a petition, you know, partly due to you tweeting about it and things like that. There was a guy, Andrew Turner, he tweeted you, he was an Iraq war vet. And you should see his video. He can't even speak without Kratom. He cannot talk normal without Kratom. He speaks with all these tics and twitches in his face due to, they think, maybe PTSD and some other problems that had affected him. And now he takes kratom and those twitches all go away. He did a video on YouTube that was kind of amazing. He stopped taking it for six days and you can see all these twitches are evident. And then he goes back

on the kratom and they all disappear. Whoa. Wow. So who's pressuring the DEA to turn this stuff into a Schedule I drug? And why Schedule I? There's a couple patents that are on the alkaloids that are in the plant. So I think that Big Pharma would be, you know, the first place to look. They have a couple patents. They want to basically take this. You know, I think it's actually, I don't look at it as being that bad. But why make why make the organic kratom illegal in order to turn this into a more powerful drug?

They think that they can extract some of these alkaloids, right? There's two alkaloids, metagenin, and the other one is like seven hydroxy metagenine. It's like too technical for anybody to really care about. But there's two alkaloids that they really care about that help with opiate withdrawals and help with pain. And those are the two. And they actually just want to ban the two alkaloids, but you can't do that because it's in the plant. So you have to ban the whole plant. And to me, you know, you said it the best. You said making something else illegal is like archaic.

It doesn't make any sense. What are you going to do to the people? You know, five states just legalized marijuana. Now you're going to throw people in jail for kratom. It doesn't make sense. Well, I'm worried about this new administration when it comes to various reasons. Yeah. But I'm worried about him when it comes to being compromised by big pharma. I really am. You know, it's just a, it's such a business oriented administration and he's bringing all these old dudes. It was like, they're right out of that TV show, the strain, like the, the, the vampire dudes that are hanging out with the Nazis. Like I'm looking at all these people like Mike Pence, all these old dudes he's bringing in with

these archaic ideas. I'm like, they're all against gay marriage sessions. Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous. You know, I was hoping that maybe Trump would bring in some people that would be opposite of his thinking. And, you know, it just hasn't happened. Well, he was a Democrat for a long time. I mean, Donald Trump was always a Democrat. I mean, him running as a Republican is kind of odd if you look at his history. But he's going all in with a lot of these people. And some of them are deeply opposed to marijuana legalization federally. And, you know, that stuff is very counterintuitive and counterprogressive. And the marijuana legalization, we've been reading a lot about that. And it's going to be what a lot of people think might be a mess because making it recreational opens it up to Marlboro and all these other companies that make tobacco products to now start selling cannabis and turning it into, you know, what we already have. Bullshit. Well, I'm not opposed to them making it commercial because I feel like the more people do it, the better we're all going to be. Sure.

I really believe that. I mean, people say, oh, you're a pothead, a thing like that, bro. But I really think it's a, I think, I mean, you can call it a drug, but whatever it is, it is a component of life that makes people calmer makes people happier makes people more sensitive I just think it's better for people. I was a hundred percent against it ever since I was in college Like I just thought like a marijuana. Wow, that's what that's the worst thing, you know and and steroids I thought marijuana and steroids were that were the devil and come to find out it's all the drugs that the doctors actually prescribe us That are the devil that we need to look out for, you know, they're not necessarily shouldn't were the devil. And come to find out, it's all the drugs that the doctors actually prescribe us that are the devil that we need to look out for. You know, they're not necessarily,

I shouldn't say the devil. They help a lot of people, but we have to be very careful about what we're putting in our bodies that our doctors give us. We can't just say, well, the doctor said it's fine and just, you know, take it. And that's how I got addicted to opiates.

And a lot of people want to say, I'll get it on Instagram all the time. Well, bro, it's your fault, man. It's all your fault. And they know nothing about addiction. It's not my fault. It's not anybody's fault. These things happen because it's a progressive, you know, these drugs were designed to make you addicted. So to say it's my fault, it's kind of ridiculous because the drug was actually designed so people get hooked on it. Yeah. You just didn't outrun it. That's all it

is. I didn't outrun it. Yeah. I mean, that's really what it is. It's like some people outrun it and you get away from it and you should have been strongerrun it. Yeah, you're right. I mean, that's really what it is. It's like some people outrun it, and you get away from it, and you go, you should have been stronger, bro. Yeah. You know, like, all right. How many people have to get fucking addicted before you recognize that it's a problem? I mean, that is a giant problem in this country. We lose a person to addiction every 19 minutes in this country.

Accidental overdoses. I think I've said that stat several times on your show, and it's just you can't say it enough. You know, we have this giant opiate epidemic and we have something here, you know, in, in our film, we're just, we're starting to make a documentary about this. And in the film, you know, we show a guy who has a, not a, not a huge habit, but six Viking in a day habit. And he cuts that down to zero using Kratom. And we watched that, you know, that process, because I feel like that's important to show that like, Hey, you can actually do this. Now, if we have people that are really, really addicted to heroin

and really, really addicted to these other drugs, they might need something like Suboxone and then Kratom. You know, like we don't really, we don't really know. You know, my friend Kelly Dunn, who owns the company Urban Ice that we were just, we were just talking to, he actually bought a farm up in Washington and it's his intent. If people don't have money to go to rehab or do whatever, they can come up and visit him, you know, and get Kratom. He's actually a, you know, a licensed therapist and all that stuff like that. So like, I feel like it's sort of this, this grassroots movement to, um, to try to get people to even try Kratom. That's what I've been trying to do is get people like, Hey, just, hey, just try it.

Like you said, with marijuana, the more people that try it, the better off we'll be. And I really feel that with kratom too. You're making me want to try it. Now, what is the name? Is it a kratom plant? Like what does a plant look like? Yeah, it's a plant. Is it a tree?

It's a plant. It kind of looks like, I don't know, like a poison ivy plant. I'm sure you can maybe pull one up, you know, but it basically just looks like, just like any other plant, shiny green leaves, you know? I don't think I even heard about it until maybe a couple of years ago and I didn't know how to pronounce it until a month ago. Well, people say kratom, kratom, tomato, tomato, whatever. I didn't know what it was.

I mean, I had rarely heard of it. I think someone gave me some after a show one day. I'm like, I'm not taking this shit. You know what? That's what it looks like. There it goes. Yeah. It kind of happens a lot.

Like somebody will say, hey, here, try this. And I never trust that either. Yeah. But for me, what happened to me is very interesting. I have a lot of friends in this world of fitness and whatever. And so I just end up talking to a lot of people that try a lot of different things. So after I got done with the opiates, I was on Dr. Drew's show. And he said, well, you should try Advil and Tylenol in combination.

That's going to be better than an opiate for your pain, for your chronic pain. So I said, okay, I start trying that. Then I get a phone call from my friend who lives in England who tells me he just had a kidney transplant because of all the NSAIDs he was taking. So now he doesn't know. Meaning non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, which are Advil. Sure, yeah, Advil and Tylenol and stuff like that. So he had a kidney transplant I just thought like Christ you know I didn't think that that was gonna necessarily happen to me

But I was taking like 10 Advil a day. You know that could happen that right? I mean how many were your friend taken he said about 20? And he was a new bane addict before that so he doesn't know if it's a new bane But I'm alright, so you get in all these problems But I just thought like well look taking 10 Advil and tylenol a day because was taking them in combination, that just can't be good for you. So my friend Kelly hit me up. He's like, hey, man, you should try this plant. It might help you. And what was your first experience like with it? My first experience was, so my friend Kelly was very serious about this and he wants to help a

lot of people. He said, I'll fly to Sacramento. I was living up by my brother at the time. So he flew out to Sacramento to see me. He gave me some kratom. He went to his a lot of people. He said, I'll fly to Sacramento. I was living up by my brother at the time. So he flew out to Sacramento to see me. He gave me some kratom. He went to his hotel. I went to my house. I had just been filming with my brother for like five hours straight. And my arthritis was like at its worst point, like the worst it could possibly be. Is that from standing?

