Chris Bell

00:00Yeah, man. It's authentic. That's sweet. Yeah. I'm just now getting over the hurricane of Shannon Briggs that came through this with a storm of Let's Go Champ. He's a maniac. Yeah, he is a maniac. So I'm glad we can get you in here today because explain to everybody, first of all, if people don't know, Chris produced and what did you direct it and produce it and Bigger, Stronger, Faster and Prescription Thugs. and prescription thugs, which is particularly important because a lot of it was about the prescription industry and how many people get hooked. And you've had experience with it. We've all known people and lost people that have had problems with prescription pills. But you wanted to come in and talk about Kratom. Sure. Yeah. You know, a while back when I was actually hooked on pills, I was looking for a way to get off them. I would search the internet every day on a way to

00:53get clean and sober. And I came across this thing called Kratom. And they said, oh, they sell it at these head shops and different things. And, you know, back then I wasn't really familiar with the head shop scene or anything like that. So I actually, I never found it. I never went out and sought it out. And then after going through rehab, I had heard about it a couple more times from some people. I've heard about people taking it to get off of opiates. It's a plant. It's a 100% natural plant comes from, you know, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia. That's where they grow it. It's been used for like 2000 years. Basically, it works sort of like an opioid, but it's not a drug. It's just a plant, you know, and it has these properties that have helped people bridge the gap when they get off of opiates. So they don't have withdrawals. What it also does is help relieve pain.

01:40And it also helps with anxiety. It helps with, you know, elevates your mood and it does all these great things. but the government now wants to make it a Schedule I drug. So you're saying it's not a drug, though? Well, I guess it's semantics. It's like how do you classify something? It's been around for 2,000 years. No one's ever done any studies on it being a drug, and no one's ever done any studies on it. Well, there's been actually a lot of studies on it being a supplement, but they aren't like these FDA-approved double-blind placebo studies that they're requiring for it to be on the market as a normal supplement. But it has psychoactive properties. Well, it'll elevate your mood. So we're just talking about alpha brain or some, you know, nootropics. It'll work like that and it'll elevate your mood.

02:25I mean, I don't know where the real distinction is between high and elevation of mood or where, you know, what the difference is really there. But it doesn't make you feel like it's not like I smoked pot. It's more like I had a good cup of coffee. You know, I'm fired up. Back in the day when I used to take pre-workout supplements, caffeine and ephedrine, it kind of feels like that. I just feel like fired up and ready to go and I don't feel pain. That's interesting that Kratom gets you fired up. I would have never I would have thought it would have mellowed you out. I have zero experience with it. You have some here now and you could drive in this stuff. Is it? Well, they tell you not to operate heavy machinery and things like that, but I've never had a problem with it. I actually take it to drive. So, you know, tomorrow I'm leaving for Thanksgiving. I got to drive six hours.

03:11So that's your ass I'm taking Kratom before I get in the car to go because it actually helps me focus. It relieves the pain. Wow. That sounds crazy. So it mimics the effects of opioids, right? Opiates. But it also elevates you? Well, sure. So like if you, I don't know if you've ever taken Oxycontin or Vicodin or any of those things like that. No. A lot of times when people take that, they feel like, you know, they're indestructible. I took Vicodin, I think it was Vicodin, once when I had my first knee surgery in 93. I fucking hated it. I took it literally one time. And I guess for me, you know, I guess it's different for everybody. I think it was Vicodin. It might have been Percocets. But whatever the doctor gave me for pain, I took the pills. I was like, oh my God, I feel so fucking stupid. I'd rather be in pain than feel this dumb. Sure.

04:03I think a lot of times what happened with me is I came out of anesthesia from a surgery, and I was all doped up on the drugs, and I didn't even know it. So it just kind of just kept going. You know what I mean? I never stopped getting high from the time I was in the hospital for like six years. Right. So for me, it was like opiates were a real big problem. They were ruining my life. They were destroying me. Now that I got sober two and a half years ago and I started taking Kratom, I feel great. Like everything in my entire career is going skyrocketing. Things are going great. My relationship with my girlfriend is great. Just everything has been good. So I can't really see the bad in it. So when they decided to make this a Schedule I drug, we decided to make a documentary about it and show the world what it really is.

04:46That seems really bizarre that you would have a problem with drugs and then this would help you. Like I would think that if you have a problem with drugs, you would want to stay away from anything that's sketchy. Sure. But a big part of addiction you got to remember is that we relapse. People relapse. If you can have something, it actually helps with alcohol withdrawals and alcohol cravings. So if we have something that will help me to not crave those things or even think about them and also not feel pain, like why should I have to be in pain? Are you in pain right now? Not right now because I took Kratom before I came here. But I would normally be in a lot of arthritic pain. Okay. And you have arthritis just naturally, right? Double hip. Yeah, double hip replacement surgery. I need both of my knees done, my shoulders shot, you know, kind of everything. I'm kind of pretty beat up.

