The Zac Clark Show - The Truth About Kratom: What It Is, Why It’s Everywhere, and Who It’s Hurting

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Kratom is everywhere – in gas stations, bodegas, vape shops, and even pharmacies. But most people don’t actually know what it is.In this episode of The Zac Clark Show, Zac and Jay break down the truth about kratom: what it is, how it works in the brain, and why treatment centers across the country are seeing a sharp rise in kratom-related addiction and relapse.This is not a PSA and it’s not an attack on people who say kratom has helped them. It’s an honest conversation grounded in real-world experience from the recovery and behavioral health space – including why kratom often goes undetected on drug tests, how it can act as both a stimulant and an opioid, and why it can be especially dangerous for people with a history of substance use.They also unpack the phenomenon of craving, the misconception that kratom doesn’t require detox, and the growing concern around stronger kratom products now being sold over the counter.If you or someone you love is sober, in recovery, or simply trying to understand what’s being sold so casually in everyday places, this episode is worth your time.Connect with Zac https://www.instagram.com/zwclark/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/ https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclark https://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553 https://twitter.com/zacwclarkIf you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release Recovery: [phone] releaserecovery.com @releaserecovery

All right, welcome back to the Zach Clark Show. I'm your host, Zach Clark, and obviously. And today, I want to engage with you in a conversation, a conversation that's very important to me. It's become more important to me over the past three to five years. I have Jay with me here to make sure that I don't miss anything. I have notes just in full transparency because this is, again, very important to me. Before we get into it, though, I do want to just acknowledge we're coming to the end of the year, December.

It's been another really awesome year for us here at the pod. There's some exciting news and some exciting things coming down the pike, which we're really, is it pike or pipe? I've heard both because I've always. wondered that I think you'd say pipe though or isn't price is here you're the deciding but i've i'm going to look this up because i've always i always say pipe but i think it's pike like the term pike right yeah okay well like grace looks that up what we are going to talk today uh talk about today is pipe cratum pike pike pike is the answer okay the true pike coming down the pike Kratem.

Like turnpike. Like turnpike. Okay. So Kratum. Kratum came into my orbit. So a couple things. What is Kratum? We want to tell the truth about Kratom.

Before I go into any of that, I have to explain something very clearly. The majority of this conversation is going to be around the role that Kratum plays in the world that I exist and operate in, which is behavioral health care, addiction, substance abuse, mental health. I can acknowledge that there is a small subset of people, just like there is with marijuana, just like there is with alcohol, that may have found benefit in the drug cratum. Perhaps they have chronic pain, and this has been the one thing that has helped them, and they take a managed dose daily. and over the past five years

or living a life that they never thought they'd be able to live before. I've heard the stories. I acknowledge those stories. I am not here to fight with those people. I am not here to tell those people to stop. I am simply here to have a conversation

about what I am seeing and how devastating it is. So Cratum is a drug. It's a leaf. Mitragin is the active ingredient in Cratum. we started to see Kratum popping up, I don't know, I'm going to say five years ago in our world. And how we started to figure it out was really clients or patients were coming home to one of our programs at release recovery clearly fucked up, clearly loaded, but they were passing drug test. And all of us looked at each other and we couldn't understand what was going on.

And I think one of our kind of newly sober, you know, recovery coaches at the time tipped us off and said this is what the kids are doing. They're basically going into these head shops, into these gas stations, into these places where you can buy this new drug, create them over the counter. And it's a all natural. It's a leaf. It's a plan. Right. Is it considered a drug? Absolutely. It's a drug. It's considered a drug. To me, it's considered a drug. It's a mood or mind-altering substance. That is how I define a drug

and create them from my understanding. I've never taken it. Yeah. Is a mood and or mind-altering substance. So the first thing we need to do was figure out how to drug test for this because our lab and the drug tests that we were using, we're not testing for this drug.

