The Zac Clark Show - Kratom: Natural Supplement or Addictive Drug? | Dr. Michael McCormick

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Is kratom safe – or is it quietly becoming the next opioid crisis?In this quick-hit episode, Zac sits down with recurring medical contributor Dr. Michael McCormick, Chief Medical Officer at Release Recovery, to clear the air on one of the most polarizing substances in America right now: kratom.Marketed as a natural herbal supplement and sold openly at gas stations and smoke shops, kratom is used by millions for energy, focus, pain relief – and even to help curb opioid withdrawal.But inside treatment centers, doctors are seeing something very different.In this episode, we break down:What kratom actually is (and how it works in the brain)Why low doses act like a stimulant — and high doses act like an opioidWhether kratom withdrawal requires medical detoxWhy it’s showing up more and more in addiction treatmentThe truth about “legal” substances and who is most at riskWhy some experts believe it should not be sold over the counterWe’re not here to attack people who use it responsibly. We’re here to speak to the 10–15% of people predisposed to substance use disorder – the ones who may not know the risk until it’s too late.If you or someone you love is using kratom, this conversation could change how you think about it.Connect with Zachttps://www.instagram.com/zwclark/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclarkhttps://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553https://twitter.com/zacwclarkIf you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release Recovery:[phone]http://releaserecovery.com@‌releaserecovery

All right, so we're doing a little mini episode here to clear the air on on Kratom. And I have back with us again, Dr. Michael McCormick, who's going to be having some reoccurring spots here on the on the pod because the old adage, my father taught me hire people that are smarter than you. And I was blessed to hire you. And I'm blessed to work with you. And so Kratum, dude. What are we seeing?

And as a doctor, what are your concerns? I preface all that by saying, you know, some of the social media activity we experienced around the creative content was very much people who credit it with helping them. Right. And then also people who credit it with taking a loved one from them and everything in between. So it's certainly a polarizing topic. Yeah, I would agree. I think that it's certainly top of mind. and the concern.

So let's talk about Kratum, or I believe it's in, you know, it's pronounced not here in the United States, but Kratum is how they call it over there. But so Kratum comes from, it's a tree, right? So it's a leaf off of the tree in Southeast Asia. And there, the natives and kind of how, and it's really kind of dates back to use, at least in publications, the early 1900s of they would chew on those leaves. and that's how they would get it, or they would boil the leaves, right,

and extract it and then drink that fluid. And the thoughts were that it gives energy and it gives focus and it gives stamina and certainly it has some pain relief, you know, properties as well. But that's very different how that those natives take is very different than what you and I are seeing now, which is in the powder form and in the tablet.

And it's mitrogenin. Is that? Mitrogenine. Yep. That's the active ingredient or what it? That's it. That's it. It's the mitrogen.

Yeah. And, you know, my experience or exposure to it has gone over a lot of years because, as you know, when I took care of the healthcare professionals 10 years ago and 12 years ago, that we weren't routinely testing for it, you know, and they're in monitoring programs. So a lot we're using it. And that's kind of what was my first introduction to it. Like they're trying to beat the test and use this stuff. Right.

So physically they were presenting as someone who was under the influence and no one could figure it out. It was because they were. Yeah. And at the time, we thought it was bath salts because they were always hard to track and coming from China. So interesting. So a contributing factor to the rise of Kratum is the fact that people who are in recovery

or fronting like they are in recovery can actually get high or could prior to us kind of instilling it into or introducing it into drug test, get high on Kratum and not get caught. Yeah, that was my first exposure to it. Yep. And this is 10, 12 years ago. Yeah, exactly. Yep. And since then, you've kind of seen working in treatment more and more cases. Is that?

More and more cases. I mean, we, you know, we had, you know, I saw it out of two of our three admissions yesterday. Using it as part of there. As the primary substance, crate them. That's, that, that's pretty powerful, I think. And this is a drug that can be purchased. Yeah, that's the primary. problem. So I stopped on the way in today to get my energy drink, which you always laugh at.

