The Kratom User's Guide: What Is Kratom, How Do You Use It & The Truth Behind This Controversial Natural Herb.

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield and there's an emergency. That's right. No, I'm not kidding. Trump actually declared the opioid crisis a national emergency, like the deadliest drug crisis in American history. Apparently, 650,000Americans are gonna die as a result of opioid addictions. And this happened like 14 hours ago. So today's podcast is pretty timely because we talk about some pretty potent alternatives to opioids that frankly, in my opinion, are also good for things like killing back pain, euphoria, good sex. The list goes on and on. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness show, to see somebody who's in their 30s jump off the roof of their building and kill themselves when they're beloved around, like, my gym and everything, like, it hurt, you know, and it made me sad because I know we could have fixed it. When I take Kratom, I just feel a little bit better. Like it takes that edge off, like it takes away the pain. And then I just feel, like, peppy, you know, I feel like, feel like I'm up and ready to go all the time. And then when I don't take it, I don't have withdrawals, I don't have any weird side effects.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I gotta tell you, from relaxation in the evening, especially to quelling my appetite when I don't want to eat a boatload during the day, to killing pain. I've been using this new herb that I discovered a few months ago called Kratom. And I discovered it when I hurt my back. I was at my buddy's house and he had a packet of this stuff called Kratom on his kitchen counter and he told me I should try it. And I did because I wanted something other than just like an opioid based painkiller to stop the discomfort and let me engage in normal day to day function with my back hurt. And I felt the effects within a few minutes, kind of like a cup of coffee and. But I also got this really pleasant euphoria. I got that drop in appetite that I mentioned. I got none of the side effects of a painkiller. I didn't get any of the psychosis of something like weed. And I felt really good. And I started to research this stuff a little bit more heavily. And it turns out that there's a lot of advocates that say that this herb, Kratom, that spelled with a K, kratom, that it offers relief from things like pain and depression and anxiety, and that it can be used as a tool to combat addiction to opioid medications. On the other hand, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the dea, they're trying to ban it. They say it's an imminent hazard to public safety. That's a quote from their website. So if you're wondering whether this stuff is safe, whether it's addictive, like how you use it, what are the different strains, what it can be used for, then you have tuned into the right show because I have Chris Bell on the show today. Chris is not only an expert on all things Kratom, but he has a great documentary called Bigger, Stronger, Faster, as well as a documentary called Trophy Kids, another one called Prescription Thugs, Some. Some really great shows, actually. And he's also occasionally on another podcast with his brothers, Mark Bell. He has another brother named Mike Bell. They're all kind of big power lifters. And are you guys power lifters or weightlifters? Would you classify yourself as a bodybuilder, Chris?

I was a power lifter. I don't really classify myself as anything anymore. Just I lift just for fun, you know. But I don't consider myself anything because I don't compete anymore. Just so you know, my older brother Mad Dog, unfortunately passed away after we did Bigger, Stronger, Faster.

Is that. Is that Mike Bell?

Yeah, Mike. Mike passed away.

Really?

And it was due to drugs and alcohol. And at the time, you know, basically I thought like, well, s, man, if my brother died from drugs and alcohol and I'm on prescription opiates, I better get off of him right now. But instead of doing that, I just took more and I ended up in rehab myself after my brother passed away. So we have quite a lot to cover here.

I want to hear this story, man, because I've seen your video. I'm gonna link to it in the show notes. I know that you claim that kratom is the cure for the opioid epidemic, and I know that you've got a pretty interesting history yourself that you just kind of hinted at, but I really want to hear a Little bit more about it before we dive into that. If any of you are listening in and you want links to Chris's documentaries, like Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Trophy Kids, Prescription Thugs. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you're even working on a new documentary on Kratom. We can talk about it later, Chris. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comChrisBell that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com ChrisBell with two L's. So, Chris, fill me in, dude. What exactly happened after your brother died? How'd you get hooked on opioids?

Well, I had a double hip replacement surgery at 33 years old. I was a power lifter my whole life. You know, I squatted. I was squatting over £600 every week, just training. Squatted like 675, I think, in a meet at. It was either 198 or 220. I don't remember what I. What I was weighing back then, but I was a pretty decent power lifter. Had like, you know, probably like 475 bench of 675 squat. My deadlift was around 600 or something like that. I was killing it in the. In the teenage division. And then when I got a little bit older and, you know, the junior division and stuff, I still did good. I. I never really got to compete as an adult, so I don't even know how that feels.

So how old are you?

I'm 44 now, but I haven't competed in forever since I. Well, last time I competed was like, I did compete in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, but when I competed in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, I had just done it for fun and I was out of it for so long, you know, So I just went.

You mean you competed for the documentary?

Yeah, I just went in and benched 500. I was like, if I do 500, people will think it's good, you know?

Yeah, that's all right. And by the way, to just interrupt your story a little bit, if any of you are listening in, I've watched Chris's documentaries and they're actually like, I don't watch many documentaries, but they're actually really good. Maybe because I'm a. I'm a. I'm a former bodybuilder, and I'm really into this. This whole fitness realm myself. But, like, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, where you get to see a guy's biceps blow up. If none of you have seen some of Chris's documentaries, you gotta tune into them. So anyways, you. You were lifting heavy, Chris?

Yeah, I was lifting Heavy all the time. And the reason I was lifting heavy was when I was younger, I had a lot of problems running. I could never really run right. And I just had these issues, so my knees would always hurt. So I went to the doctor, and the doctor said, you know, 16 years old, he said, well, we have to scope your knees. I've just had a lifelong battle with pain. I've been in pain since I was a little kid. I don't know what it is. It's arthritis. You know, I have osteoarthritis in my whole body, and it's not rheumatoid arthritis. It's nothing else. My body just really so.

So it's not like an autoimmune issue. It's actual osteoarthritis.

My body aches all the time. Every joint, shoulders, elbows, knees, you know, like, it just. It's always achy. So, you know, for me, after I had the hip replacement, I had a double hip replacement surgery at 35 years old. And when I went to have that, I thought, like, okay, I'm going to get out of this. I'm going to make this comeback like Rocky Balboa. I'm going to be back kicking ass. I'll be squatting and deadlifting again. It's going to, you know, game over. So I get done with the surgery, and my right hip for, you know, two years feels like it's on fire. And every time I tell the doctor or anybody that my hip feels like it's on fire, they immediately go to your drug addict. And I'm like, well, I wasn't a drug addict when I started this, but I'm in a lot of pain here, you know, so when you get into these. This mix with opiates, it gets really a slippery slope and a weird position even for the doctors, because I was in real pain. I was having real pain that they gave me, but they couldn't understand why I was having pain because they did the surgery. They thought they fixed me. Right.

Right.

So I just started buying drugs from everywhere. I started buying from my friends at the gym or, you know, wherever to supplement what the doctor would give me. The doctor would give me a little bit, but I needed way more by then, you know, so I was just buying them, you know, on the. On the black market. Buying them.