05:35And so for me, it just works. You know, my brother, who's also a power lifter, he takes it as well before he trains, and he really loves it too. Takes it before he lifts weights. Yeah. Wow. And he's trying to bench 600 pounds, so it's not like he's using a little bit of weight. No, your brother's a gorilla. Yeah, he's pushing it. That's so strange to me. This is all like, I'm glad we didn't talk before this podcast because I had a thought in my head of what this stuff is. And you're changing it right now. What did you think it was? Well, I felt like it was probably just a good way that people could relieve pain naturally. But I felt like if someone was going to describe it to me, I thought they were going to tell me about an opiate type of effect. That it just mellows you out, but it doesn't hurt you. There are different strains of it.

06:16There's a strand called Bali, which is like supposed to be good for anxiety and kind of calm you down. There's a strand called Green Melee, which is like sort of good. That's the one is a good pre-workout. But they're all kind of the same thing. You know, they all have the same alkaloids. Kratom has 27 alkaloids. So when you look at it, it actually has alkaloids that work like opiates. They attach to opiate receptors, but not in the same way. if you look at oxycontin when it attaches to an opiate receptor i mean it's like you know it's stuck in there it's like screwed in basically if you think about like a screw that opiate it's screwed in there so tight that you could never just pull it out you'd have to you know unscrew so with um with the kratom though it kind of like balance it kind of like drifts around the

07:01top of that opiate receptor it doesn't it doesn't attach nearly as hard they say that opiates um attach a thousand times greater to the opiate receptor than anything found in nature and kratom is found in nature. Oh, wow. But what about heroin? Like the actual poppy seed is found in nature, right? So yeah. And they have to do stuff to it to make it right. You know, heroin, they have to do stuff with coca leaves to make cocaine. They have to, you know, it's like, marijuana and kratom are probably the two most similar things. And when I went to interview Senator Mark Pocan last week about, he was the one that wrote a letter to the government. He wants to keep Kratom legal. He thinks that, you know, it should be allowed for everyone. And I said to him, what do you think about marijuana? And he was like, I just think it should all be

07:45legal. And it was the first time I was ever in the presence of somebody that works for the government saying that they think that weed and Kratom and all this stuff should be legal. And it's because he had a good head on his shoulders about the problems that people face every day. You know, it's not black and white. Like I live in this gray area. I don't, I'm in a lot of pain but i don't want to take opiates right you know i shouldn't have to take opiates so where's the pressure coming from to turn this stuff into a schedule one drug if there's no if there's no negative response by the body you're not having people die of overdoses is there an ld50 rate on this stuff uh well if you look at you know i mean you're saying where where is the ld50 explain i should we should probably explain to people lethal dose at 50 meaning if

08:29you take 50 rats and you give them a pound of this shit 50 of them or you know 25 will die at a certain level we've heard about you know there's been no deaths from marijuana right kratom is the same thing no no deaths there have been zero deaths and there there have actually been 15 deaths that have been brought to the fda and the dea's attention those 15 deaths i actually went and interviewed one of the one of the mothers the kid was on three psych meds he was withdrawing he was or withdrawing from three different psych meds. I have a black box warning that says, warning, if you're a teenager, you might commit suicide, basically. And this kid committed suicide. He didn't die from a Kratom overdose. He died from committing suicide. And his mother wants to blame Kratom. She doesn't think that the psych meds had anything to do with it. And I don't want to say that Kratom had nothing to do with it.

09:17We don't really know. And what I really call for with Kratom is just more research. Like I want people to put in the money to do the research, to make sure that this is safe. And let's see if we can solve this opiate epidemic. Let's see if we can crack down, basically lower the amount of opiate prescriptions we have in this country. I just read an article the other day, one in seven people in America are gonna be affected with addiction problems. Wow, that's crazy. One in seven. Yeah, that means somebody in your family. That's insane. Somebody in your family will be affected by it. That's more than 10%. Yeah. That's weird. That's weird, right? And it's not that everybody gets addicted. They're affected by addiction. My girlfriend was really affected by addiction because when she met me, I was taking drugs and drinking every day. And that's a big effect, especially on women. It's tough.