And as I'm walking out of the gas station right over here, there's a case, you know, and I looked at it. You know, it's a case of three shelves of all Kratum products. Well, I mean, the feel free, the blue ones, the little blue one. The little blue one, yeah. You would never know. No, the Kava Kratum combo. So what we see with Kratum, the interesting thing is, is the different amounts that you take and the effects that it has. And that's what's very interesting about Kratom, right?

So we talk about, you know, one to five grams probably of Kratum that you're taking. It's going to act almost as a stimulant. So it's going to give you that pep. It's your coffee in the morning. It's going to get you going. And then that moderate five to 10 grams, you know, it starts to have those opiate fat kind of signs and effect. and then over 10 grams or even, you know, seven or eight grams and up is where you're going to see the full opiate effects. And it acts as an opiate.

Pain relief, sedative nature, you know, just kind of bringing you down and getting you high, you know. And that's what we're seeing in our patients most commonly is high dose use of cratum. And there was talk out there that it does not require a detox. Can you help? Yeah. can you help yeah and i appreciate that um it it 100% requires a detox or what i would say to you it's just like you know everything that you and i talk about when when we talk about cannabis or this or whatever we're talking about that 10 to 15 or 16 percent of people that have problems with it right

we're not talking about the whole public so maybe some people use it responsibly and and use it for certain indications whether it's for that you know stimulant effect or whether it's for that pain relief and that that's fine you know god bless them they can use it responsibly but it's like anything else and it's such a simple thing for me to understand because i lived it yeah i introduced alcohol in my life just like someone could introduce create them into their life yeah i benefited from the effects of alcohol for several years it was fun to party it was fun to drink it made me more uh able to flirt with girls whatever those things were And then I took it, I crossed a line.

Yeah. And eventually was drinking every day and drinking more to the point where it was deeply affecting my life. And I didn't, I realized that I didn't have an off switch. Yeah. And the same thing. And then my friend next to me could introduce alcohol into their lives and they're still drinking alcohol in amounts that are safe. Yep. And the same thing I think could be said for, Kratum, for marijuana, for all of these things that people want to, quite frankly, come after us for.

Sure. And you're exactly right. We're talking to the 10. or 15% of the population that are predisposed to a substance use disorder. Creightim is dangerous for those people. That's exactly it. And Cratum, because of the opiate-like effects, it lends in that patient population to tolerance. So someone that may take one of those little blue bottles a day is now taking six a day,

eight a day, ten a day, just to function to stave off the water. withdrawal. And I don't blame that person. Oh, this is what happens. I remember, I remember thinking to myself 15 years ago when I was trying to kick heroin, isn't there something over the counter? Isn't there something I can take that's going to help me get through this pain and agony? And if you would have told me at the time, hey, go to the local smoke shop or the local gas station and buy four or five bottles of this stuff and hammer it down and you'd be feeling a little bit better, I would have done it 10 out of 10 times.

That's it. That's it. And so when you asked me that question about detox, we do formally detox, at least the cratum patients that we see and treat. And what does that require? That requires buprenorphine or Suboxone, similar to if you come to me with heroin or fentanyl or oxycontin or whatever it may be. That's how we treat them, along with comfort meds, the whole full slew of comfort meds, which is nauseameds and stomach stuff and muscle relaxers because you're going to get the. restless legs and the muscle spasm. And we frequently use, because we do wait to start the Suboxone, we use either the long-acting benzodiazepine of librium, or we use phenobarbital. And in your opinion, I mean, this is probably a little more of a load of topic, but this stuff should not be, I mean, I can say, I don't think it should be served over the counter.