Oh, yeah. I actually did a whole podcast with this girl who wrote. I don't know if you read this book, it's called Drug Addict or md and it's about how. I mean, well, it's about a lot of stuff when it comes to the opioid epidemic. One of the things she gets into is just like all of the 20 different tactics people use now to get their hands on more opioids, either by tricking their physician or figuring out some other way to get, like, morphine and tramadol and oxycodone and fentanyl and everything else.

If people watch Prescription Thugs, they can see, you know, I talked to a congressman and I said, well, why can you buy this stuff on Craigslist? That doesn't make any sense. And then he's like, you can't buy it on Craigslist. And I show him, like, I pull up my iPad and I show him. He's like, that's just illegal. They can't do that. You know. And so I was even showing, you know, the government, like, hey, look, people sell these on Craigslist. It's such a blatant problem, and nobody's really doing anything about it. People are talking about it. You'll see it and hear it on the news, but nobody's doing anything about it. And that's what's different about A Leaf of Faith. My new movie about Kratom is we're going to actually do something about it, which is going to be great.

That's what it's going to be called, A Leaf of Faith.

Yes.

I like it. So you got on these opioids, you hunted down a whole bunch of different sources of them, and you were basically addicted to opioids.

Yeah, I was addicted to, like, Norco at first, and then I went to, like, Percocet, and then I. You know, basically, with opioids, if people don't know about them, they vary in strength, basically. So there's a bunch of different ones, and they all are different strengths or for whatever reason, people take different ones. So you have like, Roxy, Codone, Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Opana, Morphine, Dilaudid, Darviset, like, you name it. There's all different kinds, and they sort of go up the ladder until you get to, like, fentanyl. And fentanyl is probably the strongest. There's even one above that called CART Fentanyl. CART Fentanyl is like a elephant tranquilizer where supposedly if you get like, one drop on it of you, you'll overdose.

That sounds fun. What's it called? Cart Fentanyl, C A R T. Yeah.

Car Cart Fentanyl or something like that. It's like an elephant tranquilizer or something. And people have Been getting into that because you only need like a little tiny bit of it. And then you mix that into like an opiate and it gives you just like a way bigger effect. I don't know. Like, supposedly it's really, really strong. But, you know, the issue is that these opiates are so strong that nobody can get off of them, you know, so it's great. They're great for pain. You get on them and, you know, the pain goes away immediately, but then people can't get off of them, and you're just on this nightmare of a roller coaster ride, right?

You can't get off of them, and you need more and more to get the same effects.

The thing is, like, people like, well, who cares? You can't. You know, you need more and more. Just buy more and more. It's like, well, it doesn't really work that way. The doctors only give you a certain limit, you know, and giving you more and more is just unhealthy and gonna kill you. These drugs are very, very powerful, right?

They cause.

They cause respiratory depression, which makes you die in your sleep. Because what happens, you don't know how many pills are gonna make you die from respiratory depression. There's plenty of stories of housewife that puts her kids to bed and takes OxyContin before she goes to sleep at night, and her kids wake up and find her dead. And that's all she was. Take one pill the first time. It's like that's happened before. Several, several times.

And also, by the way, very similarly to a diazepam or Valium or a Xanax, which a lot will use for not just pain, but sleep. It shuts down the prefrontal cortex, so it makes you unaware of what's going on around you, which allows you to fall asleep, especially if you're stressed or your mind is racing. But it also completely Fs your deep sleep cycles, meaning you never go into your deep restorative sleep cycles where your nervous system is supposed to repair and recover and you form memories so you sleep, but it's not real true. Restorative sleep.

Yeah. And that's the crazy thing too, is like you're, You're. It allows you, like you said, to get into a place where you don't know that you can't breathe, you know, And I've just seen way too many people die from opioids on Halloween. A really, really close friend of mine was my massage therapist, actually committed suicide. And it destroyed me. You know, like, to see somebody who's in their 30s jump off the roof of their building and kill themselves when they're beloved around, like, my gym and everything. Like, it hurt, you know, and it made me sad because I know we could have fixed it. You know, I just know we could have fixed it. And when I say I know we could have fixed it, I know what Kratom does. I know that if people are away from these pills, they're away from these toxic drugs, that they will get better and they will be able to find other ways out of pain. I know they will because I've done it.

Yeah.

And I don't know many more people. I mean, obviously, you know, like, I don't. It's like, I don't know many more people that have a whole lot more issues than I do as far as pain goes, you know, unless they're in hospital, you know, so I'm always banged up. Like, I always have something going on. It's hard for me, you know? Like, I can't run, you know, I can't run at all. Like, if you tell me to run, run across the street or you're going to get shot. I'll probably get shot, you know, so it's. I'm handicapped, but I just try to. You know what I think the problem with it is? I. I've been doing this for so long and living in pain for so long. People look at me like, ah, he's. He's totally fine. You know, and people. People don't think that I obviously have a limp and stuff like that. People don't think it's as bad as it is. So that's a problem for me because people look at me and they're like, oh, you're fine. What are you talking about? You're not in pain? I'm like, yeah, my knee hurts sitting here talking to you right now. My shoulder hurts, my elbow hurts, you know? So it's like, I had to find something that could get me out of pain that wasn't going to kill me. And so what happened was I started. I went on Dr. Drew's podcast, and he told me. He's like, hey, they've done a study. And the study says that if you take Advil and Tylenol in combination, you know, that it works better than opioid painkillers for chronic pain. And I'm looking to get out of chronic pain. Right? So I was like, okay, let me try that. So for, like, maybe six weeks or something, I was trying.

That's. That's what Dr. Drew said. Take Advil. And Tylenol.

A combination? Yeah, one. One to one.

That's really good for your stomach.

Well, that's what I didn't know. Right. And he tells me that. But, you know, he also didn't realize he's dealing with somebody who's used to taking 10 pills a day of whatever. Anyway, Right. So I started taking about. It was about 10 Advil and 10 Tylenol a day. Because I would take, you know, I would take two of each at a time. So I was taking four pills at a time. That was what would take away the pain. When I would do one and one, it just didn't. Wasn't effective. So I would do two and two, and I would do that a couple times a day. And then, you know, I'm just rifling through these bottles of Advil and Tylenol and I get a call from my friend Justin House in England. And he used to be a bodybuilder in Gold's Gym in Venice around 95 era. Big guy, six five. You know, he was pretty jacked. And I just remember as being this big jacked guy. And then when I looked at his Facebook profile, I'm like, oh, he's not nearly as jacked as he used to be. I wonder what happened to him, you know? And he told me that he had a kidney transplant. And he told me the reason why he contacted me again was like, hey, I saw you on. I was also on Joe Rogan's show talking about it, and he's like, you're on Joe Rogan talking about taking this Advil and Tylenol. And I just want to let you know I had to have a kidney transplant because of all the Advil I was taking.

Right. Even more so if you're an athlete because your gut permeability increases when you're exercising or when you're exercising in the heat. And Advil, Ibuprofen becomes all the more toxic in that situation. That's why, like Ironman triathletes popping ibuprofen or marathon, you know, anybody exercising outdoors, it's one of the worst things you can do for your liver and your kidneys. I mean, there's people that cross the finish line of those type of races in almost like a state of sepsis, like chronic toxicity just from ibuprofen.