10:10It's a tough thing to handle. Now, I can understand this woman whose son died being – I can understand her remorse and looking to point the blame at someone. And a lot of times people are reluctant to point the blame towards something that a doctor prescribed. And they'll automatically say, well, it probably wasn't that. It was probably this other thing that's not regulated. You know what she said to me? She said, Chris, I'm going to pray for you because I know you're taking Kratom. And I'm going to pray for you that you're OK. And I was like, you know, lady, you don't need to pray for me. Like I've been taking it for a year, you know, and I think that people just get it wrong. And I feel bad for her.

10:45I feel bad for her in the fact that she can't just realize that – she can't look at the research and see because when I went and interviewed her, she said, well, I'm not even sure if Kratom killed him. And this is after a gigantic – they mount this gigantic media coverage of this story, right? Like this was all over. And now like two years later after the damage has been done, she's kind of coming back and saying, well, I don't know if it was Kratom. But she already did the damage. Like these are these deaths are the reason why the DEA wants to ban it. Well, the DEA, though, is going on. What kind of evidence? I mean, when they do a scientific analysis of Kratom and they break it down, did they find they don't find anything toxic in it, do they? No. Well, I talked to Melvin Patterson. He's the spokesman for the for the DEA.

11:30And when I talked to Melvin Patterson, what he told me is that they lean on the FDA a lot for these kind of decisions. Right. So they go to the FDA and they ask the FDA, can you give us an eight point? It's like some sort of thing that they have in place. It's like an eight point inspection to make sure that this drug is not dangerous. And if it is dangerous, it's deemed dangerous. They'll take it off the market based on the FDA's research. So the DEA had asked the FDA for that eight point inspection. The FDA never went ahead and did it. So the DEA got upset and said, well, we're going to ban it anyway because we're waiting on you guys. And then there was a big uproar. There was 100,000 people signed a petition, partly due to you tweeting about it and things like that. There was a guy, Andrew Turner. He tweeted you. He was an Iraq war vet. And you should see his video.

12:18He can't even speak without Kratom. He cannot talk normal without Kratom. He speaks with all these ticks and twitches in his face due to, they think, maybe PTSD and some other problems that had affected him. And now he takes Kratom, and those twitches all go away. He did a video on YouTube that was kind of amazing. He stopped taking it for six days, and you can see all these twitches are evident. And then he goes back on the kratom, and they all disappear. Whoa. Wow. So who's pressuring the DEA to turn this stuff into a Schedule I drug, and why Schedule I? There's a couple patents that are on the alkaloids that are in the plant. So I think that Big Pharma would be the first place to look. They have a couple patents. They want to basically take this. You know, I think it's actually I don't I don't look at it as being that bad.

13:09But why make why make the organic cratum illegal in order to turn this into a more powerful drug? They think that they can extract some of these alkaloids. Right. There's two alkaloids, metagenine and the other one is like seven hydroxy metagenine. It's like too technical for anybody to really care about. But there's two alkaloids that they really care about that help with opiate withdrawals and help with pain. And those are the two. And they actually just want to ban the two alkaloids. But you can't do that because it's in the plant. So you have to ban the whole plant. And to me, you know, you said it the best. You said making something else illegal is like archaic. It doesn't make any sense. What are you going to do to the people? You know, five states just legalized marijuana. Now you're going to throw people in jail for kratom. It doesn't make sense.

13:51Well, I'm worried about this new administration When it comes to For various reasons But I'm worried about him when it comes to being Compromised by Big Pharma I really am, you know, it's such a business Oriented administration And he's bringing in all these old dudes Like they're right out of that TV show, The Strain Like they're the vampire dudes that are hanging out With the Nazis, like I'm looking at all these people Like Mike Pence, all these old dudes He's bringing in with these archaic ideas I'm like, ugh They're all against gay marriage Yeah. I mean, it's ridiculous. You know, I was hoping that maybe Trump would bring in some people that would be opposite of his thinking. And, you know, it just hasn't happened.

14:28Well, he was a Democrat for a long time. I mean, Donald Trump was always a Democrat. I mean, him running as a Republican is kind of odd if you look at his history. But he's going all in with a lot of these people. And some of them are deeply opposed to marijuana legalization federally. And, you know, that stuff is very counterintuitive and counter progressive. And the marijuana legalization, we've been reading a lot about that, and it's going to be what a lot of people think might be a mess because making it recreational opens it up to Marlboro and all these other companies that make tobacco products to now start selling cannabis and turning it into what we already have, bullshit. Well, I'm not opposed to them making it commercial because I feel like the more people do it, the better we're all going to be. Sure. I really believe that.

