Welcome to Addiction and the Family, Episode 69: 70H, A Rising Threat on the Drug Scene.
Welcome to Addiction and the Family. My name is Casey Arrillaga. I am a licensed clinical social worker and addiction counselor at both Windmill Wellness Ranch and Recovery Tree Counseling. I'm the author of several books, including "Realistic Hope, the Family Survival Guide for Facing Alcoholism and Other Addictions" and the Children's trilogy based in my book, "Mommy's Getting Sober." I've been in recovery from my own addiction since 1998, and I'm married to someone in recovery. The first 10 years we were in active addiction together, and since then, we've been in recovery together. Join us as we share experience, strength, and realistic hope on how you and your family can learn to grow and recover together.
Okay. Welcome to Addiction and the Family. Kira, great to have you on. 
Thank you. 
So tell people, you have a new license. Tell people what's going on. 
My new license is Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor. It used to be Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor intern. 
Intern no more. You are so cool. All the more reason to have you on here.
One of the things we're gonna be looking at today is we're talking to our audience about a new threat that is on the horizon. In fact, it's really here now. It's something that you can buy in gas stations, 100% perfectly legal as of right now. Although the federal government is starting to look at making it illegal. We are looking at a brand new thing called 7OH, sometimes called 7Tabz or On7, but for purpose of simplicity, we're just gonna call it 7OH today. And Kira, you've had an opportunity to talk to some people who have been using 7OH, so we're definitely be getting that in this interview. Yeah. 
I have. Are we allowed to talk about the Johns Hopkins thing? 
We are gonna talk about the Johns Hopkins thing. So yes, we are collaborating with... 
Johns Hopkins.
Yeah, so really prestigious university. We're gonna be working with them. We're in collaboration right now to do some case studies, and in the course of that we've done some interviews.
So in this episode we're gonna be talking about that. And Kira, you're gonna get the chance to talk with our audience about some of your experience with that. So, super cool. Yeah. Stick around after a quick word from one of our sponsors. We're gonna get right into this.
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Okay, welcome back. So let's talk about this. So Kira, you're a chemical dependency counselor. I'm a clinical social worker. We both work at Windmill Wellness Ranch and it is really exciting. Um, we are doing this collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and in the course of that we get to supply a lot of clinical data because they have the chemistry. They're looking at broad based stuff, what in social work is called macro work.
And we get to do the micro work, which is working one-on-one with people. And so we've seen kratom get used for a long time, right? What can you tell our audience about that? 
Okay. Once upon a time, there was a little plant named kratom and people would make tea out of the leaves and it was calming, no stronger than caffeine, generally speaking.
And then, uh, humans decided they could purify it, kind of the way we did with the coca leaf. If you've ever heard of cocaine, it originated with the coca leaf and people would chew that, and it wasn't terribly bad for you in that form, but when we turned it into cocaine, it became a whole different animal. That is what has happened with kratom. 
Yeah. So it started out, like you said, people would brew a tea just like we used to brew beer, like the Egyptians would make beer. Right. And while we knew people get drunk and there were people that had a substance use disorder, I'm sure even at that point, a lot of times beer was better, or wine was better than drinking the water. 'Cause you couldn't really trust the water. So everyone kind of drank this stuff. It wasn't that strong. But here come human beings and we just create stronger and stronger and stronger things. Pretty soon we're distilling it into liquor. And there was a time when in England they were saying, "Man, we need to ban gin. It's this brand new thing." We figure how to purify things. So yeah, we purified what was going on with kratom into these powders, and they've been selling those for years, and it's still considered legal . Some people call it just an herbal supplement. But what we find is that low doses, it seems to have like a stimulant effect for a lot of people,
and at high doses it acts more and more like an opiate. A lot of people refer to kratom as being an opiate, even though technically it doesn't come from the opium poppy. I mean, you had the opium poppy that does one thing. Opium, and we purify it now that becomes really bad. 
Yeah. 
And that purifies into: 
Heroin, fentanyl, morphine. 
Yeah, things that will start killing you. So I don't know how many opium poppy overdoses there ever been, but there have been a lot of opiate- related deaths 
From fentanyl, from heroin, from morphine. 