You're a former bodybuilder, right? So you know Flex Wheeler and Tom Prince and those guys. So Flex Wheeler and Tom Prince, they both had issues from NSAIDs. Flex had a genetic condition and exacerbated by NSAIDs, and so did Tom Prince, from what I hear. So while Tom Prince told me that Flex had the same thing as him, I didn't hear that directly from Flex, but I'm sure that that's probably the case. But from taking all these NSAIDs, these guys basically have had their kidneys shut down, right? And if you take too much Tylenol, your liver will shut down. So you're kind of screwed as far as trying to find a painkiller that's on the market that's safe and effective. So what happened right after that was I got a call from my friend Horseshoe, who was in. Used to wrestle for WWE under the name Luther Reigns. And he called me up and he said, hey, bro, you ever tried Kratom? You know, he was all fired up about it. And I was like, I don't know. I said, actually, I've tried it before. When I was doing Prescription Thugs during the filming of it, before I was. Before I was actually sober, I decided to try Kratom. But I tried it because I thought it got you high, right? And I didn't realize that it was supposed to kill pain. It was supposed to actually be effective for pain and all these other things. So I took it and I actually tweeted about it. I'm like, yeah, tried Kratom. It didn't do shit. So after that, I was like, I just forgot about it for a while until this incident, which was about two years later with my buddy Horseshoe, who told me to try it. And I was up in Sacramento, and he had come to Sacramento to train at Super Training with me and my brother and stuff, and he had his friend with him who owns this Kratom company, and the guy had a bunch of it with him, and he's like, yeah, you guys should just try it. You know, it started out like that. Like, you guys should just try it. Mark and I both tried it. At first, I tried it and I said, let me just. Like, I'm in a lot of pain right now. Just give me, like, an hour. I'll let you know how I feel or whatever. So I took it. I went home. I waited like, an hour, called those guys. We actually met up for lunch or whatever. And by the time we met up for lunch, like an hour later, I was completely out of pain. I could not. I was, like, sitting there going, I can't believe this. Like, what is this stuff called again? Where do you get it? Like, what? You know, where is it from? I just started getting, like, super inquisitive, right and as I more and more about it, like, man, so many people in this country struggle with opiates. So many people can't get off these pills. If there was a pill that wasn't addictive, that would be, you know, that would take you out of pain. I'm like, that's a, that's a huge deal, you know, and, but I didn't, I just didn't think it would ever happen, you know. So I found this thing and when I found out it was an organic natural plant, then it just got me excited because I know that unless something is poison, pretty much anything that's natural is pretty good for us. You know, there's, when we process things and take things out, put things in. And that's why I actually am all for using the whole profile profile of the Kratom leaf. I actually like using the raw leaf rather than any of the extracts or anything where they try to make it stronger. I just like using like the plain, you know, Kratom powder because I think that it offers all these other alkaloids that help, help limit it. I think like the nature of it helps it so you don't take too much or you don't overdose or blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. And I think a lot of plants are like that. They balance themselves out.

Yeah. You mean rather than taking the actual extract of the, of the alkaloids that are what I, what I understand are like the pharmacolog, pharmacologically active constituents of Kratom, like the stuff that actually kills pain that would, that would bind to the opioid receptors instead. If you're, when you're taking, talking about the leaf, you're not talking about like chewing on an actual like leaf shaped leaf. You're talking about like the, you're talking about like the powder that you get from, from different stores or websites that we'll talk about later.

Sure. Let me break it down a little bit. The, the two alkaloids, Alkaloids are simple. Alkaloids are just active ingredients in the plant. Right. So the alkaloids that are present in Kratom that are responsible for all the health effects, you know, and anything else are metragynine and then another one called 7 hydroxymetragynine and those two compounds, a lot of times people will pull them out of Kratom and then there's like, there's still, you know, there's 40 something alkaloids in kratom. So if there's over 40 alkaloids, they all do like different little things. How do you know that the ones that you're taking out aren't the ones that, like, you know, regulate addiction or regulate whatever, you know, whatever, like, can balance out the plant so that when you ingest it doesn't do something that you don't want. But in saying that they have. Actually what they have done is they've been really doing some groundbreaking science. Dr. Christopher McCurdy out in university of Florida, he just told me that they're able to now isolate and start testing the individual alkaloids to see what they do. So I think now we're going to get more of that science out. It just hasn't been out because there hasn't been a whole lot of money to research this stuff. So people knew what the two active alkaloids were and just pulled those out, and that was easy.

Chris, where do the leaves come from in the first place?

They come from Thailand, like Malaysia, Indonesia, all these places. Southeast Asia is where it naturally grows. And actually in most of Southeast Asia, especially in Thailand, it's highly illegal. And the reason that it's illegal isn't because it's dangerous. Way back in the 40s, people stopped taking heroin because they started taking Kratom. People would be out in the fields working all day, and it's not a super wealthy country. So a lot of workers, day workers and stuff out there in the fields, and they would chew on kratom leaves, and that really shrunk the heroin business in Thailand. And they didn't like that. So they basically got rid of Kratom and it's still there. And actually now they're trying to turn it around because now they have a huge opiate problem.

Right.

So now we're trying to turn that around, you know.

Yeah. The thing with Kratom, though, it's. It's actually related to like the coffee fruit plant, isn't it?

Yeah, it's in the coffee family. And it's, you know, it's. It's basically, to me, I like, I liken it to coffee. I feel like when I. When I take Kratom, I just feel a little bit better. Like it takes that edge off. Like it takes away the pain. And then I just feel, like, peppy, you know, I feel like I feel like I'm up and ready to go all the time. And then when I don't take it, I don't, like, I don't have, you know, in my experience, I don't have withdrawals. I don't have any weird side effects. I just I know that they exist and I'm not going to deny that side effects exist. I don't like when people do that and they're like, no, nothing. I'll tell you, I do get a dry mouth when I take it. So that's a side effect, right? So people like, ah, big deal. And it's like, well, no, it's a side effect, you know, so I think everything should be mentioned. I get a dry mouth, there's a couple times where I'll take it and I just feel like I talk too much. Maybe now, but you know, sometimes like that or whatever, but that's about as much.

Well, there's, there's differentthere's different strains of Kratom. Andand what I've noticed is, you know, originally when my back was hurt and I was at my friend's house, he gave me this strain. It's like white strains. There's like white and red and green. And from what I understand, green's kinda like a hybrid, like a mix between the white and the red. But white would be more like coffee, more like an energy drink, more like a stimulant along with the pain killing, whereas the red is more like a, more like a, like a, like a sleepy or a nighttime type of strain. It depends quite a bit on the actual color of the strain. Right.

You know what, for pain relief, it doesn't really matter. They, you know, I, my friend Kelly Dunn, he owns a company called Urban Ice Organics and Urban Ice, they make, you know, they make several strains and then I have like blends of different strains as well. And you know, he basically tells me like, I like, you know, I've owned this company for like 10 years and I, I don't really know. Like, it's not that he doesn't know the difference on paper, he doesn't, he can't feel the difference himself, you know, so he's like, this is supposed to be good for this, but I don't really feel that, you know, this is.