Just standing up. Yeah. Yeah, just get beat up, you know. And also like standing on concrete floors and gyms and stuff like that. So I was just like beat up. I took the Kratom. And then he came over later that day to talk to me. I said, dude, you're not going to believe it, but I'm in.

I don't feel any pain right now. No pain. And it took a good two or three months for me to really get into it. Because I might tell you now and you might go home and try this, right? Right. And you might say, yeah, Chris, whatever the fuck. That doesn't work. But then for some reason you'll go back to it and then you go back to it and go back to it and all of a sudden like it's a miracle to you i don't know

what that's how that's how it was for me i'm not saying that's how it's going to be for everyone well i'm not in any pain so if i took it it would just to get fucked up well elevate your mood to elevate my mood i'm pretty happy right now i don't want to get more elevated i'll do something silly yeah you might you never know yeah but also helps with that lowers your blood pressure helps with anxiety blah blah blah blah Right so you can look at it for several health benefits But it doesn't get you to a point where you can't drive or you you don't know how to type I should probably be responsible and say it hasn't gotten me to that point hasn't gotten you to that point But I have I have taken too much of it

Okay, give me one of them packets and tell me like like how much you're supposed to take to that point. Hasn't gotten you to that point. But I have taken too much of it. Oh, okay. Give me one of them packets and tell me how much you're supposed to take. Well, it's all going to be relative, right? You would take one of these? What do you weigh? 190, 200? Yeah, somewhere in the range of 200. So I take six of them, but I worked up to six of them. Six pills? Yeah. I would suggest this is a packet of pills. Sure. Now, Kratom a lot of times is taken in a powder form, but it tastes disgusting, so I can't handle the powder. So I just take the capsules. Yeah, somebody gave me in a powder form, and I was like, this is like heroin.

You know what? You know, I want to hear something really interesting. I was supposed to speak at an AA meeting the other day, and I got a phone call from somebody at the AA. i took some right now how much should i take take two okay but you know like um i was supposed to speak at an aa meeting and i got a phone call from a good friend of mine and she said well i'm confused now because i'm not sure if you're sober oh because you're taking kratom i'm taking kratom and it affects your mind so now i need to worry that you're fucking up. They're worried that I'm fucking up. And you know what? It actually hurt me.

Like it hurt. It hurt to hear that from somebody that like helped me get sober. Right. It really hurt my feelings. Like I don't mean to sound like a pussy, but like hurt my feelings. And you're like, hey, you're not sober from people I really look up to. Right. Well, I can understand their worry.

I totally understand their worry. It's so confusing. It sounds like you're doing a heroin substitute, right? Sure. A natural heroin substitute. And it's been called herbal heroin. So I can see their concern. So is that maybe the same sort of concern that led the DEA to take a close look at this?

Because, I mean, if you look at it, I mean, everyone wants to worry that the DEA is in bed with big pharma and it's all about business and they're here to screw over the American people and keep these legal, natural things away from us. But I had the same sort of reservations. I mean, I didn't know until you came in here today, I didn't know that you could operate cars on it and it doesn't fuck with you and that you take it before a drive. I would have never imagined that.

I do. I'm not saying that everybody... I don't want to be here and be irresponsible. I don't want to say, oh, everybody should take Kratom and everybody – but I feel like I know that it's safe enough to try, for example. I know it's safe enough for anybody to try. So I've seen it. I've seen it in thousands of people that are using it. I get emails every day from people that take Kratom because we're doing a documentary.

And you know as well, you know, when you're – I feel that media has the power to change the world. I feel like what you do, what I do, we actually have a voice and we have a power that can change people's minds. My film, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, completely changed people's minds on steroids. It did. It changed my mind. It gave me a view into it that I never had before and that and then there was a was it an HBO spread was it real sports did a whole thing on on steroids yeah yeah real sports yeah it was real sports and they were you know essentially saying where's the bodies like everyone's

talking about people dying from steroid overdoses no it's not what's happening they were dying from pain pills I didn't get to tell you how I turned around on marijuana. The Joe Rogan experience. Listening to your show. You know, that's why I say media is important. I feel like we can change the world. We can change things. I was dead set against it. Thought it was for losers. I'm like, oh, Joe Rogan smokes pot. Maybe it's not so bad. So I started doing the research. I'm not saying I just jumped in and started doing it, but I've done the research and I know enough that it's safe. You know, we know. It's 100% safe.

I mean, you could definitely take too much of it. Just like you were saying you could take too much kratom. You can get too fucking high and freak out. That's true. But if you just get a little bit high, you're going to be all right. Marijuana and kratom, they're both miracle plants. They're both plants that are put here. Marijuana and kratom, they're both miracle plants.

They're both plants that are put here. If you believe in God, I believe that these things were put here on the planet for us to use, to heal ourselves, to feel better. There's nothing wrong with feeling better. I think we have a big aversion in this country to people being able to feel better. Like anything, taking kratom, oh, it makes you feel better. Why is that a crime? It shouldn't be a crime. We have alcohol on the market that makes people feel better. We have cigarettes and tobacco and that makes people feel better. They get a little buzz from it or whatever. Why not Kratom? Like,

what's the big deal? Yeah. We have a reluctance to indulgence in some ways, right? Like we're worried about indulging in something, something pleasurable. Like it's bad for you. Well, people say, Oh, Kratom, I heard that makes you high. And I'm like, well, first of all, what would be so bad with that? That's a good feeling for a lot of people. I don't see that that's so bad to have a little bit of euphoria. Now, being high on cocaine or crack or whatever, that's a completely different story. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about like a little elevation in your mood.

Yeah, there's a big difference between being high and being impaired. Sure. Right? And I think we put those two together, and they're always in the same category for some strange reason, and they don't necessarily have to be. Like a nice cup of coffee gets you high. Yeah. I mean, look, I drink a cup of coffee in the morning, and I start slapping my hands together, and I want to start doing shit, you know? If I drank that little caveman coffee nitro, I'd be bouncing off the walls.

Yeah, I'm sure. Because that's so strong and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I love it. I think it should be legal. And I think that if Kratom's in the same league as coffee and Starbucks is the biggest business in our country, why is it so bad? So since the people that are sober and that are helping you with that, they have concerns about it. And there's a lot of people that it seems like this is a drug or a plant, I should say, that just does not have enough.

There's not enough data. There's not enough research, not enough research. And that's what we want to do. We would like, you know, look, every time there's been an epidemic in this country, we had a polio outbreak. Right. And our president was affected by it. So what did we do? We decided, you know what? No more polio outbreak, right? And our president was affected by it. So what did we do? We decided, you know what? No more polio. Let's fix the problem. I don't see why the government doesn't say, look, we're losing a person every 19 minutes. This is way more serious than polio. Why are we not putting funding into researching things like kratom? There's other things that are like kratom too. Why aren't we researching these things? There's another plant called akiyuma, another plant called soursop. There's several plants that are like kratom, do similar things.