15:17I mean, people say, oh, you're a podhead, you think like that, bro. But I really think it's a, I think, I mean, you can call it a drug, but whatever it is, it is a component of life that makes people calmer, makes people happier, makes people more sensitive. I just think it's better for people. I was 100% against it ever since I was in college. Like, I just thought, like, marijuana, wow, that's the worst thing, you know. And steroids. I thought marijuana and steroids were the devil. And come to find out, it's all the drugs that the doctors actually prescribe us that are the devil, that we need to look out for. You know, they're not necessarily I shouldn't say the devil They help a lot of people But we have to be very careful about what we're putting in our bodies that our doctors give us We can't just say well the doctor said it's fine and just you know, take it

15:57And that's how I got addicted to opiates and a lot of people want to say i'll get it on instagram all the time Well, bro, it's your fault, man. It's all your fault and they know nothing about addiction. It's not my fault It's not anybody's fault. These things happen because it's a progressive You know, these drugs were designed to make you addicted so to say it's my fault it's kind of ridiculous because the drug was actually designed so people get hooked on it yeah you just didn't outrun it that's all it is i didn't outrun it yeah i mean that's really what it is it's like some people outrun it and you get away from it you should have been stronger bro yeah you know like all right how many people have to get fucking addicted before you recognize that it's a problem that is a giant problem in this country we lose a person

16:35to addiction every 19 minutes in this country accidental overdoses i think i've said that stat several times on your show and it's just you can't say it enough you know we have this giant opiate epidemic and we have something here well you know in in our film we're just we're starting to make a documentary about this and in the film you know we show a guy who has a not a not a huge habit but six bike it in a day habit and he cuts that down to zero using kratom and we watch that you know that process because I feel like that's important to show that like hey you can actually do this now if we have people that are really really addicted to heroin and really, really addicted to these other drugs, they might need something like Suboxone and then Kratom. You know, like we don't really, we don't really know. You know, my friend Kelly Dunn, who owns the company Urban Ice that we were just, we were

17:21just talking to, he actually bought a farm up in Washington and it's his intent. If people don't have money to go to rehab or do whatever, they can come up and visit him, you know, and get Kratom. He's actually, you know, a licensed therapist and all that stuff like that. So, like, I feel like it's sort of this grassroots movement to try to get people to even try Kratom. That's what I've been trying to do is get people like, hey, just try it. Like you said, with marijuana, the more people that try it, the better off we'll be. And I really feel that with Kratom, too. You're making me want to try it. Now, what is the name? Is it a Kratom plant? Like, what does a plant look like? Yeah, it's a plant. It's a plant. It kind of looks like, I don't know, like a poison ivy plant. I'm sure you can maybe pull one up. But it basically just looks like any other plant, shiny green leaves.

18:07I don't think I even heard about it until maybe a couple of years ago, and I didn't know how to pronounce it until a month ago. Well, people say kratom, kratom, tomato, tomato, whatever. I didn't know what it was. I mean, I had rarely heard of it. I think someone gave me some after a show one day. I'm like, I'm taking this shit. That's what it looks like? There it goes. It kind of happens a lot. Like somebody will say, hey, here, try this. And I never trust that either. Yeah. But for me, what happened to me is very interesting. I have a lot of friends in this you know in this world of You know fitness and whatever and so I just end up talking to a lot of people that try a lot of different things So after I got done with the opiates I was on dr. Drew show and he said well you should try Advil and Tylenol in combination That's gonna be better than an opiate for your pain for your chronic pain

18:48So I said okay I start trying that then I get a phone call from my friend who lives in England Who tells me he just had a kidney transplant because of all the NSAIDs he was taking so now he doesn't know non-steroidal anti-inflammatories which are advil sure yeah advil and tylenol and stuff that so he had a kidney transplant i just thought like christ you know i didn't think that that was going to necessarily happen to me but i was taking like 10 advil a day you know that could happen then right i mean how many were your friend taking he said about 20 and he was a new bane addict before that so he doesn't know if it's a new bane blah blah blah right so you get in all these problems but i just thought like well look taking 10 advil and tylenol a day because i was taking them in combination that just can't be

19:26good for you. So my friend Kelly hit me up. He's like, Hey man, you should try this plant. It might help you. And what was your first experience like with it? My first experience was, um, so my friend Kelly was very serious about this and he wants to help a lot of people. He said, I'll fly to Sacramento. I was living up by my brother at the time. So he flew out to Sacramento to see me. He gave me some kratom. He went to his hotel. I went to my house. I had just been filming with my brother for like five hours straight. And my arthritis was like at its worst point, like the worst it could possibly be is that from standing standing up yeah yeah just get beat up you know and um also like standing on concrete floors and gyms and stuff like that kills you so i was just like beat up i took the kratom and then he came over later that day to talk to me i said dude