Supposed to be good. See, I can definitely feel the difference. Like, like if I take the white, it is like I can take that in the morning if, if I'm in pain or if I want that euphoric high and I want something as an alternative to a cup of coffee or occasionally I'll mix it with coffee. But then in the evening or I even keep a little packet next to my bedside for if I wake up during the night and I really gotta like shut down racing thoughts and get back to sleep. Yeah, I I'll use the red strain.

I'll tell you the truth of what I think.

Oh, go ahead.

I think you're being marketed to so that you buy, really? Yeah, so that you buy a bunch of different kratom. But you know what? Whatever, Whatever works for you, right? Because I take.

Well, what, what's worked for me is like, there's, there's one called White Mang da. Yeah, Like M A E N G D A. And that gives me a huge boost of energy. But then for Red, there's one called Borneo. Like, and I assume they're named these names you probably know more than me. They come from different areas of the world. But Red Borneo just like knocks me out.

You know what mang da means?

No.

It means pimp grade.

Pimp grade?

Yeah, that's all it means. So it's like, that's just like a slang name for it, you know. So it's like, it's a really, it's a really interesting plant because of the way it came up. Like, it didn't come up like a normal supplement or didn't come up like, you know, they sell it in smoke shops. So it has this kind of stigma against it that, you know, maybe it's like a synthetic drug. It's gotten lumped in with all these synthetic drugs like K2 and Spice and all these different drugs that people have been taking and dying from or getting sick from. And they sell them at these smoke shops and it's completely unregulated. So going into a smoke shop to buy something to kill pain is not my idea of something like I would normally do, but I have now that I found Kratom, I'm like, I don't care where I get it, I just want to get it. However, I think that's a stigma that needs to be overcome.

So you don't really think there's any difference between a white strain and a red strain and a green strain? As far as whether it makes you sleepy or awake, I think you might.

Have a slight difference in the balance of alkaloids. Just don't know if it makes that much of a difference. I have to say, I personally haven't.

Felt it that, Yeah, I, I, I have to disagree. Like, I, I actually have felt a huge difference between white. Like, like white will keep me up at night. If I take it, I'll be up till like 1 or 2am and then red, it's like, like an indica strain of, of marijuana. Right. Like, I'm, I'm just out.

I'd have to see the science on it. I just haven't seen any that says that it's actually like everybody that. That talks about it. Well, actually, I'll find out for you in August. Cause I'm going to see Dr. McCurdy again. And Dr. McCurdy's like the world expert on this, and he could actually tell me, you know, what. What's what. But, you know, all I read on the Internet is from bros, you know, so you don't know, like, everything's. Everything's out. Everything out there. They haven't done enough studies to, like, know exactly what's in each thing, you know, so when they do, then we'll have a lot more information to work with.

So we know it's an effective analgesic. We know it induces some euphoria. For me, it induces almost like this. This feel good kind of effect without the psychosis or the paranoia of something like marijuana. But tell me about any. Any, like, risks or side effects that you're aware of from this stuff. Because you mentioned you don't like it if people hide that stuff under the bush. So what have you found out?

You don't have the killer. And the killer that has killed, you know, that kills like 20,000 people a year. Opiates. The real killer is the respiratory depression. And Kratom does not present itself with any sort of respiratory depression. So there's no deaths from Kratom ever. There's not one death in history from kratom. There's 15 claim deaths from Kratom, but they're all polypharmacy where the people are on like, eight drugs. And there's no way to prove that you're on 10 things and then like, oh, and throw a Kratom in there. It's sort of like the whole steroid thing. It's like, you know, Chris Benoit died from steroids. It's like the guy was on tons of shit and was mentally ill, you know, so there is a. You know, that. That's something I think that needs to be brought up, is like, there haven't been any deaths from it there. You know, some people might get, like, nauseous. Like, I'll tell you, I've taken extracts. And this is why I just said about the extracts. There's like a couple different brands out there that sell, like, these extracts in, like, gas station and stuff. And I'm fine with that. But, like, I. I don't want to. Sometimes when I take those, I can. You can get sick from them, I think.

You get sick.

I. I have gotten sick from. I should say. Like, I've. I've vomited from it, you know.

Yeah.

So that's being honest, you know, I've vomited. I'd say, like, there's been three incidents where I vomited from Kratom. But it's. It was in the beginning of me taking it, and it was because, like, I am. You know how he's, like, hacking himself. I mean, we're all doing the same thing all the time, you know. So, like, I just look at it like that. I was trying to figure out, like, what would be a really good dose for me. And I just went to the extreme, you know, I just took too much stuff. Yeah. And much of the wrong stuff. I, like, with the extract, I'm like, you know, I had this 50, 50x extract. And, you know, my friends, like, just drink like, a quarter of that. Of course I drink the whole thing, you know, and I got sick. So it's like my friend told me, drink a quarter of. I drank the whole thing and I got sick. But I wanted to push the limits and I wanted to see what it would do. Now by doing that, I think that that's, you know, it's a good experiment. Nothing bad. Nothing really bad happened to me, you know.

Yeah, I looked into it pretty extensively before, you know, after that first time, I took for the low back pain because I was desperate. After I liked it so much afterwards, I started researching it, and I especially looked into the hepatotoxicity because that's one of the main things I'm concerned about is the effects of any of these alkaloids on the liver. And, you know, for example, like kava, which I've used extensively, especially when I'm in Hawaii. Like, I know that's got some pretty intense hepatotoxicity if you. If you use it chronically or in large amounts. So I looked into kava, you know, kava, and then kratom. And then there's this other one called Khat K H A T. Those are all, like, herbal medications. They call them the 3Ks. And when I looked into Kratom, it's actually far less toxic on the liver than these other two. And any of the studies that have been done or the case studies that have shown it to cause issues with the liver, people were taking huge acute overdoses or chronically consuming it, like, over and over and over again for a very long period of time at. At high doses.

So I can tell you, like, they've done studies in rats. Dr. McCurdy down in Florida, he's done studies in. In rats. And he said, we gave rats basically $5,000 worth of kratom a day, like, like comparable to a human. It would be like you'd have to take five grand a day and ten pounds of it to take.

Yeah.

What the. What they administered to the rat. And it's like, nobody's going to be able to take ten pounds of anything. Yeah, no, it's going to be able to spend $5,000. And the rat, even at that. At that level, the rats didn't die.

So I've actually, I've found I'm able to take less. And this is something I originally discovered with. With collagen, any collagen, any gelatin, any bone, broth source, you vastly increase the absorptability when you mix it with ascorbic acid or vitamin C, even if that's just like the squeeze of a lemon or whatever. So what I'll do is if I'm not just chewing on the Kratom powder, which I'll do, I'll just like take a teaspoon and dump it into my mouth and let it sit in my cheeks and chew it. But the other thing you do is just. What's that?

I said, how do you do that? It tastes awful.

