Maybe it wasn’t the best time in his life for Andrew to walk to his favorite gas station on the west side and, with the attendant’s insistance, try a new product called Opia.
It was kratom, he said. It would help alleviate his depression and mental slog. He had just broken up with his girlfriend and lost his job as an investment advisor at a local bank. He needed help, and it’s not that Andrew didn’t trust therapists, he just didn’t know the right of getting worthwhile help.
So, he tried a little green tablet called Opia.
“The guy I know behind the counter gave it to me for free,” Andrew, 32, an employee at a west side Home Depot, told Scene in July. “He said, ‘Try it! Try it!’ And he marketed it as kratom. ‘It’ll fix your depression. It will give you energy.’”
And it did. So much that Andrew began taking two packets of Opia a day just to keep the high constant.
But come month two, that energy plateau began to wane. Andrew had to limit the gaps between Opia doses. In the hours between, he experienced body aches, endless chills, restless leg feelings and “the most sweating I’ve ever had.”
“I mean, I wasn’t buying anything illegal. I didn’t have to meet up with anybody shady. I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Andrew said. “Technically, I just went to the gas station to get more and feel better. Honestly, it happened so quick, you don’t even realize it’s happening.”
The main chemical compound behind the vast highs and horrid lows is 7-hydroxymitragynine, abbreviated as 7-OH. It’s an alkaloid that occurs naturally in kratom leaf, a plant part of the coffee family that Americans began getting high on shortly after soldiers flew back from the Vietnam War. And it gives a high that, as this reporter can attest, comes quickly, and gives a jolting, hours-long body-buzz of ecstasy. Afterward, however, some users (including this reporter) get a long bout of sleeplessness and sweaty bedsheets.
But 7-OH, as everyone from the FDA to the American Kratom Association has made very clear this year, is a different beast entirely. In the past half decade, chemists have figured out how to effectively extract the 7-OH alkaloid from dried kratom, then pack it tightly into a tiny tablet flavorized as Blue Raspberry, Strawburst or Mintopia. A tablet so tiny and powerful that one team of scientists doing trials on mice with products they bought off the internet found 7-OH’s strength “17 times that of morphine.”
Which is why it’s in the sights of Gov. Mike DeWine.
Since August 25, when DeWine called for all forms of the leaf to be classified as (illegal) Schedule 1 drugs, the ensuing rallying from kratom users, kratom experts, ER doctors and attorney-advocates has hoisted the substance into the pharmacopeial spotlight: actual kratom leaf, they say, should not be mistaken for its high-strength cousin.
“I really find it very difficult to find that there is an imminent public harm or hazard here, because there are no deaths from 7-hydroxy,” Paula Savchenko, a Florida-based attorney who’s worked in the supplement regulation in industry for the past decade, told Scene in a phone call.
It’s why she’s been advocating lately, despite the American Kratom Association cheering the FDA on, for smarter, age-related regulation at the state level. Not outright prohibition. “Any adverse accident of hospital report has been related to other substances in the system,” she said, “alcohol or other drugs.”
Savchenko is technically right: As of today, there are no reported deaths in the U.S. tied solely to 7-OH, a recent report from the FDA explained. A survey of 103 deaths in the past six years did tie mitragynine and 7-OH to the cause, but did not blame it alone for those users’ demise.
But a lack of proof in studies doesn’t mean guards should be down. Hospitals and urgent cares still have to make gut decisions on how to treat patients based on lower-potency forms of supplements.
“I would speculate why people are experiencing more problems anecdotally is just because they are getting a more potent drug,” Ryan Marino, an ER doctor and toxicologist at University Hospitals who’s treated a spattering of intakes related to kratom in general, told Scene. One “that has more potential for dependence, withdrawal, addiction, overdose.”
And those side effects? “I’m talking irritability, anxiety, insomnia, a lot of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, body aches, muscle pains, joint pains,” Marino said. “Very uncomfortable, like from head to toe.”
As the DEA entertains public comment through the end of the year, and makes a yay or nay decision come March, thousands of 7-OH users across the country are still dealing with the side effects of a shot or capsule they feel they were misled into buying or taking.
“I didn’t think I had to do research for what I was told was a natural, five-hour, caffeine-free energy shot,” a mother-of-two, who was given 7-OH by her yoga studio, told Scene in an email. “Never have been addicted to anything in my life. I’m just a normal suburban mom.”
A month later, she went to the emergency room at Southwest General with flu symptoms. She was “so sick I thought I was dying.” She was referred to a substance specialist at the Oakview Behavioral Health Center. A doctor prescribed her Suboxone, typically used to treat opioid addiction, for four months.
“I see these things everywhere now. Gas stations, chiropractor offices—yoga studios,” she said. “It’s really scary because I don’t think people understand what they can do.”
In July and August, Scene heard from 17 kratom users about their experiences with 7-OH. Two said their taking 7-OH was mostly positive and helped crush horrible anxiety or ameliorated their depression.
But the vast majority, 15 people, reported their experience was nothing short of hellish, one that led to job loss, strained rapport with their spouses, thousands of dollars spent (on tablets and medical bills) and existential agony amidst countless sleepless nights. One woman told Scene her withdrawal periods from 7-OH led her from losing sleep for up to a week at a time.
And all were quick to mention just how easy it is, at least for the time being, 7-OH is to buy.
“All it takes is one moment of weakness,” a plumber in his fifties told Scene, “and it’s in your hand.”
Vape shops and supplement stores that carry 7-OH products can’t sell to adults under 21 in Ohio. The packages themselves advertise sweet flavors and momentary bliss—”Live lightly with us,” Opia’s reads—along with, on average, three separate disclaimers. Seven products reviewed by Scene all touted legal protections.
“By using this product, you accept full responsibility for the use,” packaging for Straight Heat reads, “including but not limited to any adverse events or health complications that may arise from use.”
Austin, a resident of East Cleveland in his twenties, started buying 7-OH in powder form from his favorite vape shop last year. He was trying to wean himself off an opioid addiction and had heard 7-OH might be the key to doing so.
Today, he takes over 100 milligrams a day, both to sustain the chill of the euphoria and to veer away from anything that feels like an opioid withdrawal with “a bit more dysphoria.”
“Pain engulfs my whole body,” Austin told Scene. “My skin crawls as if there was bugs living in my bones. My heart races and jumps. Paranoia sets in.”
Such cyclic abyss is what pushed Jay, a health consultant for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to begin referring his clients—mostly construction workers using 7-OH to deal with strenuous work hours—to addiction clinics.
Earlier this year, piqued by curiosity, Jay tried Opia himself. It was at a gas station in Lakewood he walked to often, and he soon enough tried the recommended dose of half a pill.
He was floored. “It feels like you took off—like you’re flying, you feel so great,” he said in a phone call. “It’s absolutely crazy.”
Then, the high wore off. “Really what you’re taking is legal morphine,” he said. “But I’d rather have a client take morphine because at least you know what’s in it.”
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