Rising Addiction to Convenience Store Drug Is Inconvenient to Treat
A supplement made from leaves of the Southeast Asian kratom tree recently showed up at a “high level” in the autopsy of a Mount Hope drug overdose victim, said Paul Rickard, Mount Hope police chief . The victim was between 20 and 30, but people of all ages buy kratom, according to a clerk at a Westfall tobacco shop that offers it in packets and jars, the latter for $41.99. Several shops in the area sell it, both in New York and Pennsylvania, but some other states have outlawed it. Rickard, president of Orange County Police Chiefs Association, said that OCPCA will discuss kratom restriction with county legislators.
Barbara Marszalek, a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Port Jervis, knows why. For several years, people struggling with kratom’s effects have come to her.
“People try it for anxiety and depression. Before the pandemic, a couple of them had to be hospitalized,” she said. “During the pandemic, some used kratom to try to get off opiates without going to a doctor. One person came to me for detox to get off kratom. They had shakes and withdrawal symptoms. They were nervous and angry. It can damage your liver, cause excessive vomiting, seizures and hallucinations.”
Kratom leaves in low doses are a stimulant, while in high doses they have sedative effects, according to the Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) fact sheet. Kratom use can be addictive and cause psychotic symptoms, as well as nausea, itching, sweating, dry mouth, constipation, tachycardia, vomiting, insomnia, hepatotoxicity, seizure, and hallucinations, the DEA found, calling kratom a “Drug and Chemical of Concern.”
However, tracking the use of kratom and its presence in overdoses is difficult because chemical composition changes with different additives, and not all hospitals do testing according to best practice standards, said Tammy Rhein, Orange County director of chemical dependency. She oversees the county Crisis Intervention Team training and its coordination with the OCPCA.
“We work on drug demand and treatment, while police work on cutting drug supplies,” she said. “During lockdown, people had less access to street drugs, so more people relied on what they could buy at convenience stores, like kratom. While the focus is on one kind of drug, like opioids, people turn to other drugs.”
But health insurance won’t pay for hospital treatment of addiction to kratom, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and synthetic drugs like K2, said Rhein.
“There’s no inpatient way to treat them, and they don’t get tracked,” she said. “Treatment medications for those drugs are lacking, so stabilizing people for behavioral treatment is difficult. All we have is behavioral treatment—cognitive-behavioral therapy, self-help and social support. People have lingering psychotic symptoms. First time psychotic episodes with marijuana and other psychotropic drugs are increasing, and earlier onset of schizophrenic symptoms tends to happen with marijuana use.”
She advocates more education about these drugs on the rise with meager treatment options for abusers.