And we see this in behavioral health care every so often where a new drug will come onto the scene. It'll be something that is manufactured. it'll be something that's created in a lab and it causes us a great amount of issue because newly sober folks are looking for anything to beat the system if the drug is not on the drug test panel in their minds perhaps they are sober mm-hmm cratum taken in small doses has stimulant like effects so think adderol think vivance think riddalin caffeine as you start to get into higher doses

cratum acts as an opioid it causes euphoria it causes sedation it gives you pain relief and again back to that active ingredient mitrogen that binds to the same brain receptors as heroin right it binds to the same brain receptors as morphine even furthermore and i hope you're still with me there's this new drink called 70h which is being referred to as gas station heroin and basically what that is that's hydroxymitrogen so a stronger form it's like going from morphine to fentanyl if you will it's a stronger form of uh cratum

that is being found again sold separately it's sold separately it's a drink these so i can tell you i was at a wedding i don't know a month ago we were in pennsylvania i was trying to kill some time i was with some friends and they walked into a place where they sold you know it was a it was a dispensary i walked in with them there was a lady in there i actually took video from this which i can kind of share and i started to film all the crater i mean there's a wall of this drug all over all of different forms all all different potencies. Clearly, it's a big business.

Yeah. And the first thing she said to me is she said, yeah, a lot of people in early era in recovery are using it to fight their cravings and fight their withdrawals. Huh. There was a large misconception around Kratum when we first started to see it kind of come up on the scene that it did not require detox. My sense around that statement,

Cratum not requiring detox is that was dictated by insurance companies. Insurance companies didn't want to pay for people to get detox from Cratum. It absolutely requires a detox. We've done it. We've seen it. I've seen it all throughout the community. The ways that you detox someone from Cratum are similar to the ways that you would detox someone from, again, an opioid, right?

Because the symptoms are anxiety, nausea, body aches, insomnia, severe cravings. So we look to detox meds, such as Suboxone, to help people detox from Kratum. The thing about this is it sold legally. It's sold legally pretty much anywhere and everywhere. And again, I think we're starting to see some regulation. I believe New York City just passed some law where you have to be 21 years of age to buy it. But until federal really gets involved here, this is going to continue to be a major, major issue. I texted someone who works at treatment just to make sure another treatment center to say, hey, just to make sure, like, you're getting authorization, insurance authorization for creative.

And he said yes. What does that mean? It means that if you call a treatment center and you have insurance, so if you call a treatment center and you're looking to go to rehab, you are, you need to prove. that you need rehab. You need to prove that you are worthy of insurance writing a check to that treatment center

so that you can go and get help. And so if you call and you're just using Kratum, there was a world at one time where insurance companies would say we're not going to pay for that. So now we are starting to get authorization for and so the money is starting to follow

the issue, which is I think a good thing. But it's really, really, really scary and the thing that's so disturbing for for me and for our work is just the ability to go and get it anywhere. I'll share a story with our listeners, which is we have a clinic and an establishment was open very close to the clinic. It was a pharmacy. I was a pharmacy. I walked into that pharmacy, which our patients in some way, shape, or form do have access to. And I very quickly saw that this pharmacy was selling cratum in a very professional area where, you know, you would hope that there is some governance around what is being peddled

there. And I went full Karen on this lady, you know, that was running the pharmacy. I, I, I questioned her having it there. I questioned some of the other products she was selling. It was clearly a business for her, obviously. She clearly had demand for it because she was not happy with, if she just wasn't selling it, she wouldn't have cared that I came in there and was kind of being a total caring about it.

But ultimately, like, I had to walk out of there because I was so heated. I just, I couldn't believe. What'd she say? What'd she say? I mean, like, you know, there's no, to her, there's no problem with it. It's a, it's a leaf.

It's an herbal drug. It's sold over the counter. There is no issue here. There's no issue until there is an issue. Right. Is it behind it, is it, it's not behind glass. It's just something like, it's like in like a little container. You can just sort of pick it up if it's a drink, like five hour energy.