Why can't we study those to stop the deaths, to slow it down, to make a dent in the deaths from opiate addiction? There's no reason why the government can't fund that. Now, what are these other plants, akiyuma, and what was the other one? One's called akiyuma and one's called Soursop. And the reason why I even know about those is because what happens as soon as something gets banned, you look for the next thing. Right, right. Oh, wow. So you step ahead. I don't even know what those things do, but I know we like, as soon as Kratom was banned, we were on the internet looking for like, well, what else is like it? Because I don't want to have to deal without it.

Well, I think it was you that tweeted something and I might have retweeted or just read it. But you tweeted something about someone getting arrested, like some big drug bust where they busted him for Kratom, which wasn't even illegal. Yeah, that's a weird thing. That was a guy, I think maybe because that guy's neighbors had it out for him. I think maybe because that guy's neighbors had it out for him. They sort of like had it out for him. And they saw these big green bags of what they thought was drugs at his house. And the cops went to raid it. And they're like, we're not sure what this is.

So we're going to have to arrest you. Oh, God. You know what I mean? It causes like a pretty weird problem. You know, the thing was when they made it illegal, I had two giant boxes of Kratom sitting in my garage. And all I could think about was like, OK, the cops are going to come here and they're going to bust me because they know I'm doing a documentary about it. I'm going to be, you know, the marked man. But I decided that like no matter what happened, I was going to keep those boxes in my garage and I wasn't going to worry about it because I figured like, what are they going to do?

Come arrest me. You know how stupid that would look because that's all going in the documentary. Right. to do come arrest me you know how stupid that would look because that's all going in the documentary right you know so i i don't really have a fear that other people have because i feel like i put everything on camera and put everything you know out there so i feel like but but other people it is serious like the um the vet i was talking about he can't live without kratom what are we going to do take it away from him what are we going to do in the meantime you know if we if we ban it what are we going to do what are we going to do with that meantime? You know, if we, if we ban it, what are we going to do? What are we going to do with that guy? Yeah. Like, where's he going to go back on opiates to the VA hospital? Like it's fuck. What a weird situation. So we really need you, Chris. This documentary is

actually important. Yeah. It's very important. It's very important because it's not just about Kratom. Yeah. This is about how the DEA and the FDA protect the interests of our federal government. And they keep the money all in the pool to themselves, and they don't want anybody else in. And I feel like it's just greed. It's total greed. It has nothing to do with it being dangerous. Well, we're definitely more aware of that kind of greed and those kind of compromises where these companies compromise various branches of the government for their own personal interest. And this Kratom is a perfect example of that because so many people, including me, know

almost nothing about it. This is a weird one. This is one where they almost got in before people could understand what exactly it was, which is rare in 2016. There's something like that available. They've never had anything like this. The DEA has never seen a reply like this. There was 100,000 people that signed a petition.

But one thing that I need to get out there to everybody, the one way we can keep this legal and keep other things legal as well, is everybody needs to go to a website that the DEA has set up. It's called KratomComments.org. and keep other things legal as well, is everybody needs to go to a website that the DEA has set up. It's called kratomcomments.org. So just K-R-A-T-O-M comments.org. You can go there and you can leave up to a 5,000 word message about Kratom. And it doesn't have to be from somebody who takes it. You could just be like, hey, I watched this podcast, and I really feel this needs to be researched more. And whatever you feel needs to be said, you can just say it here. So I went on, and I left a comment about why I use it and what I like about it. And I feel like everybody that does needs to do that, or they're not doing their job.

And what is that? Put that back up again, Jamie, please. It says December 1st deadline. Submit your comments. Now, what is the deadline well that's why that's why I was a pain in the ass and kept texting you because I was like dude can we get on before this deadline well it's very important that people know that there's a deadline for these comments and it's in a couple days it's December 1st and if you make a comment by December 1st the DEA has to read it like they have to

look at it so even if you write a bunch of December 1st, the DEA has to read it. Like, they have to look at it. So even if you write a bunch of gibberish, they have to read it, which is kind of funny. But don't do that, though, folks. He's on Kratom. He can't even fucking spell. He can't spell. No, but I'm saying they have to look at all of them. So if we can get 10,000 comments, I think there's maybe half that right now.

And your show is so powerful. If we can get 10,000 comments, then this is going to stay legal. Wow. So it was supposed to stay legal. Wow. So it was supposed to be Schedule 1. They had a plan to make it Schedule 1 a while ago. It's very interesting. The DEA only has one option. The DEA has an emergency scheduling.

So there was a drug called Flakka. Have you ever heard of Flakka? No. Jamie, can you look up Flakka, F-L-A-K-K-A? Because you have to see this. Flakka was a drug in Florida where everybody was going crazy. They were smashing shit. Really?

They were smashing through their car windows and jumping on cars, and they were like zombies. And that got banned immediately. And there was nobody that stuck up for it. A new synthetic killer drug. Yeah, wow. That was something. See, it made him crazy.

Yeah. Well, you see what some of these people do? Look at these people. Oh, my God. That guy's on Flaka. They're on Flaka. Is that real? But see, what happens is, I don't know.

I don't know. It's a synthetic drug. Whoa. I think Kratom gets lumped in with these synthetic drugs like Spice and Flaka. Watch, this guy jumps into the back of the car. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Yeah, see, like...

What the fuck? This is someone on Flocka? Holy shit. Can you imagine? That's like that movie... He goes flying off the car, back into the car. It's amazing. Whoa.

What the fuck? Why am I not here? Look at this guy, smashing, you know? Oh, my God. It's like the most entertaining video I've ever seen. So even if it's not real, I love it. But I think it was a drug that they were selling in head shops down in Florida. And it got banned within like, I don't know, a couple months of it being on the market.

Always fucking Florida. God damn Florida. The gateway to demonic possession. I was saying that's like I Am Legend. Like those fucking crazy things from that Will Smith movie. The monsters, yeah. So this guy jumped on this guy's hood and he's trying to shake him off. Is that what happened here?

All I'm saying is that when we sell things, you know, things that they sell in head shops, like they sold Spice. Remember Spice was a synthetic marijuana. And the problem with it is that a lot of times they're unregulated. Like nobody, you know, Spice just came on the market. There was no regulation. They were selling it in head shops.

They were getting away for it. Like I think everybody puts this stuff on the market to get away with it. But when Kratom was put on the market, it wasn't put on the market to get away with it. You know, it's been in, like the problem is like there's a law in America called the Deshay Act. Have you heard of that? No. Deshay is basically the Dietary Supplement Health something Act, right? I forget.

But basically what it does is anything that was on the market before 1994 gets grandfathered in and is a legal supplement. So, like, even if they didn't do the research on it or whatever, before 1994, and that's something that Orrin Hatch put in place to kind of keep the supplement industry, you know, help the supplement companies. It doesn't help us as a consumer because we don't know what we're getting because there's no regulation. But I feel like that, you know, that Deshay Act says if there was a supplement on the market before 1994, that it needs to stay legal. And Kratom has been sold in Florida. They've been selling it for 30 years. You know, they've been selling it before 1994. So I'm actually just trying, I'm actually went to the Freedom of Information Act and summons the records. We summon the records for importation of Kratom. Now, if we can prove that Kratom has been imported to the United States

before 1994, we have a pretty solid case to say, you know, look, this gets grandfathered in just like everything else. Wow. So we grandfathered in as a nutritional supplement. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure they're going to make it harder than that. You know, I'm sure like if we have the proof, but I'm just going out at full blast. You know, I feel like if you go out something with everything you got and you look down every avenue, you're going to find something, you know, it's kind of like a's kind of like a lawyer right now. Wow. What a strange predicament. It's very unusual that there's something that's this well-loved by the people that are taking it,

but so little is known about it by most people, including me. I have to say something that's very important. The people that are against Kratom are just against the fact that they don't know a lot about it. There's very few people that are like really dead set against it. There's a congresswoman down in Florida who's dead set against it because they want to boost, you know, their election. They want people to vote for them. So they say, oh, we took this off the street.