20:10you're not gonna believe it but i'm in you know like i don't feel any pain right now no pain and it took a good two or three months for me to really get into it because like i might tell you now and you might go home and try this right right and you might say yeah chris whatever the fuck like That doesn't work. But then for some reason, you'll go back to it. And then you go back to it and go back to it. And then all of a sudden, like, it's a miracle to you. I don't know. That's how it was for me. I'm not saying that's how it's going to be for everyone. Well, I'm not in any pain. So if I took it, it would just get fucked up. Well, elevate your mood. Elevate my mood. I'm pretty happy right now. I don't want to get more elevated. I'll do something silly. Yeah, you might. You never know. Yeah. But also helps with that. It lowers your blood pressure. It helps with anxiety. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right?

20:50So you can look at it for several health benefits. But it doesn't get you to a point where you can't drive or you don't know how to type. I should probably be responsible and say it hasn't gotten me to that point. It hasn't gotten you to that point. But I have taken too much of it. Oh, okay. Give me one of them packets and tell me how much you're supposed to take. Well, it's all going to be relative, right? You would take one of these? What do you weigh? 190, 200? Yeah, somewhere in the range of 200. So I take six of them, but I worked up to six of them. Six pills? Yeah. I would suggest this is a packet of pills. Sure. Now, Kratom a lot of times is taken in a powder form, but it tastes disgusting, so I can't handle the powder. So I just take the capsules. Yeah, somebody gave me in a powder form, and I was like, oh, heroin. You know what? You want to hear something really interesting?

21:38I was supposed to speak at an AA meeting the other day, and I got a phone call from somebody at the AA. If I took some right now, how much should I take? Take two. Okay. But you know, like, I was supposed to speak at an AA meeting, and I got a phone call from a good friend of mine, and she said, well, I'm confused now because I'm not sure if you're sober. Oh, because you're taking Kratom. I'm taking Kratom, and it affects your mind. Oh, so she's worried that you're fucking up. They're worried that I'm fucking up. And you know what? It actually hurt me. Like, it hurt. It hurt to hear that from somebody that, like, helped me get sober. Right. It really hurt my feelings. I don't mean to sound like a pussy, but I heard my feelings to hear, like, hey, you're not sober from people I really look up to. Right. Well, I can understand their worry. I totally understand their worry. It's so confusing.

22:23It sounds like you're doing a heroin substitute, right? Sure. A natural heroin substitute. And it's been called herbal heroin. So I can see their concern. So is that maybe the same sort of concern that led the DEA to take a close look at this? Because, I mean, if you look at it, I mean, everyone wants to worry that the DEA is in bed with big pharma and it's all about business and they're here to screw over the American people. Keep these legal, natural things away from us. But I had the same sort of reservations. I mean, I didn't know until you came in here today. I didn't know that you could operate cars on it and doesn't fuck with you and that you take it before a drive. Like, I would have never imagined that. I do. You know, I'm not saying that. Right.

23:04I don't want to be here and be irresponsible. I don't think I don't want to say, oh, everybody should take Kratom and everybody, you know, but I feel like I feel like I know that it's safe enough to try. For example, I know it's safe enough for anybody to try. So I've seen it. I've seen it. And, you know, thousands of people that are that are using it. I get emails every day from people that take Kratom because we're doing a documentary. And you know as well, you know, when you're I feel that media has the power to change the world. I feel like what you do, what I do, we actually have a voice and we have a power that can change people's minds. My film Bigger, Stronger, Faster completely changed people's minds on steroids. It did. It changed my mind. It gave me a view into it that I never had before.

23:45And that and then there was a was it an HBO spread? Was it real sports? Did a whole thing on steroids? Yeah, real sports. Yeah, it was real sports. And they were essentially saying, where's the bodies? Everyone's talking about people dying from steroid overdoses. No, it's not what's happening. They were dying from pain pills. I didn't get to tell you how I turned around on marijuana. How? The Joe Rogan experience. Listening to your show. That's why I say media is important. I feel like we can change the world. We can change things. I was dead set against it. Thought it was for losers. I'm like, oh, Joe Rogan smokes pot. Maybe it's not so bad. So I started doing the research. I'm not saying I just jumped in and started doing it. But I've done the research. And I know enough that it's that it's safe. You know, we know it's 100 percent safe. I mean, you could definitely take too much of it.