And you could argue, yeah, you could argue right now the opiate overdose and death rate has gone down, but it's hard to say whether that's because fewer people are using it, or we've just gotten better at combating opioid-related deaths with things like Narcan and Naloxone, stuff like that, right, that we've talked about on this podcast not long ago.
However, we don't know how to combat the types of things that we're seeing from 7OH, which is now a purified form of kratom. So you had the relatively innocent teas been used for centuries in the Southeast Asia. Then we move up into these powders that they're selling, 
which is like cocaine. Yeah. So they took the cocoa leaf and they turned it into cocaine, and then later on they took the cocaine and they turned it into crack. And that's what's happening now. 7OH is the crack cocaine of kratom, which is the cocaine of the kratom leaf. 
Yeah. So check that out. So here's the thing though, a lot of people don't even know that it's dangerous. 
Sure. It's an herbal supplement according to the label. 
Yeah. Right. So I mean they flashy packaging, it looks really cool.
I take supplements. 
Right. Yeah. A lot of people buy it at gas stations. Now I'm gonna say kids, just as a general note, if you can buy it at a gas station, it's probably not good for you. Right. Just as a general note, but this is on a whole different level. You're looking at bad for you in a way that while we don't necessarily have overdose deaths that we can prove come from 7OH, we can absolutely say it is becoming addictive and people are getting hooked.
And so one of the things we're doing with Johns Hopkins is moving from that macro data into micro data, talking with people one-on-one. So out of curiosity, clients that you've worked with or people that you've known who have done kratom, what kind of things have they reported? Do they ever find it to be addictive within itself?
It is absolutely addictive. I have a, a good friend, a young guy in his twenties that smoked pot for a long time without getting addicted to it. Drank alcohol on and off without getting addicted to it. It was just a fun thing to do in your youth when you're 21, 22 years old. And then he got hooked on kratom. And he's detoxed from it a few times now and had some sobriety from it a few times now, and he has always gone back to it. 
Yeah, it's kind of hard to watch, right? 
Yeah. 
And we've had a fair number of clients come into Windmill Wellness Ranch, who are also making kratom part of their mix and the things that we'll hear are like, "Hey, I was in sober living and somebody told me, Hey, kratom was okay," you know?
And we started thinking like it's even a way to detox off of opiates. And I will say that there are some researchers who are going with that idea. There are some people in the medical field and in the addiction treatment field who will say like, "Hey, we shouldn't make kratom illegal. It's okay because we can actually use it to help people get off other things."
And they seem to be discounting. Or maybe again, they don't have that direct clinical experience working on one-on-one with clients to say like, "Wait a second, people are now having trouble getting off that." And it reminds me, you know, in the early to mid 20th century, people were thinking cocaine was a wonder drug.
It was a solution to other things. 
Absolutely. 
"Oh, we'll get people off these bad things." 
Mm-hmm. 
"We'll get 'em off cocaine." In fact, you can find it in, what's the popular drink again? Oh, Coca Co. 
Coca-Cola. 
Coca-Cola. Did you know that Actually, fun sidebar here, that actually cocaine is legally purified so that the Coca-Cola company can use the byproducts and not the cocaine.
The cocaine itself goes into dental anesthetic, which is why they call it like Novocaine and stuff like that. 
Right. 
And we had a client one time,
I forgot about that. 
I remember, forgot I mentioned this to him. And he goes, "Oh." 'Cause sometimes when people do cocaine, don't get any ideas here, but they'll rub it into their gums, stuff like that.
And, uh, not, not that I've ever done that. You, no, no. I don't know what we're talking about here. 
I have, I have done that. 
Okay. Well you've done it. Uh, that's us. So this client said, " Wow, that's what it is. I was at the dentist. I knew. I knew that feeling in my gums and I couldn't place it."
Well down the line, we may have people saying the same thing about 7OH because what we're finding now is that this, like you said, is kind of the crack cocaine to the cocaine to the original coca leaf. 7OH is hitting the market. And it's being marketed as a great new thing. So you've had an opportunity to sit down and talk with clients who are doing 7OH 'cause we're seeing more of those people come into the treatment center. So we set out on this mission with Windmill Wellness Ranch. We were gonna get some interviews done when we, in short order, had five different clients admit who had been doing 7OH.