We saved your children. You're like, she doesn't really know nothing about Kratom, like to make it illegal. What has she said about it? Has she said anything? She told me, this is great. You interviewed her? Yeah,

I interviewed her down in Florida and she told me that, you know, look, when you talk to a mother who, whose baby was born addicted to Kratom,

she's like, that's going to change you. And I said, can you get me that mother's name, address and phone number so we can contact her? Uh, yeah,

yeah, sure. We'll get around to it. They've never produced that. We've asked, we're claiming there really was a mother whose baby was addicted to Kratom? We've asked three or four times and we haven't gotten it. However, I did interview a girl in Washington, DC who said that her baby was born addicted to opiates. And that was a terrible,

terrible thing that she had to go through. And now she takes Kratom and she's fine. And she's not going to relapse and she'll be fine. And her daughter ended up being fine and stuff like that. So what I'm saying is like these opiates are what people would be born addicted to. Not Kratom. You know, they're looking down the wrong rabbit hole. So does Kratom have any potential addictive side effects? We don't know.

It's hard to tell. You know, I can give you. How often do you take it? I take it usually every day, but I can give you some anecdotal evidence that I went to Thailand for two weeks a couple months ago. And I had been taking Kratom for four months straight. Then I had a two week, you know, in Thailand. We were actually shooting a kickboxer movie. And after after I got back from Thailand, I wasn, I wasn't jonesing for Kratom.

I didn't take it for two weeks because it's illegal there. So there was a reason. Oh, it is illegal there. Yeah. I've never been to Thailand. And the last thing I want to do is show up to Thailand and end up in Thai prison. Yeah, that doesn't sound fun. No, it doesn't sound fun at all.

So I was like, maybe they don't even take this seriously there, maybe it's bullshit, but I'm not bringing it. But it is illegal over there? Yeah, it's illegal in Thailand. You know why it's illegal in Thailand? It's really interesting, because if you look at this, Mangda is what they call it. It's kind of a Thai name.

But the reason why it's illegal in Thailand is because it was cutting into the opium profits. Oh, Jesus Christ. So what happens is people— That's probably exactly the same pressure over here. Exactly. But pills.

This happened in the 40s, 1942 or 3. They banned kratom, and they basically kept it illegal because it was cutting into the money. People were taking it instead of opium, instead of heroin. Wow. Wow. And that's the same thing that's going to happen in this country, but it's going to be different. In this country, it's going to solve a problem. Is opium legal in Thailand?

I don't think it's legal. But I think even, you know, it's like they just tried to get kratom out so that nobody was taking it. Oh, I understand. So the people that were profiting off of opium, period. I think Kratom's more illegal than opium, if that makes sense. That's hilarious. Wow. What a weird rabbit hole this is.

Yeah, to me, the whole thing is interesting because I completely get the other side. I don't want anybody taking something that's unsafe. I don't want to market something that's unsafe I don't want to market something right that's unsafe but I don't make a dime from selling kratom like that's not right you know that's not where my income comes from and I'm not gonna sell it so it's like it's not something where I'm like hey man I can make billions of dollars off this let me just go not only that if anybody would have an interest in not promoting something that's addictive it would be a guy like you as

an intimate knowledge of what it's like to be addictive and under the spell Sure, I think addiction needs to be looked at in a certain way though where you look at addiction and you go like, okay I'm addicted to coffee. It's no big deal. You know, like what is that gonna? What is what's the problem? You know, what's the problem being like people are addicted to coffee? What's the problem? There really is no problem I just need coffee addicted to sugar will lead to problems down the road but not a problem today right addicted to cigarettes lead to a problem down the road but not a problem today you know so we don't really know there's not any long-term studies to show that kratom is good in the long term there's not any studies but we can go by the evidence that we do have you know and they've done

a lot of studies in mice and all the studies in mice, like none of the mice die. They're not. And the number one opiate addiction study they did was at University of, it's Ole Miss, whatever that, Mississippi. So Ole Miss, Christopher McCurdy, he's a guy there doing the research.

And he really feels that this could be the savior for the opiate epidemic. He feels that they need to make it stronger he feels I need to extract it make it stronger and that would be used for the opiate epidemic so that's why I said I think there is potential for it to be studied as both the dietary supplement and as a drug because if you can if you can make something out of kratom that's gonna help a lot of people you know it's like what's the big – I don't really see it as a big problem if it could be both. Right. You know what I mean?

Like let them make their money and whatever, but keep it legal for us. So in doing your documentary, what have you learned about the push to try to make it illegal? And when did it all start? It all started, I think – shoot, when did it start? It started like over the summer. I actually started doing the documentary a little bit before it. I was like, well, maybe people should know about this. Maybe this is something.

Oh, so you were doing it just to let people know about it, and then along the way it started to be threatened. It was weird. It was like I started doing it going like, is this going to be a movie or is this more like an infomercial? What is this going to be? I don't want it to more like an infomercial? Like, what is this going to be? You know, like, I don't want it to be like an infomercial because I'm not selling it or making money off of it. I want it to be something that's very honest about what this product does.

And so to me, the ban and the controversy is the best thing that could ever happen because now people know about it and they're aware. As long as it doesn't get banned, we're okay. You have a knack for that. As long as it doesn't get banned, we're okay. You have a knack for that. You know, when you think about it, like in Prescription Thugs, you're making this documentary on pill addiction, and then you get hurt during the middle of it, start taking pills, and become addicted to pills during the middle of a documentary on pill addiction. I'm either blessed or cursed.

I don't know what that is, you know? You might fucking manifest it or something, man. I hope not, because actually the next documentary is about cancer Oh, well the reason I'm doing that the reason I do all my documentaries is because like I said We have the power to change the way people think and we have the power To open up people's minds about things that they might not know about well and also explore things You're very good at exploring things in a very objective way in a very honest way and I think that that's so important in today's day and age, because it's so hard to know where,

why a person's promoting something in one way or not promoting something in another way. It's like, what is the interest behind it? What's the motivation behind it? So to know that there's a guy like you who's doing this stuff stuff just completely honest and open and raw like that It's very very important. Well. Thank you. I really appreciate it like number one Being respected by somebody like you it just means so much to me because you know all my life I'll ever wanted to do is like I always wanted to prove myself I always thought I had to you know prove myself as a kid like I Did this or that but I feel like these movies just kind of automatically do that for me?

I think you're absolutely automatically validating like everything i've tried to do my whole life you know i wanted to be a big feature filmmaker and make arnold schwarzenegger movies and that couldn't be the first that's the furthest thing from my mind right now is to make movies that are you know big action movies that are mindless i want to make big you know big documentaries that are smart well it's interesting as life goes on and you change and evolve and your motivations change. But I recommend your movies to a lot of people, man, particularly the prescription thugs because of this. So many issues have come up over the last – it seems like the last couple decades in this country are just – the unprecedented numbers of people that are addicted to pills.

It's crazy. There's a couple million people like walking around completely checked out, you know, and I feel like it definitely needs to be, I still, I can't wrap my mind around why the government hasn't stepped in and said, we have to fight this opiate epidemic. I think they're getting paid off. Why isn't the government putting, making the companies that make Oxycontin? For example, Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma admitted, like, we got all these people addicted. We lied to doctors.