It doesn't taste that bad. I mean, could be worse. But you can put it in a tea, like just some hot water or like a nighttime tea or a morning coffee if you're doing like a white strain and you add vitamin C in it. And I find I gotta take about half as much when I put a bunch of vitamin C, like break open vitamin C capsules, or use like a squeeze of lemon. Because the vitamin C enhances the absorptability of the alkaloids in the kratom. So you can actually add vitamin C and it seems to enhance the effects even more, which. Which I guess would allow you to get away with using a little bit less. What about the.

Those are called potentiators.

Yeah, potentiator. Some websites, like, you know, I use a website called Coastline right now to order my Kratom, and one of the versions they sell is ultra enhanced. It's like a super duper concentrated form of Kratom. Have you ever tried this?

No, I haven't tried that. But, you know, the biggest problem with the Internet and Kratom is all the shit's unregulated. That's the biggest problem. So none of, like. I would say that. I would say it's at least over 90% of the kratom companies out there don't test their products. So, like, I just wouldn't. I would never order from there. You know, I'm never gonna order a product that's not been. That's. That says not for human consumption. I'm not. I'm not gonna do it, you know, so that's the problem. That's a big problem with Kratom, and that's. That's another stigma that we have to get over. So that's why I don't. I don't order any of it from, like, weird sites on the Internet, because I don't know, you know, I don't know what I'm getting. So if I know, then maybe I would try.

This one I'm not too concerned about. It's like a. It's like a family business from these folks down in North Carolina who. Who I trust pretty well. I did. I did quite a bit of research on before I ordered.

Does it say not for human consumption?

Uh, no, it doesn't. It's. You can. You can go check out the website. Just coastline Kratom. I'll put a link in the show notes. People want to.

Here's what's. Here's what's happening. Here's the big issue, right? In order to have a supplement on the market, right, it had to be on the market before 1994, and. Or, you know, basically they. It would get grandfathered in. Now, Kratom has been on the market since, like, 1984, but nobody knew about it. So in America, in the US Nobody knew about it. So it never got grandfathered in under the DSHEA act in 1994, and then, like, following that subsequently, like now, you know, going backwards. You can't, like, retroactively, like, put that law into effect, I guess. I don't know. But, you know, basically what people are asking for now and what the DEA is asking for and the FDA is asking for and people want is for these companies to just test their product for simple things like mold and bacteria and E. Coli and all that. So, like, you're saying, you know, I'm not worried about it. It's a small family business. I'd be more worried about it because it's a small family business, because who knows what, like, what conditions they're keeping their Kratom in. All that stuff. Like, that stuff bothers me. That stuff worries me about the supplement industry in general. There's people out there making money, and I'm ingesting stuff in my system, and they're not going through the proper process. That pisses me off. So, like, I'm not, you know, I don't use those products. That's all I would say about it.

Where do you. Where are you. Your Kratom.

I use. I use the one urban ice. I use natural or it's a natural. Organics.com is their website, but every single batch that they put out, they test it. So I like that. I like knowing, like, okay, it's not. You don't have to. The FDA doesn't require you to test things to see if it works. They require you to test it to see if it's safe. You know, when we dove in and we started asking people to start putting their research out there, people started lying about it. And then also a big thing that happened was we have a lot of. We have a lot of research, and we know for a fact that we've had Kratom come in. Right? We've seen Kratom that we've seen at other companies. Kratom come in and the company reject it and that Kratom go right back out and be sold somewhere else. So you know that that's going on, you know, you know that. That people aren't testing their. And then when somebody does test it and finds out that it's bad and doesn't accept it, it still gets sold somewhere else, you know, so we. That. That's why. That's why this thing just needs to be monitored.

Yeah. What. What about the, like. Like metals or herbicides, pesticides, stuff like that? Are. Are there organic sources of Kratom?

Yeah, actually, I'm not sure how they necessarily treat the plants, but Urban Ice is organic.

Okay, so that one's called Urban Ice. That's the one that I like. Okay, cool. I'll find that link to it in the show notes. For those of you listening in, the next thing I wanted to ask you was, as far as, you know, we talked about side effects and the potential for liver toxicity, but what about addictive potential? What are your thoughts on that?

That's a big source of debate. You know, a lot of people will debate that up and down. I would say that it's habit forming. You know, personally, I'd say it could be habit form, like, you want it, but you don't need it. So. But other people might say it's addictive. They might say you get withdrawals, but the withdrawals, like, we have to look at outcomes. Right? You can't just look at like, oh, this Guy took this and he got addicted, right? Well, like, you drink coffee and you got addicted, okay? Who cares? Like, doesn't really affect your life, right? You eat sugar, you got addicted. Like, big deal. Like, you know, it's going to all kill somebody down the road. But right now, like, is that addiction, you know, really affecting their life or is it making their life better? Like with Kratom, I just think that the good always outweighs the bad. I think even if I was addicted to it, as long as, you know, like, the thing is getting off of it isn't. Isn't hard. Like, if I get off a Kratom and don't take it and I feel like a little lethargic, you know, that's not really a big deal to me. Getting, Trying to get off opiates. When I was. Got off Suboxone, I was shaking and quivering the entire night. I was dripping sweat, I was vomiting diarrhea. You know, that's uncomfortable. We don't, you know, I felt like I was gonna die. And I mean, it's just not anywhere near that. I think there's a lot of people out there that like to scare us, you know, and like to scare us and to think that we're doing scary things when we're sometimes not. You know, there's, there's a lot of money in opiates and in prescription drugs. There's a lot of reasons to keep this stuff off the shelves.

You know, I've never had an issue with feeling as though I need to take it. Um, like. Like I do with, you know, the world's most addictive drug on the face of the planet. The most used drug on the face of the planet. Coffee. Like, I gotta have coffee every day if I'm really using coffee frequently. Like, like, I just can't do as well without caffeine in my system. I haven't personally noticed the same thing with Kratom. Like, I can quit taking it for weeks and weeks, come back, take some and be just fine and never feel as though I need to take it. So for me, it's not habit forming. But I've really, I've dug through the research and haven't found much research showing whether or not it's truly addictive. You know, the only thing I've found is those high acute doses or extreme chronic use could produce some hepatotoxicity, but that's about it.

I have a really good friend and he, he was an addict and I, you know, basically, like, we were talking about it and he says that he thinks he takes too much of it. So you know, we have to look at those things because like I, I went to rehab and when I was in rehab, there are people in rehab for weed, you know, and you're like, come on dude, what are you doing here? Like for weed really, you know, but people have a problem with things. It doesn't matter really what it is, right? So it, he just happens to say like, look, I take like 20, 30 kratom pills a day, you know, like wow, I'm like packing them down, you know, and I think I'm taking too much. And I said, well, you know, are you addicted? He's like, I don't know, I just like taking them, you know, And I'm. He's not sure. Right. So we've never actually, I've never like me and my film crew have never really actually encountered any Kratom addicts on camera. We've interviewed a ton of people for this documentary I'm doing and we haven't really come across too many people that like are addicted to it. There might be people that say like I got really sick or had bad withdrawals or whatever. But we also don't know if the Kratom that they had was adulterated because I should say that in the 15 deaths, nine of them came from Sweden. And in Sweden they had a company that was put in fentanyl in the Kratom and that killed nine people. So yeah, it was adulterated. Now a lot of times if you test the stuff at the gas stations, right, their alkaloids are all over the place. So they don't, they don't know what's in it. So you know, so they, gas stations.