24:32Just like you were saying you could take too much Kratom. You can get too fucking high and freak out. That's true. But if you just get a little bit high, you're going to be all right. Marijuana and Kratom are both they're both miracle plants. They're both plants that are put here. You know, if you believe in God, I believe that, you know, these things were put here on the planet for us to use to heal ourselves, to feel better. There's nothing wrong with feeling better. I think we have a big aversion in this country to people being able to feel better. Like anything – taking Kratom, oh, it makes you feel better. Like why is that a crime? It shouldn't be a crime. It should be – we have alcohol on the market. That makes people feel better. We have cigarettes and tobacco, and that makes people feel better. They get a little buzz from it or whatever. Why not Kratom? Like what's the big deal?

25:12Yeah, we have a reluctance to indulgence in some ways, right? Like we're worried about indulging in something, something pleasurable, like it's bad for you. Well, people say, oh, Kratom, I heard that makes you high. And I'm like, well, first of all, what would be so bad with that? That's a good feeling for a lot of people. I don't see that that's so bad to have a little bit of euphoria. Now, being high on cocaine or crack or whatever, that's a completely different story. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about like a little elevation in your mood. Yeah, there's a big difference between being high and being impaired. Sure. I think we put those two together. And they're always in the same category for some strange reason. And they don't necessarily have to be. Like a nice cup of coffee gets you high. Yeah. I mean, it does.

25:57Look, I drink a cup of coffee in the morning and I start slapping my hands together and I want to start doing shit, you know? If I drank that little caveman coffee nitro, I'd be bouncing off the walls. Yeah, I'm sure. Because that's so strong. And I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I love it. I think it should be legal. And I think that, you know, if Kratom's in the same league as coffee and Starbucks is the biggest business in our country, like, why is it so bad? So since the people like, you know, people that are sober and that are helping you with that, they have concerns about it. And there's a lot of people that it seems like this is a drug or a plant, I should say, that just does not have enough. There's not enough data. There's not enough research. Not enough research. And that's what we want to do.

26:37We would like, you know, look, every time there's been an epidemic in this country, we had a polio outbreak. Right. And our president was affected by it. So what did we do? We decided, you know what? No more polio. Let's fix the problem. I don't see why the government doesn't say, look, we're losing a person every 19 minutes. This is way more serious than polio. Why are we not putting funding into researching things like kratom? There's other things that are like kratom, too. Why aren't we researching these things? There's another plant called Akiyuma, another plant called Soursop. There's several plants that are like kratom, do similar things. Why can't we study those to stop the deaths, to, like, slow it down, you know, to make a dent in the deaths from opiate addiction? There's no reason why the government can't fund that. Now, what are these other plants? Akiyuma and what was the other one?

27:24One's called Akiyuma and one's called Soursop. And the reason why I even know about those is because what happens as soon as something gets banned, you look for the next thing. Right. Right. Oh, wow. So you step ahead. I don't even know what those things do. But I know we like as soon as Kratom was banned, we were on the Internet looking for like, well, what else is like it? Because I don't want to have to deal without it. Well, I think it was you that tweeted something and I might have retweeted or just read it. But you tweeted something about someone getting arrested, like some big drug bust where they busted him for Kratom, which wasn't even illegal. Yeah, that's that's a weird thing. That was a guy, I think maybe because that that guy's neighbors had it out for him. They sort of like had it out for him and they saw these big green bags of what they thought was drugs at his house.

28:10And the cops went to raid it and they're like, we're not sure what this is. So we're going to have to arrest you. Oh, God. You know what I mean? It causes like a pretty, pretty weird problem. You know, the thing was when they made it illegal, I had two giant boxes of Kratom sitting in my garage. And all I could think about was like, OK, the cops are going to come here and they're going to bust me because they know I'm doing a documentary about it. I'm going to be, you know, the marked man. But I decided that, like, no matter what happened, I was going to keep those boxes in my garage and I wasn't going to worry about it because I figured, like, what are they going to do? Come arrest me. You know how stupid that would look because that's all going in the documentary. Right.

28:43Right. You know, so I don't really have a fear that other people have because I feel like I put everything on camera and put everything, you know, out there. So I feel like but but other people, it is serious. Like the the vet I was talking about, he can't live without Kratom. What are we going to do? Take it away from him? What are we going to do in the meantime? You know, if we if we ban it, what are we going to do? What are we going to do with that guy? Yeah. Like, where is he going to go back on opiates to the VA hospital? Like it's what a weird situation. So we really need you, Chris. This documentary is actually important. Yeah, it's very important. It's very important because it's not just about Kratom. Yeah, it is about how the DEA and the FDA protect the interests of our federal government.