They admitted it, and they got fined. But the fine was only like a little tiny percent of what they made. You get fined $200 million, or even if you get fined a billion dollars, and you made $8 billion, who cares? You don't even feel it because you're going to make another billion next year, another billion after that. They actually call it the price of doing business. They build in those fines into the product so they know, hey, we're probably going to get fined on this for $400 million.

Let's just build it in the cost of the drug. I mean it's an insane system that we have here for products that are supposed to help people. Well, it's also this disingenuous thing that politicians do where they pretend they're looking out for the people. But yet, how come you haven't heard a single politician in decades say a word about cigarettes? Obama got into office, he was smoking cigarettes when he got in, which is just, that's half a million people just in this country die prematurely every year because of that. I think if we look at tobacco and we look at the problems with tobacco, what's the big problems with it? They put all these chemicals in the tobacco.

And if they could just ban that, look, I don't think actual natural tobacco is that bad for you. Well, how many people are dying from cigars? Not a lot. Not a lot. Not that I know of. I mean, maybe it's abuse. Maybe if you get crazy with it. But that's kind of like wine.

You know, wine is great. But if you drink wine like four or five bottles a day, you're going to kill your liver. Yeah. It's just like so many things. But I feel like things like that, like wine, like wine feels like, like Kratom has this sort of self-limiting thing. Like wine, you could drink too much of it, but you feel so shitty. Right. And it's like Kratom's kind of the same way.

Like as you take too much of it, you'll just feel so crappy that you're going to know never to do that again. What does it do? Like how does it make you feel crappy because you said you're just having it too much just stomach ache nausea you know and when I say so I guess I should I should mention that what I actually took I don't even know if it was kratom what I took was a product and I'll never do this again it was it was like some extract that somebody gave me and I tried it and that's what made me sick so it could have been way stronger than regular Kratom. There could have been something else in it.

But that's sort of that was my first like, OK, be smart about this. Look at the look at the packaging. A big problem with Kratom is most of the Kratom that's on the market. This is the only company in the entire country or world that packages Kratom like a dietary supplement. Every other supplement, if you look on the back it'll say right here not for human consumption no that's a problem can they buy can people buy this right now yeah they can buy yeah for now sure yeah and this company is from Vegas so that they do a lot of business in Vegas they're actually in health food stores in Vegas

explain to people so they could get it and obviously you nor I have any stake in this at all this is called urban ice urban ice organics They have a website. Yeah, I have a website. I believe it's urban ice organics calm or urban ice calm I'm not even sure to tell you the truth, but Any any like head shop, you know should have Kratom? They saw a lot of this in Vegas. So in Vegas that it's all over But you know what like the other thing we talked about is why are they making it illegal? The guy who owns this company made a lot of money off of it.

I'm sure. Millions and millions of dollars. So when you make millions and millions of dollars, people want to know, like, hey, dude, you didn't go through the process. And I think Kelly and I were just talking, like the process to make something a dietary supplement is a long, arduous process. And I feel like Kratom may need to go through that process because we don't have enough information on it. And it hadn't been studied. It's sort of something that slipped through the cracks. Nobody really knew about it. It wasn't that popular. And it's been around for 2000 years and no one ever decided to say, hey, this is a dietary supplement. Wow. Now, these other ones that you were talking about, the other ones when you were saying

if this gets illegal, there's two that are similar. Name those again. What is it again? Soursop, I think is one of them. And Akiyuma, which is like, I don't think it's Japanese or something. But Akiyuma and Soursop, I've never tried them. I don't know. I've just read about them.

But they have a similar effect, allegedly? That's what it says. Yeah. That's what they say. But they haven't been as popular So maybe you know, like I feel like they're not as popular because it's probably not as good or strong, but I don't know man, so Do we have they isolated like what is the pressure to try to get it illegal? Yeah, we we've kept trying to isolate, you know, and we've talked to the people that are against it,

and there are Congress people that are against it. There are grieving parents that are against it. You know, like nobody in Big Pharma is going to come out and say, hey, we're going to make this a drug and screw all of you. Like they're not going to really say that. So it's really, when you get into Washington, like we were just in Washington for a week, and everything's so shady and underhanded in my mind.

Like all these people are are working together. They're all in cahoots, you know, like everything's in everything seemed to be like, I don't know, just the congressman that I talked to, Mark Pocan from Wisconsin, marijuana and kratom are both illegal there. And he's kind of fighting for it to be legal. And like I said, he's one of the only congresspeople I met that was willing to go to bat for these kind of things, and I think we need more Congress people like that that are looking out for the citizens. So there are state laws against it? There's six states, I believe, that have banned Kratom. I think Wisconsin's one of them, Tennessee, Alabama.

I don't remember the rest of them, but there's a couple states where it's banned. And what do they cite when they say that it's— Deaths. Deaths and danger and kids taking it. You know, everything's about protecting the children and saving the children, but, you know, none of the people in the kratom industry have never said, like, hey, let's age-restrict this. Let's make it, you know, 21 and over or 18 and

over or 25 and over. It doesn't, you know, whatever, whatever they want to do. Like no one's even, the FDA has never even come and taught. Like it's impossible. And this is the big problem. It's impossible to talk to the FDA or DEA. I just spoke to the, the, um, spokesman for the DEA last week, Melvin Patterson. And I said, Hey, Mr. Patterson, I would really like to come down and do an interview with you.'s like oh yeah sorry we don't do that and I want to say well you work for me like you know we pay we pay their salaries I know people hear that all time like I think there just needs to be more transparency 100% in the DEA and the FDA you can't find out the FDA is like

Scientology like you can't find out anything about it like when you try to do research on you try to find out find out who's doing what or whatever, there's not a whole lot of transparency. And that's why documentary filmmakers like me have to use the Freedom of Information Act, where if we request something from the government, they have to give it to us. And that's something that really helps us. So this is a, I mean, we're talking about what a rabbit hole this is, but this is a weird rabbit hole for you to have started this out as something like you're, you're finding this plant to be beneficial. You see all these people that are benefiting from it and you're like, Hey, this is a great subject. I'm going to let the world know about it. And then as you're doing it, it's there's, you start feeling this dark push for it to be schedule one

and to start making it legal. What's that journey been like? Weird, you know, I think scary a little bit because you start this thing and I thought I was just going to go down the two. I mean, I thought they were going to maybe make it illegal and then, you know, maybe we have nothing, you know, because once you make something a schedule one drug, it's impossible. Ask the people, the marijuana people, it's impossible to take it off of Schedule 1. It can happen, but it's really hard. So I think the idea is not to get it there in the first place. Well, there was talk about the DEA removing marijuana from Schedule 1 this summer, and they backed out of it. I just read some more about that today. That's still kind of up in the air, huh? Well, they got close to it, and they said they were going to reconsider it. And

apparently, a lot of people were very hopeful. They thought this is going to be it. Schedule one is ridiculous. No medicinal value. I mean, they've shown marijuana to cure some forms of cancer. To say there's no medicinal value for it is completely ridiculous. We need to start dumping our money into researching these plants. Because, like, look, you have these pharma companies. And I don't know if you've seen this show on Discovery where they show you how they come up with new drugs they basically take like

there's a machine it's like this fucking robot and it takes like every fucking substance in the world and combines it until like it makes millions and millions of different different kind of fucking like things you know different kind of drugs and then they start testing it on like every different disease to see if it works. So it's like, it's like shooting in the dark. It's like they have no, like, they're like, there's a machine that'll just make a drug and then they figure out if it works on something rather than like, we already know that Kratom works for this, this, and this.