Are dangerous like, like the, the dick pills that you see on the, on the gas stations, those things are, are super dangerous to play along with the energy drinks. Like, like some of those truckers, what those guys are taking, like they're dope to the gills off of this stuff. That's just like OTC sitting right there next to the cash register, low enough for like my 9 year old boys to grab it at the gas station.

I heard that, I heard that the boner pills are from like rhino horn and that's why one of them is called like Rhino nine or whatever. So the rhino, I heard that they were killing rhinoceroses to make boner pills.

Yeah, who knows?

Crazy, crazy situation over there.

Yeah. But I also, I looked into some of kind Kratom extracts and yeah, some of them have like designer drugs added to Them. Some of them have, like, Tramadol and, like, another synthetic opioid drug added to them.

So we want to stay from. We want to be sure that what we're taking isn't adulterated, and that's. That's, like, the real reason for regulation, you know, is like, to make sure that what we're putting in our bodies is safe, you know?

Yeah. Tell me about legality. Like. Like, not only legality in the U.S. i know the DEA was trying to classify it, but also legality when it comes to, like, WADA or USADA sanctioned sports athletes, people like that. Like, who can use this legally? How can it be shipped legally? Where's it at, the world of Kratom right now?

I don't know if it's. As far as I know, it hasn't been on the banned substance list. It may be, but I'm not sure. I never even looked in that. I did ask Jeff Novitsky, who's the UFC drug guy, basically, that takes care of all the UFC drug issues. And so the guy that busted Lance Armstrong, so he knows a lot about, you know, a lot about this stuff, and he said, no, Kratom's, you know, perfectly legal in ufc. Like, you could totally use it if you wanted to, you know.

So actually, I can tell you, you know, I actually, off the top of my head, I don't know about ncaa, but I do know it. It's. It's not currently on WADA's list, which means, I assume it's not on USADA's list as being prohibited. In support, I would imagine, if the DEA classifies it, and I want to hear. Hear where they're at with that from you in a moment here, then it might appear on those lists, of course. But. But where. Where's it at right now with the dea?

Well, the DEA backed off. So what happened was they issued a ban. They wanted to ban it. Right. First they issued an import alert saying, like, hey, if customs. If you see this stuff getting imported, like, let us know. We want to know about it. We want to track it, that kind of stuff. And then, like, about a year after that, they. They basically said, we're going to ban it, and we're going to ban it on this date, and we don't want public comment. So when they said they didn't want public comment, then everybody sort of went nuts and they had, like, a march on Washington and a petition and all that. And I went to that march and we signed the petition and got a bunch of people to sign the Petition and all of that. And what that did is that got the DEA to say, well, look, we've never had some sort of like rush of this many people calling and getting pissed off. What we're gonna do is we're gonna open this up to comments and if you guys can get like 10,000 comments, like, we'll consider them all and then we'll, you know, go from there. So they were really aiming to get 10,000 comments, but what was great is that they were about at 7,000 and the day before, the day before they were gonna like, you know, stop doing that or whatever stuff, like close the comment period. Or maybe it was a week before they were gonna close the comment period. I went on Joe Rogan's podcast and it went from 7,000 to 23,000. So with a little help, with a little help from Joe, you know, we kicked some ass, you know, and he took it on the show. So when he took it, I mean, I think there's a lot of people were like, let me try it. I don't know, you know, and I think that that's important, having people that are influencers like you and Joe and people in the media that are talking about this in a positive light rather than always just shining a negative light on something whenever something's bad, you know.

Yeah. I want to ask you a little bit more about dosage and just like practicality of Kratom, because like I mentioned, I a lot of times just dump out the powder into my mouth or I mix it in tea with a little bit of like vitamin C or lemon juice or lime juice. Are you primarily using it as like a capsule or a tea or are you doing like, like the powder?

So I, I, I don't like the taste of it just personally. And so I use. Some people are fine with it, like you said, that you're fine with it.

Tastes like dirt. Tastes like for anybody's done kava, for example. It's kind of similar to that. Like it's this dirty, earthy kind of taste.

Yeah, very earthy. Yeah. That's all. But what I do is I take capsules and in the morning I usually take anywhere from six to eight capsules. You know, they're probably standard sized capsules and, and that might sound like a lot, but like you said, it's not toxic to your liver and blah, blah, blah. So the reason that I take take that much is because that's where I found that it kills pain for me. Now you're saying with the vitamin C, I actually didn't know that. So that's great. I know about potentiators for drugs, trust me. But I didn't know about it for Kratom. So I want to try that because maybe I can actually cut down the amount of pills. The less stuff that you can take in general, the better. Right. So maybe adding in a little vitamin C might allow me to take out half of the dosage or whatever, but I find a great dosage with, like, six capsules. It completely takes away the pain. But I take it in the morning, and I take it before. You know, I'll go do cardio in the morning or whatever. I'll take it before that. And it just gets me up and going, you know, like.

Like a white strain especially, actually works really well for workouts.

Yeah, yeah. And in the morning, I just do cardio. So, like, my whole thing is like, I'm just trying to get. Trying to get back to normal and feel good. So I just. I walk in the morning, and during that walk is always like, work. You know, it's like I'm working, I'm, like, thinking about ideas. I'm writing stuff on my phone. I'm, like, researching stuff on the Internet, listening to podcasts, do all that stuff. And every morning, boom, boom, boom, get it done. And by the time an hour's gone by, I've done cardio, and I've gotten that over with. So a big part of this for me was coming out of rehab at £260, looking like a big fat meatball with a head. I was like, man, that's not me. That's not who I am. I used to be in shape. I used to train hard. This isn't me. So I basically went on a ketogenic diet, and this morning I weighed 183from260. So those are steps that I've taken with Kratom. And the reason to say that, the reason I bring it up, is because I started doing the diet because all of a sudden my mind could focus on what I needed to do. I wasn't like. I don't get thrown off by things I don't get, and it really helps me focus. So when I focus on my diet or I focus on my training or I focus on my work, I've written, like, three scripts since I've been on Kratom, so I'm going nuts in my career. And a lot of it has to do with Kratom. I just think it's a great plan.

Yeah. The other one, that it blends quite well. With and I just wrote an article from Men's Health magazine about this is this stuff called copaiba oil. C O P A I B A and it's an essential oil that gets distilled from the SAP of this tree, South America. And itit's considered to be very similar tot. What did you call it when something magnifies the effects of another substance?

Potentiator.