They were saying, "This stuff is evil. We need to get away from it." One of them was saying, "Nope, I dunno what you're talking about," but their spouse was saying, "This is evil. You need to get away from it." And in short order, four out of the five of them left treatment within the first few days, because what they were experiencing for withdrawals was enough that while there were various reasons that people always give for leaving treatment, suddenly whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, within a few days they were all out the door. Only one stick around. And, uh, Kira, I know you got to interview one of those people before he left. 
I did, I got half of the interview questions answered. It took about an hour and 15 minutes or something. We went really in depth because, this poor guy had been sober from heroin for four years and went to a kava bar with some friends, and they would drink the kratom tea and he wouldn't have any.
And about the fifth time his friend said, "I tell you what, I'll, just buy you one. You'll like it." Which of course, is a thing that dealers do, right? The first one's free. It's never free, guys don't do it. Anyway. So he got his first cup of kratom tea for free and he really took to it. And he had no idea what he was getting into.
And he can look back now and look at all the other factors in his life that made him say yes to that little cup of tea and say, " I'm gonna go to the gas station and pick some of this stuff up, or the head shop or wherever he got it. And, he was hooked on it in pretty short order. His girlfriend didn't get hooked on it. 'Cause she tried it too.
But he did take to it and he did get addicted immediately. And one day, several months in, he decided he wanted something stronger. So he went to the smoke shop and he said to the guy, "Hey, do you have like a more concentrated form of kratom?" And the guy said, "I know just what you want." And he gave him 7OH, which was touting itself to be an herbal supplement as well.
And my young client took it and he said it was so much like shooting up heroin. It was not the extreme high, but it was very, very reminiscent of heroin. And when he came to treatment, he really wanted to get off of that stuff. He could see the end coming. He knew it was gonna be bad. He hadn't lost everything yet, but it had happened before when he had to quit heroin.
So he thought he was gonna get it this time, and he was with us three or four days. He didn't get through his detox. And I really thought he'd stay. So speaking of that, that's one of the exciting things that we're doing with Johns Hopkins is we're working with Johns Hopkins, we're working with Dr. Jarod Dempsey from Trac9.
And what we're gonna try and do is we're gonna try and figure out what are the receptors, 'cause they have some ideas, right? What receptors being hit, what pathways are being activated by kratom? And it turns out to be activating three pathways as opposed to one that we often run into with various other drugs.
So we're gonna be working on a new detox protocol and we're so happy to be working at a place that is kind of out ahead of the field and not only recognizing this is a problem, while some people are going like, well, maybe it's not that bad, you know, maybe we should keep this legal. We're saying like, Nope, we are seeing people on the ground suffering from this.
Let's figure out how to help keep them in treatment because the relapse rate is way too high. ACA, which is "against clinical advice" or "against medical advice" when somebody leaves treatment early. We wanna help to be able to prevent that. So we're gonna look at some of the things that we're seeing around 7OH in terms of the scientific data.
We're gonna look at some of the other things we've heard in these interviews after we take a quick break to hear from another one of our sponsors. We'll be right back.
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All righty, welcome back. So we're gonna jump back into this. So here's some of the stuff that we've been looking at. We've been reading some of the research around this that's coming in from some great researchers around the country. And here's some of the stuff that we're seeing. We are finding that people, are buying these pills.
There is no regulation whatsoever in how much of the drug can go into the pill. So people literally have no idea what they're getting. Nothing's been inspected by a doctor. The FDA is not involved. There is nobody really being able to say, here's what you're getting. So people are picking up tablets that might be, say, 15 milligrams, they might be 30 milligrams.
They don't even know what that really means, right? It's just a label on the side of a pill. So what people are finding is they're chewing them. They can vape 7OH, and they're getting into it. And then what we're finding is. Are they taking one or two pills? Are they leaving it at that? 
They're not.
They are not. They're taking, uh, often three to five a day. it definitely escalates. My guy, after a month he was doing five times a day, 30 milligrams, and by four months he was doing five times a day, 80 milligrams. And of course, the pills don't always give you what you're expecting from the last time you bought them.
Because they may not actually be 80 milligrams or might not actually be 30 milligrams. 