And we already know that marijuana works for this, this, and this. Why not put the money into studying that rather than shooting in the dark, making some weird, you know, combination of shit. Have you seen that that that no i haven't seen it at all but that sounds almost like it sounds like uh they're like like you know the like they use those algorithms to try to work the stock market it's something like yeah similar they're just throwing numbers up yeah well there's a lot of them that come out real bad. I mean, I know a dude who had a stroke, a young guy from Vioxx. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You should probably know about that. Yeah, Vioxx. Arthritis. Arthritis medication. Yeah, I know a guy in his 30s had a fucking stroke on that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, see, that's serious. They pulled it off the market.

Yeah, they pulled that off the market. I think there was 55,000 deaths from Vioxx. And Kratom? Zero. Oh, weird. Marijuana? Zero. Oh, weird. Marijuana? Zero. There you go.

How strange. Yeah. Man, there's a business in selling people pills. We live in a twisted world. We do live in a twisted world. The fact that people are going to keep that from somebody who's in pain is ridiculous. Well, I'm hoping that as time goes on, we're slowly starting to understand that it is impossible for your doctor to know all the ramifications and repercussions involved in any drug. There's just no way.

I was just on the show, The Doctors, with a doctor whose son was taking Kratom. His son was a drug addict and he kind of found out about it. And then his son said, dad, I'm going to get off all the heroin. I'm going to start taking Kratom. And he said, his son has been on Kratom now for, I don't know, like six months. He's been sober. He's been happier than he's ever been. And, um, this doctor is a hundred percent, you know, down with it. And he was on the show, the doctors with me, and he was arguing with, you know, there's a P the guy from, uh, what's that show intervention. One of the dudes from intervention was on the doctors with us arguing like yeah people get addicted to kratom all the time it's like dude you're a marketing guy like these people in rehab like you

gotta understand the reason why if you google kratom rehabs come up is because rehabs have marketing teams they're trying to get as many people into the doors as they can so they tell you kratom is bad and they put it on their website Narconon is a big Rehab center they're owned by Scientologists and they're all over the Kratom thing saying like hey Are you addicted to Kratom call us you know and it's just like I? Feel like the people that get addicted to her like I went to rehab I've been in rehab that with people that were there for marijuana And you want to just be like dude what the the fuck are you doing here like remember celebrity rehab?

Yeah, yeah, but but people do have a problem with it So it's okay like you can go to rehab for anything You know real so going for kratom is no different than going for like depression or something or gambling Yeah, rehab for gambling. So I don't I don't know why they're marketing it to people I think it's kind of sadistic in a way like they're looking for people that are on kratom You know that to you know if I don't know I mean, I don it's kind of sadistic in a way. Like they're looking for people that are on Kratom, you know, to, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know why they. Well, perhaps if they don't have any personal experience with it, maybe it's not as nefarious as we think it is.

Maybe they're just ignorant. Sure. And the good rehabs aren't doing that, I should say. Like where I went, Cliffside Malibu, they don't have a Kratom thing on their website because they're a legitimate rehab center. I was talking about celebrity rehab. I remember when Eric Roberts was on it. It was hilarious. Everybody else is shaking and throwing up and sweating.

Eric Roberts sitting there with a newspaper, a cup of coffee. He was cool. He's got slippers on. He was just in there for pot. Yeah. Like there was no withdrawal. There was nothing happened. They're like, oh, what does it feel like?

He's like, I feel fine. I just don't have weed. Well, the problem with when you tell somebody that they have a problem, they start thinking, fuck, I have a problem. You know, like, have you ever had a cop behind you and you never did anything? No, but you're like looking in the rear view mirror and you kind of drop both hands on the wheel. Yeah, you're like, how's my license? Is it good? Is it good? Is my license good?

Did I pay my insurance? Fuck. Do I have a gun? There's no gun in this car. Why am I fucking freaking out? Am I speeding? No, I'm going the speed limit. But meanwhile, there's something, if someone tells you, Hey, you've got a problem, you've got a problem. You might not think you have a problem, but you got a problem. Like, fuck, you got a problem. What's my problem? You know, your problem is kratom or your, your problem is sex or your problem is whatever the fuck it is. Exercise. You're addicted to exercise. Someone could tell you, you have a problem. And then most of us are at least a little insecure. Almost everybody I know is at least a little insecure.

And as soon as someone accuses you of something, you start considering the possibility they're right. Yeah, and then sometimes you try to hide it more. Yes. As an addict, I was like, okay, well, now they're on to me. I better really, really hide this. I had a conversation one day with my dad. I'll never forget it. My dad is like the nicest person in the world. You've seen him in the movies. And one day, um, I was out of money. I'm in my forties and I'm out of money. That's ridiculous. That's stupid. You know what I mean? Cause I was,

but I was a drug addict. So my dad said to me, I don't know what's wrong with you, but I think you're a drug addict or an alcoholic or something, but there's no reason why a guy in there 40 years old should be out of money. And I'm like, you know what, man, he's right. And that is that conversation that it was about three months before I went to rehab. But like that was the conversation. Huh. It was that conversation. It was my dad being disappointed in me.

It was like that conversation that really sort of shook me to the ground. Like somebody told me I had a problem. It like kind of shook me to the core because he yelled at me when he said it and he never yelled at me. Wow. Well, sometimes that's all you need is one person's opinion who you really love. Yeah. Boot me ass from dad.

Yeah. And you go, shit. And my dad's been through everything. You know, he's had cancer. He's had, you know, his half of his intestine pulled out. He's had all these issues and they're not due to drugs or alcohol. So it makes me feel even more guilty because like my issues are just due to something I'm doing.

Right. Right. Well, except arthritis. Yeah. But, um, I'm feeling it now. I don't know what it's doing, but something's going on. Got a boner? No.

Oh, does that happen? You should probably warn me. No. Shit, man. I wish. Um, no, just, uh just I feel good. It doesn't it's not not negatively affected me in any way. I don't feel slow or anything like that.

That's what I was assuming it was. I mean, literally, one of the things that I wanted to do before talking to you about this, I wanted to do no research because I literally wanted to just go in with my ignorance so that I can question you from ignorance. Interestingly enough, if you try to do research, it's kind of biased right off the bat from Google. Like I said, when you search Kratom, a lot of times what comes up are the rehab centers that are paying to be. Let's try it right now. And then if you type in Kratom ban, you'll get more of a across the board, up and down. I'm going to try it with Bing, because I've been using Windows. So let's see if they have the same thing.

Would you say he's mocking Bing? I don't know. Oh, no. Bing is not bad, man. I don't have any problems with Bing. Okay. KratomRed on Amazon.com. See?

They're trying to sell you it. Oh, they're trying to sell it. Yeah. KratomRed. Okay. Drug abuse. Kratom Effects. Okay. Drug abuse, Kratom effects. Okay. Narconon. I did not know Narconon is owned by Scientology. I didn't know that either, but I have my buddy Anthony Roberts. He was like, when I was doing Bigger, Stronger, Faster, it was like this

dude that would always hit me up online about stuff and he kind of knew everything. So I hired him to work on this movie as a researcher and a writer, and he's been teaching me a lot about how to find stuff. Let's see what the Narconon people have to say about it. Effects of drugs. So it's Narconon.org. The effects of drug abuse. It says Kratom is a relatively new drug to the U.S. and Europe and has been used for many years in Southeast Asia as an anti-diarrheal medicine. Hey.