We can go on a field trip maybe and film us kind of walking into a head shop here in New York City. But it is like buying a tin of Zen or buying a, you know, a pack of smokes. That's it. And so I wanted to do this episode because it's our job, I think, as folks who kind of swim in these circles to educate our listeners and our folks on what the hell is going on out there. And the market is always going to be one step ahead of the providers. Yeah. We are always trying to stay on top of the latest trends. in the substance abuse, et cetera, world,

because basically what these, they're always trying to develop products that one, a drug test can be, and two, are legal. And cheap? Yeah, and cheap. Now, do you, like, do you ever go? Like, I guess you, like, you went into this pharmacy

just to what, just to check it out? Or because you thought there might be, you wanted to see if they were selling cratum or you just walked, like, who's the new, pharmacists. No, I went in there to buy a water. A water? You were thirsty that day?

I was thirsty. That's fair. Jay's going to try and make me laugh, but we're talking about a serious topic. No, I, I, uh, because I think that's a good point, though, what you're saying is that, like, you could go into, like, one of these, you know, hundreds of bodegas or head shops. I'm so confused when I walk out the door, like, what's legal, what's not? They're just all there. And you can, you just see a little, like, just a row of these products.

Well, we've reached the point, and I shared this with my dad because I was down in Florida visiting them like a month ago, we've reached a point where if you are someone like me who is very mindful of what they put into their body based on their history, we've reached a point where you walk into a gas station and have to be very, very careful about the beverage that you are buying. I have seen literally Celsius and then a, then a, a cratum drink, a CBD drink, a kombucha drink, all of of which for me, I don't personally indulge in because there's a feeling associated with those drinks. People might say I'm crazy about kombucha, but guess what? I've heard the story of the guy who's 10 years sober, starts drinking kombucha. There's trace, trace, trace amounts of alcohol. And next thing you know, he's drinking a liter of vodka a day because it's the phenomenon of craving. So for me, I stay away from all that shit. I don't judge people that that use it. So just talk about that. Talk about that.

Like, what is the risk of something like Kratum for someone who may or may not have a substance use issue? What's the risk? What's the progression? What have you seen? What's it look like? It's the same progression that I had with opioids. It started with a 30 milligram pill over the course of two days. Eventually, it's, you know, 10, 30 milligram pills.

before noon right it's a tolerance once you start to build that tolerance you it's when i started using painkillers there was definitely a stimulant like effect i got more energy i was more focused i was high yeah and as i started to use more and more and more of them that's where that real opioid like effect came in and so with creatum it's the same thing you go you try it for the first time you have the tea you have the drink you take a couple capsules you get that kind of like warm and fuzzy kind of pumped up feeling and then ultimately if you respond to drugs and alcohol the way that I do and you like feeling good there's going to be a tendency to want more of it and that is how we're seeing people get addicted and end up literally in treatment centers

with a primary diagnosis like cratum use disorder I don't think it's in the DSM but like their their main drug of choice is kratum i mean this is in the fta thing that i printed out and like and obviously this is not it's not fairly federally regulated but like they do refer to it as you know uh creatum use disorder yeah i mean that and that's the issue right and and and cratum related sUD yeah cratum related sUD i get it it's it's and the issue we have anybody with a substance use disorder that is not surrendered is looking for a shortcut and this is actually being marketed as a legal high or a natural high or a safe high so even the marketing around a drug like creatum is is scary and and look man better men than i have probably

gone out on this crap because they don't even know what they're putting in their body i mean someone who's, you know, 45, 50 years old, been sober a long time, walks into a head shop, has some level of curiosity around, you know, what they're selling in there or even a gas station like I did in Florida, you could very easily say, oh, I'm going to try this without doing your research. It would be a little bit ignorant. I mean, someone like myself in long-term recovery, like I said, I am very in tune with everything that I put in my body because I don't want to activate that craving, the phenomenon of craving, which I have when I put any mood or mind-altering substance into my body.