Right. 'Cause there's no law around any of this stuff yet. And I say "yet." My hope is that this becomes regulated. But what we're running into right now is people have no idea what they're getting and they're saying things like, "I took my first pill, got about 20 minutes down the freeway,"
so we're on the freeway, ladies and gentlemen, driving at freeway speeds and it suddenly hits. And he said he had to pull over because it just felt so opiate-like where he just felt completely relaxed. He felt at ease and that sounds nice, right? Who doesn't wanna feel relaxed and at ease, except actually we can be way too relaxed and at ease while we are driving a motor vehicle, which is a really heavy piece of equipment that is potentially deadly to you and the people around you.
And nobody warned him, "this is what you're getting into." 
Right. 
The guy who sold it to him just said like, "Hey, this is flying off the shelves." Sure. Hey, cocaine would fly off the shelves too if you're allowed to carry that in your shop, man. So he pushes it across to this guy. Our guy picks it up, has no idea what he's really getting into, and pretty soon he's hooked.
He said within two days, I think he said, "I had built a tolerance." And this is a guy who's done a lot of other drugs, so he knows what a tolerance is. And then he's starting to feel withdrawal, and then he's getting afraid of withdrawal. He's trying to quit. He finds himself buying regular, "regular" kratom, uh, just to sort of get through, and he just can't get himself off of that until he comes into treatment.
And he said an interesting thing. We asked the question, "If someone you knew or loved wanted to do this, what would you say to them?" And he would say, "Stay far, far, far away, because this stuff can really get you tangled up." Now we have some people who are saying, "Well, you know, we haven't seen overdose deaths, so maybe it's not that bad."
You know, it will be soon, I think. Also it's getting combined with alcohol and THC and other things just because, you know, people experiment on themselves. You know, we experiment on our own brains. So if I've got a little bit of the thing that I'm addicted to and I've got something I can maybe enhance it with.
You know, maybe smoke a little weed or have a beer or something like that. Maybe it will up the effects. That's how my own grandmother became addicted. She took her Tylenol codeine with a beer, 'cause the Tylenol codeine wasn't enough anymore. And she was 60 ish when she started drinking, and that is what killed her.
So it's a very real thing. There's a lot of cross addiction going on. And the thing is, the guy that I was interviewing, he mentioned, you know, he was working, and all of his money was going for kratom. He was just blowing through his savings. Uh, he was having a rough patch with the girlfriend.
And so of course that was when he decided to go from kratom to 7OH was during the rough patch with the girlfriend. 
As often happens. And this is the big thing to understand about addiction, is that a lot of times, what we're finding is people use it for emotional regulation, right? There are several major characteristics that people look for around addiction. Things like tolerance and withdrawal are things that people are more familiar with. We can say it becomes a preoccupying thing, as some of our interviewees are talking about. That idea that this now becomes what I need to do with my life.
It's where my thoughts are going. It's where my money is going, interfering with my life. But one major factor to recognize that seems to go across the board for all addictions is using it for emotional regulation, saying when I feel upset or when I feel happy. And the thing about that, sometimes people say, "Oh, I do such and such whenever I feel happy." You know? 'cause we assume, oh, this person is crying into their beer. Right? Not necessarily. Sometimes people are feeling good and what's funky with that is sometimes they don't know what to do with feeling good. Like they're so used to being emotionally dysregulated that when they feel good, they say, "I'm gonna give myself permission, celebrate a little bit."
And it just speaks to what happens unfortunately with a lot of people when they build up tolerance, whatever they're building to, is this idea of like, "Whatever it is, is not good enough. It needs to get bigger." 
Yeah. 
Unfortunately we're starting to see this with any number of drugs across the board, right?
But. Here's the hot new player, 7OH. So what researchers are also finding is that if you're taking enough of it, it pretty much acts like oxycodone. It acts like morphine, and that we're running into these effects. So again, we mentioned like low doses, it can have sort of a stimulating effect, and unfortunately, a lot of our clients are finding that they don't take low doses very long.
So they may have even started looking for one effect, and pretty soon they are deep into it, just trying to avoid withdrawals and now you're just always trying to run ahead of the dragon. Yeah, and it's a, it's a terrible way to live. 
It is, and the story that I'm getting is, after five months on 7OH, they're not getting very high.