Does it really? You know, I've heard that. Yeah, a lot of people. So you got diarrhea, you take Kratom. A painkiller and a recreational drug, Kratom is the popular name for a tree, and the drug comes from its leaves. The drug may be bought in leaf form, but in this country it's more likely purchased as a capsule

with a powdered leaf material or chopped up in the form of a leaf that can be used for a tea or for smoking. Yeah, this says tea on it. Do people make actual tea out of this? Yeah, they make tea out of it, yeah. Does it taste like shit? I think it tastes terrible. It's pretty bitter, you know. It says the effects of Kratom come on rather quickly

and last between five and seven hours, although high doses can last longer. It's heavily promoted as a legal undetectable safe drug that can be used to come off stronger drugs it is not illegal in the United States but the breakdown products of kratom can be detected in some drug tests is that true like for people like work at UPS or something I haven't seen that happen no I don't I don't think that's true they might be scaring you yeah you're probably trying to get you to join I don't think it would show up on a drug test because it's not an opiate. It's not the same ingredients.

It says the breakdown products of Kratom can be detected with some drug tests. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe some drug tests that are looking. Well, there is a specific drug test that looks for it, that will go in and look for just Kratom. And that's what they use when somebody commits suicide or whatever. And they said, oh, is there, is there Kratom in their, in their system or whatever? You know, and there's 15 deaths from Kratom. 14 of the 15 deaths are all polypharmacy, which means you've, we're taking several different things. Most of the time

it's like polypharmacy, but it's like, oh, they were taking, you know, Xanax, Vicodin and Kratom. And you're like, well, why would you blame it on the Kratom? It like oh they were taking you know xanax vicodin and kratom and you're like why would you blame it on the kratom it seems like the least yeah you know egregious of all of them if it's only in combination with other pharmaceuticals that sounds crazy yeah i mean that's like marijuana like you know it's like who knows like who knows how many people have died on marijuana and other drugs it's funny that you you bring up Thailand because they're using Thailand as an example here. More than 13,000 people were arrested for kratom-related crimes in Thailand. That's just because it's illegal in Thailand to preserve the opiate industry.

They conveniently ignore that. So the drug is abused for its sedative or stimulating effects. Not used, it says abused. Well, see, the thing is, I don't think that taking a normal... I think if I took 50 pills a day, that would be abusing it. I maybe take six pills a day.

Maybe, at the most, 10. And even the term pill is a weird word because what you're basically taking is powdered plants. Yeah, well, the term drug is a weird word. If you went back and read that statement that you just read and substituted the word plant it wouldn't sound bad at all the plant comes out of powder the plant is this the plant does that it wouldn't sound bad but when you use the word drug yeah of course paints it in a corner well drug is such a weird word because it covers too many different effects you know it covers

stimulants depressants so here's what it says. A person using this drug may expect or may not expect or want the following undesirable effects of kratom. Edginess, nervousness, vomiting can be severe or prolonged. Nausea can be severe or prolonged. Sweating, itching, constipation, delusions, lethargy, respiratory depression, tremors, aggressive or combative behavior, psychotic episodes, hallucinations, and paranoia. There's a big thing you just mentioned there. Respiratory depression has not been shown with Kratom. So they're fucking with you. And that's what kills people with Oxy. What about hallucinations?

Do people hallucinate on Kratom? I've never met one. Psychotic episodes? Never met one. Aggressive or combative behavior? Never really experienced that. The only thing I can say that I have experienced are people that feel better and are in better moods. Here's an interesting one.

Addiction effects may include, number one, loss of sexual desire. People are like, fuck this drug. It will actually prolong you during sex. Oh, shit. Prolong you. So like make it harder to finish, basically. Darkening of the skin or face. What do you want to be, black?

That's why. That's an effect. That's why. A negative effect. Well, you know where that comes from, darkening of the face and the skin? Oh. It comes from in Thailand when they did the study in 1975. They were researching like the workers, the workers out in the fields.

So they researched these workers out in the fields that were chewing the kratom leaves, saying, oh, they're turning brown. Because they're out in the field in the sun. They're out in the fucking sun. So stupid. So like these people are turning brown. Oh, my God. That's so stupid. And that's listed as a side effect, melanin.

Well, and then you'll have people, like Congress people and other people that are fighting against this, try to use that as a fact. Here's where it gets really weird. Withdrawal effects of Kratom are very similar to those of opiate-like heroin or prescription painkillers. Let's hear those. Here's the withdrawal effects. Diarrhea. I thought it withdrawal effects. Diarrhea. I thought it was anti-diarrhea. Make up your fucking mind.

Muscle pain. I thought it's good for pain. Yeah, it's great for pain. Okay. Muscle tremors or jerking. You were just saying. Well, actually, the vet, all his muscle jerking and twitching goes away. They're saying that that's a side effect.

Restlessness and sleeplessness. Does it help you? You know, I haven't really stayed up all night on it. But, you know, there's adverse effects to everything that we could possibly ingest. Right. So it's more like let's take a big group of these adverse effects and see which ones occur more often in people. big group of these adverse effects and see which ones occur more often, you know, in people.

And it really, it really hasn't been shown across the board to do all these things to everybody, you know? So like there was one guy that was on Kratom for three years and they said, he's got to be addicted to Kratom. We're going to study him. We're going to see what happens when he,

when we take him off Kratom, you know, when he gets off Kratom. So he gets off Kratom and you know what happened to him? What? He had a runny nose. Whoa. Yeah.

That's scary. That was the only thing that he complained about was like a runny nose. Here in large font, it says, Narconon can help the person who is addicted to Kratom in large words. And then it goes back, well, every drug has different effects. Oh, man. The route back to sobriety is much the same from person to person recovery recovery must include release relief from incessant cravings near the beginnings of rehab you know you know what we said about we were talking actually heard your podcast and you brought me up on a, on another,

you know, on another one of your podcasts. And we were talking about time, the amount of time it takes to get sober. Yeah. And I still, I still believe that. Right. I still believe like it takes time and I still reset. Sure. But the thing that we have to talk about is like, you don't just take this and get off of opiates. You, you take this and you go to AA meetings and you go to, you know, whatever, whatever works for you. Yeah. You go to counseling, you go to AA meetings and you go to, you know, whatever works for you.

Counseling. Yeah, you go to counseling, you go to a therapist and you talk to them. You talk to them about why you couldn't get off the drugs and you tell them you're taking this and you say, hey, let's see if we can solve this problem, you know. But like it's let's not be stupid about it. Like I went to the doctor and I got when I when I was addicted to opiates and I would drive around my car crying. I'll be crying saying I just want help my car crying, I would be crying, saying, I just want help. My brother was dying from this.

I knew he was going to die from it. I knew it. So I would drive around, I would cry. I'd be like, I need rehab. I need help. I don't know what to do. Every rehab I called was like $4,000, $6,000.

And I didn't have the money at the time. I was a drug addict. I was broke. If I had known about something like this back then, it would have completely changed the person i am now i would have i would have lost five or six years you know wow that's fucking crazy it's just it's it's so it's so weird when you're a grown adult and all of a sudden you find out about something that's been around for thousands of years it's

been helping people you're like how, I try to pay attention. How the fuck did I miss this one? For me, being like the guy who did Bigger, Stronger, Faster, always talking about supplements and everything, I missed it too. Wow. I know about every supplement on the market. I know everything Onnit makes. Every supplement that's out there, I look at them. I want to see what they do.