Yeah, potentiator. Very similar to a potentiator, but basically anything it's mixed with, you know, whether it's marijuana or, you know, reishi mushroom extract is another one that is good. With Kratom, you put very, very small amounts of this copaiba essential oil in with like, a tea or an edible or a tincture, and it vastly improves absorptability and deliverability. And that one's interesting because it's got a lot of pain relief properties. So it's, it's a really good analgesic when you apply it topically or when you use, like, very small amounts orally. So that's another one I found to be pretty useful forfor mixing with something like Kratom. What about some of these recreational drugs that. Not that any of our listeners are doing a lot of tobacco or cannabis or alcohol, but just if they happen to be like, is there. Does that help help with the use of Kratom? Like, say, for example, in the evening if you have Kratom with a cocktail, for example, or should you completely avoid, like, using sedatives or. Or other types of compounds along with Kratom?

I haven't, you know, like, for example, like, I don't. I haven't mixed it with much of anything. I would think that using Kratom and marijuana would be fine. And I don't see, like, I think. I haven't, I haven't had any issues, put it that way, with, like, mixing it with anything.

Okay, got it. So as far as, like, stacking it youy'd say, you know, I like, I.

Like Kratom and caffeine. There's actually, we're actually developing. We're developing a supplement now, a Kratom supplement that'll have a lot of interesting things in it, you know, dude, you.

Gotta keep me posted on that because I actually have done that. I'll just make my normal morning cup of coffee and put about a teaspoon of like, a white strain of Kratom in there and it brings coffee to another level. Plus, if you're in pain, if you're sore, if you have, like, a back injury, like, I had when I started doing it. I mean, it. It allows you to function all day long without the pain kind of being at the back of your mind.

We have something very interesting because, like, I don't. I don't make any money off of Kratom. Like, right now, I don't. I don't make a dime off of Kratom. I. What? But, you know, putting out this movie and trying to help a lot of people, I think it makes a lot of sense. And it's smart to try to develop something for when the film comes out and people are gonna want it, you know, So I think that it's smart to develop something like that. I would use that I like and then just say, well, this is my product, or whatever, you know, I don't think there's any shame in that. I think it's smart, you know, because this is a product that can help millions and millions of people, and I want to be involved in it. You know, I want to be. I want to. I want to carry the torch. I don't want to just be a guy who's like, oh, yeah, I use Kratom and, like, stand on the sidelines. Like, I think the more involved you get and the more you push things, like, the more it can really help people. When I say this is the cure for the opiate epidemic, the reason I say that is because, you know, even during this podcast, people have from opiates. You know, it is such a huge problem that all we gotta do is get, like, all these people need. All I needed when I went to rehab was a little bit of love and to get away from the drug that was killing me, you know?

Yeah.

And it was. And at the time, it was actually alcohol. Like, when I went back to rehab, it was mainly for alcohol, but I'd also relapsed on pills, but I wasn't quite addicted to the pills yet. So I got out of the pills, like, early enough to, like, to not be totally killed by them because I quit the pills years before, you know, as I kept relapsing. Every. Every time I went to quit, I relapsed. Every time I went to quit, I relapsed. Now, this is really interesting. I found Kratom after being sober for a year, and now I'm sober three years and I haven't relapsed.

Yeah.

So that's. That's interesting to me. Like, well, if I relapse, I'd say, well, Kratom doesn't work, obviously, but I have never thought of Doing an opiate I like. I'm so against it. That pet peeves now is like, every time somebody mentions it or hear something about it just makes me sick, you know?

Yeah. How. How. How long does it take to hit your system? And how long does the effects last from, like, a single dose?

Well, that's interesting. So in a liquid form, it can hit your system in, like, five minutes. And that might be another case to make some sort of liquid form that's not necessarily like, just extract, but so it can hit you in, like, five minutes. Actually, they just did a study over in. There was Christopher McCurdy, who's a doctor, who's like a world expert in this, was speaking over in England, and he was talking about it. Compared to Narcan or naloxone, which is what the nasal spray that they give you if you overdose, and Kratom. In the formulations that they've made in their lab, Kratom work just as fast, if not faster, than Narcan. So that's pretty outstanding. We've never seen a substance with this kind of profile. We've never seen a substance that can do something like this. So when you're looking at. That's just the basis for the drug. That's not even a drug. What I'm talking about is these scientists want to take Kratom and make it into a botanical drug. So they want to pull out the. They want to, first of all, figure out what all the alkaloids do and then figure out which one should stay and which one should go. Because some of them cause just side effects. Like, some of them do nothing but cause wet dog shakes. Which means, like, when you get out of the water, you shake like a dog. Or actually, no, it's not when you get out of the water. It's just out of nowhere, these rats will start shaking like a dog. And that's called wet dog shakes. And that can come on from Kratom. Right now, people don't get that, like, I don't shake myself up like a dog, like, when I take it. But in rats in high doses, they've experienced that. So they were. They were able to isolate that specific alkaloid because they saw the problem, and then they were able to isolate it and take that out and then fix that problem, you know?

Yeah. The one thing I noticed, and this was not for me, this was one of my buddies, is he got nauseous when he took it. Like. Like. And maybe. Maybe he took too much. We had a lot of stomach aches. Dizziness a little bit of those wobbles. So I. I've never had any experience like that, but I've got pretty high tolerance to a lot of these things. And for example, the. The little packet of the red strain that I keep, the. The red Borneo that I keep next to my bed stand at night, I will, like, if I wake up at 2 or 3am I'll take about a teaspoon or so of that. And typically, it hits me. I kind of get like this euphoria, almost like an indica strain of marijuana within about 20 minutes or so. And that'll last me until I wake up the next morning. Yeah, I just kind of let it sit in my mouth.

I would say capsules are a little bit faster, and I would definitely say, like, you know, I mean, powder is always gonna be like, all a capsule is is gelatin with powder in it. So the powder is going to be faster because you're not waiting for that gel cap to dissolve. But I feel like if you, you know, for me, I just. I just take things early enough. Like, I wake up and I just take it, you know, it's like by the time I actually get ready to go, I'm ready to go, you know?

Yeah.

So, you know, even if it takes you, like, okay, I gotta, you know, you wake up in the morning and there's a couple things you gotta do before you actually leave the house, right. You gotta, like, maybe take a shower or maybe brush your teeth or make, you know, you gotta do something. So before I even do that, I'll just take the Kratom. And then by the time I do whatever I need to do to get out of here and go to the gym or wherever I'm going, you know, I'm good to go. So I feel like it kicking in doesn't really. It's not been like, oh, man, it takes forever to kick in, or nothing like that, you know, I've been pretty cool with it.

Tell me about this documentary, dude. Like, why are you making it and what was the reasoning behind it?