They're just avoiding withdrawals. And it takes all the money they have, and it's ruining their relationships, ruining their career. You know, it's not a way to live. These people are not gonna be contributing to society for much longer if they keep at it. And they're gonna be doing other drugs. My guy was a recovering heroin addict.
If heroin becomes cheaper than 7OH, what do you think he's gonna do? He's gonna do heroin. One of the stories I find with people who are addicted to painkillers is they end up trying heroin because it's cheaper than getting painkillers on the black market.
So people older than I am are going out for the very first time to score heroin of all things on the street, because they can't get enough Percocet from their doctor. And Percocet's more expensive than heroin on the streets. 
And unfortunately, a certain number of them now are gonna have a friend who says, "Hey, come out to the kava bar."
We're gonna have people that say, "Hey, try kratom. It's okay. It's all natural." All natural, by the way, folks, it's just a marketing gimmick. There's lots of things that are all natural that you should never, ever, ever put in your body. This seems to fall under the same category. And now people will say, "Oh, well try 7OH. This will be the solution for you."
And unfortunately, we're gonna see a greater and greater number of people, I'm afraid, getting hooked into this. So one of the things that we wanna do, of course, we wanna let you know whether you're somebody who struggles with addiction yourself, you're somebody in recovery, or you're somebody who loves someone in recovery, which with a show called Addiction and the Family, obviously that's a big focus of ours.
We wanna let you know what's coming next, what to look out for, and how to not get fooled by marketing that says, "Hey, it's all natural," or "This is okay," or, "I bought it down the street. I didn't even need a prescription, therefore, it must be fine." Don't be fooled by things like that. So any last words you'd wanna say to our audience about kratom, 7OH, or anything related to this?
I did have something about the marketing 
Talk about that. 
That I wanted to get into.
I was talking to my guy, interviewing him, and he noticed over time that the 7OH was becoming more available at a higher dosage, less expensive and more deals. And I said, what do you mean more deals? He goes, you know, buy one, get the second one for $10. I have to say I was a little horrified by that, but of course they did that.
They're trying to sell more of it. You know, the people that are manufacturing this are making a lot of money off of our addictive people. You know, our, our people that think that they're getting an herbal supplement and instead getting a really harsh addiction. Really awful, awful withdrawals. People that have gone through heroin withdrawals and gotten clean and stayed clean from heroin are complaining about these withdrawals.
And if you've ever known somebody to go through heroin withdrawals, you'll know they're awful. 
Terrible stuff. And it reminds me we might be just at that point in history with this drug the way we have been with previous ones. Some people may or may not know that, you know, of course, heroin was a brand name, these were considered okay at one point. Freud used to say cocaine was this wonderful miracle drug, and he in fact encouraged his friends to do it. 
For depression! 
There you go. The cure for depression. 
Yeah, the cure for depression. I can attest to that. It's a very, very short term cure for depression. It lasts for like an hour and a half.
Yeah. And then you want more. So Yeah. 
Then you're still depressed. 
And the sad thing is, you know, when you talk about the marketing, I have to think that probably a certain number of people who are manufacturing this and selling it, honestly think they're doing everybody a favor.
So, who knows? I can only hope in my heart, I tend to think the best of people, that they don't think that they're doing what they're doing. But we are here to tell you, stay outta the way of this stuff. So with that, we're gonna move towards closing. Any last thoughts? 
One thing I noticed as we were doing the first segment, was, it's the hot new thing, you know, it gets you high. You can easily attain this thing. It sounds like this episode was brought to you by kratom and 7OH. It kind of sounds like, "Hey, you know, this is great stuff." But that's kind of the point 'cause it seems really great.
Just that first time. But so did cocaine, so did alcohol for me, and it's got a harder detox. I appreciate you being willing to share that. All right, everybody, we're gonna sign off there. Thank you for tuning in. Again, stick around for the credits. There's lots of cool stuff in there, and we'll see you in the next episode of Addiction and the Family. 
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Addiction and the Family. This program is recorded, produced, written, floors swept, the whole bit by myself and my wife, Kira. Just so happy to have you with us. If you'd like, you can always look us up on Facebook. We are tweeting on Twitter. Whatever they're calling it these days, and we can be found on Instagram, we can found on Blue Sky, we can be found on Pinterest.
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