Kratom: Why I Use It

The Case For and Against

I know some people might get really mad, over this post. I thought long and hard about writing it.

Since March 2020, I use kratom to manage anxiety. My husband uses it to manage chronic pain after two knee surgeries in his 20’s, after blowing out his knee snowboarding. I’m not saying you should use kratom.

I’m saying that some people will find benefits from it, versus some rather toxic and dangerous pharma, alcohol and marijuana products many, if not most, Americans are using or abusing these days.

It’s an unsprayed herb from a tree, it’s untouched by Pharma, because they can’t patent it and make a billion bucks on it–and it works really well for me. And I found an American company who will give you one ounce to try, for free.

I think if you use no substances, and you’re doing well, in all the madness since March 2020, you’re doing great, carry on.

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But I write to you, if you’re not managing well these days, or if you’re using another substance you know has negative effects. Nobody should feel guilty about the human drive to chase dopamine and serotonin. We’re wired to want to feel happy, calm, and like we can solve the day’s problems. It’s why we fall in love. It’s why we love babies and puppies and kittens. It’s why we have friends and a social life. Can we embrace that everybody wants serotonin?

But I’m talking to you if you’re using something and feel uneasy about the side effects, toxicity, and expense, of the other substance (which is probably altered, synthesized, and other toxic ingredients added, by some billion-dollar industry, and controlled by your government) … then maybe you’ll want to hear what I have to say about this alternative.

My husband used kratom, when I met him. My hairdresser took it four times a day, and swore by it, for her depression.

I didn’t use it, for a few years, while John did. I’d eye it, it looked like an herb, and I looked at his source and it appeared pharma was not involved whatsoever. I’d say, “No thanks, I don’t need substances, and I’m not convinced it’s not bad for you.”.

I’d try it now and then, and really enjoyed the mild euphoria and focus, that didn’t alter my mental state, which I need for my work–

–but I didn’t “need” it. I don’t have chronic pain or physical health issues, and my lifelong anxiety was, shall we say, “in remission” for many years.

I had a thriving business, my kids were doing well, I was in love, and the future looked bright.

In late Feb 2020, I had been looking at the data out of China, and I started screaming on Facebook that we were being lied to, and that the insane reaction to Covid was going to destroy supply chains and our economic future.

I started listening to anybody who could possibly explain why the whole world had suddenly gone wack. David Icke was my biggest red pill. Helping me see why this might not really be about a virus.

I was also contending with an unprecedented situation in my social life, and in my work. My COO, who was also my best friend for 20 years, essentially stopped talking to me. Eventually we parted ways after she worked for me for 10 years. Several D- and C-level executives stopped talking to me, and left.

My five closest friends canceled me. One called me an anti-vaxer conspiracy-theorist nutter. (Keep in mind this was April, 2020, long before there was a Covid vaccine.) One told me that based on what I was saying on Facebook, he wanted to organize an intervention of my friends and force me off Facebook.

Thousands of trolls attacked my FB page, over and over. Many more unsubscribing from my email newsletter, telling me that I was everything that is wrong with the world. The consensus seemed to be, “Just shut up, Robyn, can’t you just give the ER’s two weeks to flatten the curve?”

People who’d valued my work for many years were hypnotized by the MD’s on TV telling them not to take “horse paste” and to just wait for the magical vaccine that would give us our lives back.

Anyway, I didn’t sleep for the first 12 days of March. I was so upset that anyone, let alone almost everyone, could think it was a good idea, to send people home from their jobs, and pay small businesses and individuals with money printed by the government, to shut us up.

Which would cause inflation and a loss of the value of the dollars most of us were saving our whole lives.

All day, every day, people told me to just be quiet about the wreckage in our famously American small-business economy, and do what we’re told. Facebook sent me to jail over and over. Three central banking institutions canceled me.

My children, who knew me to be apathetic about the whole Democrat vs Republican thing, were so confused: “Mom, why are you suddenly so POLITICAL?!” (My attempts to explain that I didn’t see these issues as “political” at all, fell on deaf ears.)

My point is: my long-managed anxiety reared its ugly head. I didn’t want to take an SSRI. I did that, when I was younger, for a year, when I was in a crisis, and situationally my life felt out of control. My anxiety paralleled it. I’d realize I hadn’t taken a deep breath in days. I struggled to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Now we know that SSRI’s don’t work any better than exercise, or a placebo. Getting OFF the SSRI, after a year, long ago, was truly awful. Worse than the anxiety that precipitated my taking it in the first place.