No, no way, no way. So, you know, I always tell the story that, you know, it's been a couple years now, that I'd be coming home from my, my daughter. basketball practice and we'd stop at this gas station to get to get right by our house just to get a gatorade and whatever you know soft pots or whatever it is it's right there on the counter so that means there's so many kids that are exposed to it that i believe that cratum at a period of time and and you know i'm almost positive that it was supposed to be designated as you know as a

level one or category one basically like as a substance like similar to heroin and all that but Narcotic. Yeah. And I don't know whether it was, I mean, I heard a statistic recently that there may be 20 million people using Kratum in the United States. And that's a big business. Huge business. And that's something that an insurance company probably wants to stay away from. Yeah.

Because I mean, I would have to imagine that's why, and I talked about this earlier, that's why insurance companies were hesitant to reimburse for it initially because that's a whole another slew of people. patients that they're not. Yeah. And just think about that. So they talked about making it a schedule one, which is heroin and that class of drugs. Like, that's a big deal. Should it be legal to be sold? I don't think so. You know, that's my opinion. You know, maybe others differ. But no, I think it's a, it's a problem for that group of patients that we certainly see. Yeah, because of the way, you know, and this is the same argument, and we're not going to touch this today, but marijuana. You know, there's there's people in my life that I know that use marijuana safely. Yeah.

And they will speak to you about the benefits of their marijuana usage. And I believe them. Right. And it works for them in whatever capacity that they need it to work. Yeah. I don't think that outweighs the young guy who's, you know, smoking a bunch of herb and going into a marijuana-induced psychosis. Yeah. You know, I don't think in the terms of Kratum, yeah, is it?

helping some people detox? There's medications. There's other medications we can use. Better medications. You know, is it helping some people slow down on some of their drinking or not go out as much? Perhaps it is. Yeah. But in those small examples, I think there's a much bigger problem here, which is the stat that you just alluded to, which is there are a ton of people using this thing. It's sold over the counter. It's very powerful. It's very potent. And half the time, people don't even know what they're taking. Yeah, I know. Because you have to look at it, right? So you're buying this either in a powder form and mixing it in the liquid or you're buying the couplets or the tablets or the drinks, you know? And so you have to look to know like how many serving size or how much is in here,

how many grams are in here. You know, that's exactly right. So that's one of the fears too. And it's a different absorption, right? So when I talk to you about the people that are, the farmers that are using this and chewing on it, it's a slower absorption into the system. Like we're talking now about this is extracted and pulled out into powders. And then that's where, you know, the 70H comes in. You're pulling out even a further subset, which has, you know, 10 to 15 times the result of jumping on that receptor. So it's just a different absorption that we're getting than maybe what they're getting in Southeast Asia that the farmers are using this. Once again, like we always talk about the delivery device and how quickly it's getting into my

system, how quickly am I feeling it? And that's the problem. that we're seeing now with it. Yeah, I mean, the other thing I'll comment on is I didn't know I was an opioid addict until I tried opioids, you know, until I was introduced to them. And the way that this is being introduced to our young people, to people that might not know that they are predisposed to a substance use disorder, and then sending them off down a dark road is scary. That's scary to me.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, and you and I, you know, we know some people that, you know, we're trying to cut down on their drinking and started just on. one of these bottles a day and now, you know, they're at 8 to 10 and they're talking us about, like, how can we figure out how to get the heck off this stuff? It's scary. It's really scary. And I think the reason we wanted to just hop on here is to want to have a doctor here

backing up some of the things that we've discussed. And two, just to say, like, with anything that we talk about here, you know, there's a world that exists where people can do these things safely. Yeah. Does that world outweigh the true damage and danger that some of these drugs and medications can cause to our society? And I think Cratum right now maybe is up there with gambling for things that I'm looking at that are truly on a war path to destroy a whole generation. Yeah. A whole generation.

Yeah, we're not here, you and I, to fight with those that maybe use it responsibly or use it for different indications. Good for them. Exactly. You and I are speaking about what we see on a daily basis. And we see the effects in our patient population and that subset of patients that unfortunately are addicted to it or dependent on it and are unable to get off of it. I mean, that's just the reality. We're not making this up. Doc, always a pleasure. That's a short little quick hit on Kratum. We will be back when we're back. Sounds good. Thanks, dude.