And I missed it. That is really fascinating. It's just really, really fascinating. So now we're in this state where the DEA held off its Schedule I distinction, right? They were going to designate it as a Schedule I. Sure. And the DEA isn't, I think, this big monster that everybody thinks. Everybody's like, oh, the DEA and blah, blah, blah.

I think the DEA, I believe, from what I've gathered from this whole situation, is they're not happy about what happened. They didn't know. They weren't aware that this many people use Kratom and are happy about it. I think that they really didn't know. I don't think it's as devious as people think. Like, I don't think it was a big, you know, it definitely could be something that is pushed by big pharma, but I feel like the way that the DEA has reacted so far has been, you know, pretty normal, pretty like reasonable, like, yeah, reasonable. Yeah. Like it's been like, like, Hey, okay, I'm sorry. Let's open up a website and take some comments.

Well, I really hope people listen to this, get to it. Give the address out one more time. It's KratomComments.org. KratomComments.org. K-R-A-T-O-M Comments.org. And so December 1st, once December 1st rolls around, which is right around the corner, what happens if they get a bunch of notes? I mean, they have to get 10,000.

Is that what it has to be? Well, they don't have to get any certain number, but I think if they get 10,000, it's like that's the number we were – That's what you were aiming for? Was aiming for. You know, like what's great is I've actually become friends with a lot of people in this Kratom community, and it's not the kind of people that you would think like, you know, I feel like, um, when I went to the Kratom March in Washington, DC, I didn't know what kind of people I was going to meet, you know, but I met, you know, mothers and grandmothers and, you know, like all these people that were like, they were like my mom, you know? And I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting

to meet a bunch of people like, what's up dude. And that kind of, that kind of guy, you know, saying like, yeah, man, the government sucks. Let's keep this legal. Tower 7, bro. Look into it. It was vets, veterans that fought overseas for us and have risked a lot for us. It was mothers and grandmothers and people like that more than it was of these devious characters that they think are using Kratom. Wow.

So this is a really important issue. And when is your documentary going to come out? We're hoping the documentary will come out early next year. So it's just a matter of how fast we can get it together. We're almost done shooting. Okay. So now it's just the editing process. And then also, are you going to wait around to see what happens after December 1st?

Yeah, we'll wait around. We're going to start editing. We're starting editing right now. So basically, if things happen, for example, Bernie Sanders is one of the guys who signed the Kratom letter. I want to talk to him. He's kind of an amazing guy to me. I would love to pick his brain about this and see what he thinks.

So it's impossible to nail these people down, but you never know when you might get five minutes with Bernie at a rally somewhere. So we're going to continue to try to get those bigger names that we wanted to get. I think they're important. Orrin Hatch is involved in this. Orrin Hatch is a senator from Utah that's been very involved in the dietary supplements for a long, long time. So we'd like to get his opinion on it. But it's kind of crazy.

I would hope that the DEA and the FDA would listen to this interview and sit with us and do an interview. I would love to just let them speak their mind. I don't do interviews where I go in and ambush people. No, you don't. I let them speak their mind. No, you don't at all. I think I took it probably an hour ago, right? How long did I take it?

10, 15 minutes into the show it's uh yeah i mean i guess i have like a mild very mild stimulant sort of effect that i feel but uh it's it's it's nothing um nothing to be concerned with you're not dying i'm not it doesn't me you know i mean it doesn't really like i've taken some stuff before. I was in Colorado this weekend and I took a lot of edibles. Whoa. Who those fucking people aren't screwing around, man. They're going deep in Colorado.

Yeah, man. I heard your special talking about edibles. That was amazing. But you're pretty sensitive to them too, right? I guess. I don't know, man. I'm more sensitive than Joey Diaz. Joey Diaz, like I'm on that level, like 300 milligrams.

Yeah? Yeah, that's cool. That's what you take? I don't even do it because I would have to take too much of it. Well, one time I did a podcast with Sam Harris recently, and I have this spray that is 1,000 milligrams. What? I guess it's 1,000 milligrams in the whole bottle, but it's like, I don't know exactly. That's just a spray?

Yeah, this is the more mild version. This one's 175 milligrams. THC? Yeah, it's like 20 milligrams a pump or 10 milligrams. Between 10 and 20 milligrams a pump, depending on how strong the stuff is. Who makes that? This is Jombo. Jombo makes a bunch of great stuff, all organic.

They use honey. Jombo. Where do you get that? of great stuff. All organic. They use like honey. Where do you get that? Dispensary? I'll hook you up. But the, hey, you want one of these? Take this one. Take the spray. Enjoy.

Don't get crazy. You know what's weird? I don't like to smoke pot. I like this stuff better because I'm just so used to taking things like that. And I also feel like I don't want to get back into the hole. My girlfriend would flip out if i started smoking pot you know but to use some like edible stuff and play around with this and see if it works for pain and stuff like that to me is something that's very very viable isn't that funny where people worry about like smoking is like oh he's smoking

drugs but if you're spraying breath spray under your tongue it's like ah he's just relieving pain you know i just think we need to open our minds to a lot of these substances that are out there that can help us, you know? Yeah. You know, it's great to say, don't take anything. That's not the world that we live in, though. Right. Well, CBDs, you know, CBDs are great because they're not psychoactive at all.

Yeah. And Shannon Briggs, who was just in earlier, said that it's helped him tremendously. Is this CBD? That's pot. That'll get you fucked up, son. Be careful. Be careful. Be careful. Be very careful. But the difference being the edible version of marijuana has a very different psychoactive effect too. That's why a lot of people think they're getting spiked. They'll

eat a pot cookie and they'll think, oh my God, somebody put acid in this. Because it's really psychedelic in the way it's processed by the body your liver produces this metabolite called 11 hydroxy Metabolite and it's just way more powerful than THC You're the only comedian that I've seen bring like science into there That was amazing You know just to kiss your ass a little bit that entire special is at the top of the game Oh, thank you. Bill Burr and all those do thanks I'm hustling.

That's great. So I wanted to get you, I don't have a whole lot of time, so I wanted to get you in here today and get it done. But what else, can you tell people about this and what else can be done? I think that people need to go to KratomComments.org, leave a comment. People can, you know, they can call the DEA.

They can ask for Melvin Patterson. He's the spokesman. They can leave a message with him. I think this KratomComments.org, though, is going to call the DEA. They can ask for Melvin Patterson. He's the spokesman. They can leave a message with him. I think this Kratom comments.org though is going to be the most effective. And also like people need to seek it out and people can hit me up on Facebook or Instagram. I'm, I'm pretty readily available. So if people have questions and want to, you know, hit me up, then just hit me up. I mean, I'm at big, strong, fast on social media and I will answer questions as much

as I can. Like I'm not, I don't hide from people you know no you don't and when the documentaries out can you come back in and watch it we'll talk about it and we'll and hopefully we'll have some good news about it and all right folks I'm high I'm create them right now doesn't do anything my brother wants to get back in here with you too okay I love that smell yeah can I mention something about him yeah for sure he's got a big sale going on for the Black Friday. If you enter the code ROGAN, it's 20% off.

Oh, is that for his slingshot? Howmuchyoubench.net is his website for slingshot, all the slingshot products. I had to plug them. Okay, beautiful. Well, a shout out to Mark. All right. Well, thank you, Chris. Really, really appreciate it.

And do you have a name for this documentary? Right now we're calling it A Leaf of Faith. A Leaf of Faith. I like it. I like it. Yeah, yeah. So if you have a new name, we'll have to, people are like, that name it's cool let's go with it a leaf of faith beautiful thanks chris all right thank you so much i appreciate it it's like a fucking wrestling match talking to you