I don’t want to numb out with a first glass of wine at 5 pm. I’d interviewed Annie, about her alcohol journey, how she hadn’t had alcohol through college, and somehow ended up in a bottle a day wine habit, in a few years.

I’d lost my best friend and longtime assistant to alcoholism – and I know way too much about alcohol to think that’s a good road to go down.

Weed is illegal in Utah and Florida (recreationally), plus I just think weed makes you less than you are, plus it has side effects. The “medical marijuana” industry is big business, and seems to be mostly selling people synthetic versions of cannabis. I tried it, and it actually makes me more anxious, not less.

And I was already DOING “all the things.” Yoga, sauna, green juices, plant-based diet. I get in my sauna most nights. My anxiety comes from a childhood of trauma, plus probably how I’m wired (overachieving worrier). I’ve done the therapy; I’ve learned not to sweat the small stuff.

This wasn’t small stuff, though, this situation I could see clearly ahead of all of us, even though most were content to let their “future self” figure it out, and hope that some smart people would somehow recover our economy and future.

I work in supply chains every day. I also used to teach a very basic Economics and American History class at BYU. I know more than most about history and economics–and how economies that put something titanic in motion this year, could be paying for it, for a decade or much longer.

Plus I was realizing we can’t trust the people who were pushing the lockdowns, masks, vaccines, and later, mandates. 2020 started out great, but went downhill fast. My emotional health took a big hit.

Kratom is something I was willing to try. I hope you’re not concluding that I’m pushing substances on anyone. But as I’ve learned from interviewing John Bush, recently, it’s a rather miraculous herb not just for people like me with a lifelong anxiety problem–

–and not just helpful to people like my husband who had two knee surgeries in his 20’s after blowing his knee out snowboarding, and now engages in an extreme sport–

–but it’s also a game changer for people with pain, people wanting to get off opiates, people with ADD and ADHD, and many other issues that confront us in daily life.

When John Bush met his wife, she was on Adderall (the pharma version of meth!) and then would start drinking after work, to ‘come down’ off the hyperactivity created by the drug. He suggested she try kratom, and now she doesn’t take Adderall or drink!

If you’re doing great, and are at peace with what’s going on in the world, don’t try kratom. Congrats, on managing it better than I was.

But for those looking to empower yourself, and build an arsenal of solutions you can have at home, so that if a crisis hits, you don’t end up circling the Pharma drain in the medical industrial complex, where one prescription becomes two to manage the side effects, becomes five … I know this cycle, because I was IN IT, when I was 28 years old.

John Bush is giving you a FREE ounce of kratom, to try. You just give him $5 for S&H.

Like me, he’s canceled by PayPal. So, you use a very safe form of e-checks, or you can go old school, and mail him a check. Frankly, those of us in the medical freedom fight are likely going to have to go back to checks, as the central banks close in on us. So, I like how he takes payments. (You can also use Bitcoin!)

What I like about him, and Brave Botanicals, is that there’s someone here in the U.S. overseeing the supply, who speaks my language, and I can ask questions.

My husband was sending money via Western Union, to somewhere in Malaysia, to buy his kratom. I have learned a lot from John Bush’s educational emails (which you’ll receive when you get your free one-ounce trial size).

I hate the word “misinformation” these days, mostly used by the propaganda machines, but John debunks the FDA’s attempts to discredit a natural herb, whereas FDA defends toxic pharma. Which makes sense when you see that FDA and pharma companies’ executives just play musical chairs. It’s an “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” insiders’ game. They really prefer you not have options in the natural plant-medicine world.

John Bush also taught me a different way to take kratom, when I interviewed him last week. Check it out, if you’re suffering and white-knuckling it, in your life. And if this plant medicine interests you to have on hand for an event that involves pain. You may be aware how toxic ibuprofen and Tylenol are.

You can get your free ounce of kratom here. It’s been banned in six states. Those of you in the other 44, Pharma and legislators haven’t stopped its use yet. I have never had any negative effects, and I have negative effects from every pharma product I’ve ever used.

The only negative effect I experience is that if I don’t use it the next day, my anxiety is back.

I hope whoever needs to read this, does. I know some of you will Google and find some negative information about it. We’ve been over this before, but Google has re-ordered the search results to be heavily pro-Pharma and anti-natural medicine.

(Ask any of my colleagues who educate people about holistic health. We all lost 90%+ of our organic traffic, from 2017 to 2020.)

But I’ve been reading and asking questions about this product, for quite some time, and I’m at peace with this way I power through the work day with some dopamine and serotonin to help me feel like I’m winning and can solve problems all day.

We all have responsibilities, and we could all use some peaceful, focused, happy time as we work. 

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