I'm making this documentary because my friend Kelly, he came to Sacramento and met with me after that first time. I took it and I said to him, like, you know what? Like, how can we get more people to know about this? You know? Like, what can we do? And he's like, well, I thought you were the guy for that, you know? And I'm like, well, I am. But, like, it'd be kind of weird to make a documentary about this. Like, it's too weird. Of a thing, like, nobody will watch it, you know? Was that what I was thinking, like, at first? Because I was like, it's just weird. It's like, how are we going to make this? You know? And then, because I didn't know that it actually could help people with opiates, it was more when, like, I started researching it after, like, a couple weeks where I'm like, oh, my God. Really? Like, holy. And it started just opening up, you know, Started opening up right in front of my eyes. Like, what. What was I thinking? Nobody, like, everybody will watch this. I'm. We're just way ahead of the curve. You know what I mean? We're so. It's like the Kratom thing is so far ahead of the curve that, like, people don't see it coming. Like, you know, they. Most people have never heard of it. And that was my biggest problem is, like, when they say, what are you making a movie about? And I say, steroids. People go, oh, my God, I know this guy. Or Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong. When I say I'm making a movie about prescription drugs, people, oh, my God, I can't believe Prince died. You know, when I say a movie about Kratom, they're like, what? So nobody knows what it is?

Some random dude in Thailand? Here's who you gotta talk to.

Exactly. And so, like, nobody knows what it is. So I just made that a challenge in the film. Like, in the film's like, okay, well, nobody does know what it is, so we have to do a really good job of breaking it down and describing it to people and how they're going to feel and, like, all that stuff. But what we. What I really want to focus on is the fact that I think, like I said, most people are talking about stuff and they're not doing it. So I really want to. What I really focus on in the movie is, like, how big, how vast this epidemic is that we have, how much money is involved in that epidemic, and how much money is involved in stopping that epidemic. Now, there's a lot of money. There's. There's like, you know, there's billions of dollars in getting people off of pills as well, you know, so it's. It's really fascinating to me because in the documentary, we want to showcase all that so that you can get people on board to know how important it is that they look into other stuff like this. And then the big thing that we're gonna. That we're trying to do with the documentary to move things forward. Like I said, you Want to actually have a call to action. You want to have people be able to help. We're going to raise money for Kratom research, and we're going to use the film to do that. We're going to use podcasts to do that. Like, you guys and everybody else who get all these affiliates and partners and people that we talk to, this great community of fitness that we have, get everybody together and say, let's beat this thing. And the way we beat it down is we put a bunch of money into Kratom research and things like that. Like, you know, let's. Let's attack this. And I really believe with the right people behind it and the right forces behind it, that we can. We can raise a really good amount of money and also develop some stuff through that research that will actually help people, you know.

Yeah, Word. Is there a link for right now.

Man, for the movie? Mm, no, there's no information on it.

Well, when it does come out, send it over to me and I'll tweet it out.

But absolutely. We started an Instagram handle, like a Leaf of Faith. Instagram handle Faith check out. But, like, it'll. And it'll all. We're wrapping the movie now. I have about two months left of finishing it up. And so we're just going nuts, like, just trying to get it done. And so right now, during that. During that process is like, you know, when we'll start putting out more social media and stuff like that, you know, but we're just trying to. We're trying to just get the movie done first and figure out where to go with it and what to do with it. You know, my goal would be, I think that this movie is really, really important. I actually, I started out, like I said, not sure if I should make this movie, and then having that turn in and be like, this is by far the most important thing I'll ever put out there.

Yeah. Well, I found your Instagram account, Leaf of faith. You've got 386 followers. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes here. For those of you listening in, Go follow this. We might. Might be able to get a few more people on your follow list.

We'll be able to pump that up by, like, next week. That's just something that we put up and we. I haven't really put any effort into it.

Yeah, well, your documentaries rock. I like them, so I'm sure this one will be good. And for those of you listening in, if you want to get Kratom if you want to check out any of the links that Chris and I talked about, I'll hunt down a link to this urban ice that Chris uses.

That's natural organics with an X coin.

Cool. I'll hunt that down in this Leaf of Faith Instagram page. Like I mentioned, you guys, I did a podcast with this. This gal who wrote The Drug Dealer, MD book on opiate addictions. And I'll link to that podcast in the show notes too, as well as everything else Chris and I talked about. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com ChrisBell there's.

Some good YouTube videos on kratom, too. There's a couple guys on YouTube, like Drew Turner. He's a great guy. He's a vet, and he's got a lot of pain issues and stuff like that. And he talks about Kratom a lot. And there's a lot. If you just go on YouTube, you'll find a lot of people making videos about it and how to take it and what to do in their experiences with it. I say, like, use all that. You know, watch everybody and, you know, it's like, be careful who you trust. But, like, you make your own judgment after watching somebody if you're gonna listen to them or not, you know?

Yeah, word. Well, I mean, since I've been using Kratom, I've been wanting to do a podcast on it and get somebody like you on the show to actually talk about it and what it is and how to use this. So I think this is gonna be really useful for folks. And again, like, if you're listening, like Chris and I are doctors, proceed at your own risk. I mean, and, you know, like, Chris mentioned a lot of this stuff. Depending on where you get it, it can be laced with other opioids. It. It can have other stuff in it. And you. You wanna. You wanna proceed with caution.

I have something to say. Serious about that. Like, yeah, we aren't doctors. So we're like, we're not doctors, but the people that we trust, the people that we put our trust into, they cause this epidemic. And so we. We have to, like, now it's, you know, what's up to us to fix it, right? So that's what I'm saying. I don't trust doctors anyway. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, oh, we're not doctors. I'm like, I don't trust them anyway. They're the ones that cause this. So we have to be careful with who we trust on anything, you know, Yup.

It's a good point, man. It's a good point.

I'm your own doctor. You have to do your own research. And that's why you're always digging into stuff, you know, because you gotta find your own stuff.

Yeah. Word. Well. Well, folks, again, I'm gonna put the links over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ChrisBell I'll also link to some of Chris's other extremely entertaining documentaries if you want to watch any of them, like bigger, stronger, faster trophy kids or prescription thugs, they're actually pretty cool shows, especially if you're into fitness. And, Chris, in the meantime, thanks for coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us, man.

No problem, buddy. Anytime, man. And I'd love to come back on. When we put the movie out, I'll have a little bit more of a, you know, I'll be able to talk about it more. I just. There's so much fun, like, cool, interesting stuff that happened during this trip, but we don't. We'll talk about it when people see it. It'll be much more fun that way.

Sweet, sweet. And also, as the movie's coming out and you get a webpage up for it, just shoot me an email. And then. And for everybody listening in, I'll. I'll put a link to it or a Preview on the facebook.com BG Fitness page or. Or follow me at twitter.com BenGreenfield and I'll push it out there.

If you want to get Mark on the podcast too, let me know. We'll hook that up.

Mark Bell.

Yeah.

And you guys do the Mark. Is it called the Mark Bell power cast?

He does. He has. Yeah. Mark Bell's power cast.

Yeah. Cool.

Has all his products, the Slingshot products and all that good stuff.

Yeah. Well, if you're listening into this show right now and you'd be interested in me having Mark Bell on the power cast, and you're a fan of his, head over to the comment section@bengreenfulfitness.com ChrisBell Let me know and let me know what you'd want me to ask him, and I can look into having him on the show as well. All right, cool. Well, Chris, thanks, man. And for those of you listening in, I'm Ben Greenfield along with filmmaker and Kratom expert Chris Bell, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week. Three new.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.