29:28And, you know, they keep the money all in the pool to themselves and they don't want anybody else in. And I feel like it's just greed. It's total greed. It's not has nothing to do with it being dangerous. Well, we're definitely more aware of that kind of greed and those kind of compromises where these companies compromise various branches of the government for their own personal interest. And this kratom is a perfect example of that because so many people, including me, know almost nothing about it. This is a weird one. This is one where they almost got in before people could understand what exactly it was, which is rare in 2016. There's something like that available. They've never had anything like this. The DEA has never seen a reply like this. There was 100,000 people that signed a petition.

30:14But one thing that I need to get out there to everybody, the one way we can keep this legal and keep other things legal as well is everybody needs to go to a website that the DEA has set up. It's called KratomComments.org. So just K-R-A-T-O-M Comments.org. You can go there and you can leave, you know, up to a 5,000 word message, you know, about Kratom. And it doesn't have to be from somebody who takes it. Like you could just be like, hey, I think this should I watched this podcast and I really feel this needs to be researched more. And, you know, whatever whatever you feel needs to be said, you can just say here. So, you know, like I went on and I left a comment about why I use it and what I like about it. And I feel like everybody that does needs to do that or they're not doing their job.

30:58And what is that? Put that back up again, Jamie, please. It says December 21st, December 1st deadline, submit your comments. Now, what is the deadline? What's it about? That's why I was a pain in the ass and kept texting you because I was like, dude, can we get on before this deadline? Well, it's very important that people know that there's a deadline for these comments. And it's in a couple of days. It's December 1st. And if you make a comment by December 1st, the DEA has to read it like they have to look at it. So even if you write a bunch of gibberish, they have to read it, which is kind of funny. but don't don't do that though folks they'll go he's on kratom he can't even fucking spell no but i'm saying they have to they have to look at all of them so if we can get 10 000 comments i think there's maybe half that right now and your show is so powerful if we can get 10 000

31:42comments then this is going to stay legal wow so it was supposed to be schedule one they had a plan to make a schedule one a while ago it's very interesting the dea only has one option the the only the DEA has an emergency scheduling so there was a drug called Flocka have you heard of Flocka no Jamie can you look up Flocka FLA KKA because you have to see this Flocka was a drug in Florida where everybody was going crazy they were like smashing shit and like really they were like smashing through their car windows and jumping on cars and they were like zombies and that got banned like immediately and nobody there was no like there was nobody that stuck up no A new synthetic killer drug. Yeah, wow. That was something. See, it made him crazy. Yeah. Well, you see what some of these people do? Look at these people. Oh, my God. That guy's on Flocka. Is that real? But see, what happens is, I don't know.

32:31I don't know. It's a synthetic drug. Whoa. So I think Kratom gets lumped in with these synthetic drugs like Spice and Flocka. Watch this guy jumps into the back of the car. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Yeah, see like What the fuck? This is someone on Flocka? Holy shit Can you imagine? That's like that movie He goes flying off the car back into the car It's amazing Whoa What the fuck? Why am I not here? Look at this guy, smashing Oh my god It's like the most entertaining video I've ever seen So even if it's not real, I love it But I think it was a drug that they were selling In head shops down in Florida and it got banned within like, I don't know, a couple months of it being on the market. Always fucking Florida. God damn Florida. The gateway to demonic possession. I was saying that's like I Am Legend, like those fucking crazy things from that Will Smith movie. And monsters, yeah. So this guy jumped on this guy's hood

33:34and he's trying to shake him off? Is that what happened here? All I'm saying is that when we sell things, things that they sell in head shops, like they sold Spice. Remember Spice was a synthetic marijuana. And the problem with it is that a lot of times they're unregulated. Like nobody – that spice just came on the market. There was no regulation. They were selling it in head shops. They were getting away for it. Like I think everybody puts this stuff on the market to get away with it. But when kratom was put on the market, it wasn't put on the market to get away with it. It's been in – like the problem is like there's a law in America called the D'Shea Act. Have you heard of that? No. D'Shea is basically the Dietary Supplement Health Something Act, right? I forget. But basically what it does is anything that was on the market before 1994 gets grandfathered in and is a legal supplement.

34:19So like even if they didn't do the research on it or whatever, before 1994 – and that's something that Orrin Hatch put in place to kind of keep the supplement industry – help the supplement companies. It doesn't help us as a consumer because we don't know what we're getting because there's no regulation. But I feel like that the Shea Act says if there was a supplement on the market before 1994, that it needs to stay legal. And Kratom has been sold in Florida. They've been selling it for 30 years. They've been selling it before 1994. So I'm actually just trying – I actually went to the Freedom of Information Act and summons the records. We summon the records for importation of Kratom. Now, if we can prove that Kratom has been imported to the United States before 1994, we have a pretty solid case to say, you know, look, this gets grandfathered in just like everything else. Wow.