Yeah. And we've seen it. We've heard the horror stories. And so, again. So what would you tell a parent, though? Because how would you, if they were worried about this, what would you tell a parent? It's not like cigarettes. It's not like-

It needs to be in the same class as anything else. Alcohol, marijuana. It's, again, I want to be very clear. clear alcohol has a place in the world yeah people drink alcohol and use it recreationally perhaps there are people that can take cratum on a saturday night and that is their way to kind of mellow out more power to that person it might even be more it might be healthier than alcohol i don't know i haven't done the research however There are major implications for my community, for people in sobriety, for people that don't know that they need to be in sobriety, and it can delay the inevitable, which is if you're using Kratom as a way to stop another drug, chances are you will most likely then get addicted to Kratum.

When I was using Suboxone to stop doing heroin, I then got addicted to Suboxone. it's trading you know one kind of Coca-Cola for Pepsi whatever it is you you said like you mentioned the phenomenon of craving which you know was a phrase that we we've talked and learned a lot about but like what is that like what's the dirty R-rated version of phenomenon of craving you know you know because like it's an intriguing idea and I don't know if people who don't have an issue you know what that means you know the phenomenon of craving I mean I just mean like I want like four brownies instead of two because it ain't that I mean to a certain degree yeah to a certain degree that's what it means for me it's why I struggle to eat desserts if I have one bite of cheesecake

I want the whole cheesecake the dopamine the feeling that I chase it's why so often And you see people go to rehab and they're there for a substance use disorder. And then six months later, they haven't had a drink or jug, but they're out in strip clubs every night having sex with everything that they possibly can or they are gambling. In those in those situations, they probably have not done the recovery work necessary to fully surrender to all of these behaviors. To get free from that. And so the fear, again,

keeping it on the thread here with cratum and i want this episode to be short and i want it to be sweet the fear is that what time are we at is cratum sweet all right wrap it up then 20 minutes the fear as you talk about the phenomenon of craving is that the hook here is that cratom is being marketed as a natural herb hmm cratum is sold over the counter cratom is easily accessible there are large businesses that are dependent upon cratom being a legal substance in this country so they're starting to be more and more money behind this product there are drinks in gas stations that contain cratom what they're not advertising is that it can be just as if not more addictive than opioids you throw all those things in the

middle of the table and for a guy like me and for many of the people i've worked with treated overseen whatever you want to call it throughout the years this is a very slippery slope again if you're out there and you're a chronic pain patient and creative has saved your life i commend you and i'm happy for you i am talking more about the person that does not yet know that they are an addict and is out there abusing Kratom and they have not yet been brought to their knees where I am talking about the person who is sober in recovery

that may accidentally I mean there's bars in New York City that are that are centered around Kratom Oh yeah and they're and they're marketing it as you know the like a you know like an alcohol free drink or high or whatever it is and so the whole thing is crazy I'm curious to see what happens.

For parents, your question is the same approach needs to be taken here with anything else in life. I know for me, if you talk to my parents, they were not going to stop me from drinking. Yeah. They weren't. I was going to drink when I drank. They were able to educate me to a certain degree. And that's why education and prevention and talking about these things openly and having this podcast to me is very important so that people can really understand what it is. It's the perfect cocktail of a drug that was beating the system. We now do

have drug test for it. We can test for mitrogenine. So we do, we have made strides here. And we do consider it a return to use, right? Someone has cratum in our, in our environment or in our property or in one of our treatment programs. That is a return to use. And we treat it as such. but it manifests itself in a lot of different ways. I mean, it allows patients and clients to lie and say they didn't know, well, it's over the counter and it's legal. And so it's a confusing, it's a confusing thing and something that I want us to all be aware of. So that is the truth about Kratum sitting in my seat.

I'm very curious to see where this goes. I'm very curious to see how like the federal government responds to it because there's a lot of businesses. Like I said, you always got to. file the money right you got to see what insurance is doing you got to see what the big businesses are doing i don't have the answers right now yeah so that's cratum and that's me we're going to sign off thanks for helping jay goodbye okay bye