35:08So it will be grandfathered in as a nutritional supplement. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure they're going to make it harder than that. You know, I'm sure like if we have the proof, but I'm just going out at full blast. You know, I feel like if you go at something with everything you got and you look down every avenue, you're going to find something. You know, it's kind of like a, I feel like a lawyer right now. Wow. What a strange predicament. But it's very unusual that there's something that's this well-loved by the people that are taking it, but so little is known about it by most people, including me. I have to say something that's very important. The people that are against Kratom are just against the fact that they don't know a lot about it. Right. There's very few people that are, like, really dead set against it.

35:46There's a congresswoman down in Florida who's dead set against it because they want to boost their election. They want people to vote for them. So they say, oh, we took this off the street. We saved your children. And you're like, she doesn't really know nothing about Kratom, like to make it illegal. What has she said about it? Has she said anything? She told me, this is great. You interviewed her? Yeah, I interviewed her down in Florida. And she told me that, you know, look, when you talk to a mother whose baby was born addicted to Kratom, she's like, that's going to change you. And I said, can you get me that mother's name, address, and phone number so we can contact her? Yeah, yeah, sure. We'll get around to it. They've never produced that. We've asked. What, are you claiming there really was a mother whose baby was addicted to Kratom?

36:27We've asked three or four times and we haven't gotten it. However, however, I did interview a girl in Washington, D.C. who said that her baby was born. She was born. Her baby was born addicted to opiates. And that was a terrible, terrible thing that she had to go through. And and now she takes Kratom and she's fine and she's not going to relapse and she'll be fine. And her daughter ended up being fine and stuff like that. So what I'm saying is, like, these opiates are what people will be born addicted to. Not Kratom. They're looking down the wrong rabbit hole. So does Kratom have any potential addictive side effects? We don't know. It's hard to tell. How often do you take it? I take it usually every day, but I can give you some anecdotal evidence that I went to Thailand for two weeks a couple months ago. And I had been taking Kratom for four months straight.

37:19Then I had a two-week, you know, in Thailand. We were actually shooting a kickboxer movie. And after I got back from Thailand, I wasn't jonesing for Kratom. Like I didn't take it for two weeks because it's illegal there. So there was like a reason. Oh, it is illegal there. Yeah. Like I've never been to Thailand. And like the last thing I want to do is show up to Thailand and end up in Thai prison. Yeah, that doesn't sound fun. No, it doesn't sound fun at all. So I was like, you know, I was like, maybe they don't even take this seriously there. Maybe it's bullshit, but I'm not bringing it. But it is illegal over there? Yeah, it's illegal in Thailand. You know why it's illegal in Thailand? This is like – it's really interesting because if you look at this, like Mang Da is what they call it. It's like kind of a Thai name.

38:00But the reason why it's illegal in Thailand is because it was cutting into the opium profits. Oh, Jesus Christ. So what happens is people – That's probably exactly the same pressure over here. Exactly. But pills. This happened in the 40s, 1942 or 3. they they banned kratom and they wanted to um they basically kept it illegal because it was cutting into the money people people were taking it instead of opium instead of heroin wow and that's that's the same thing that's going to happen in this country but it's going to be different in this country it's going to solve a problem you know is is opium legal in thailand i don't think it's legal but like i think even you know it's like they just tried to get it get Kratom out so that nobody was taking it. Oh, I understand. So the people that were profiting off of opium, period. I think Kratom's more illegal than opium, if that makes sense. That's hilarious. Wow.

38:55What a weird rabbit hole this is. Yeah, to me, the whole thing is interesting because I completely get the other side. I don't want anybody taking something that's unsafe. I don't want to market something that's unsafe. But I don't make a dime from selling Kratom. Like that's not where my income comes from and I'm not going to sell it. So it's like it's not something where I'm like, hey, man, I can make billions of dollars off this. Let me just go on. Not only that, if anybody would have an interest in not promoting something that's addictive, it would be a guy like you as an intimate knowledge of what it's like to be addictive and under the spell. Sure. I think addiction needs to be looked at in a certain way, though, where you look at addiction and you go like, OK, I'm addicted to coffee. It's no big deal. You know, like what is that going to what is what's the problem?

39:39You know, what's the problem being like people are addicted to coffee? What's the problem? There really is no problem. You just need coffee. Addicted to sugar will lead to problems down the road, but not a problem today. Right. Addicted to cigarettes lead to a problem down the road, but not a problem today. You know, so we don't really know. There's not any long term studies to show that Kratom is good in the long term. There's not any studies, but we can go by the evidence that we do have, you know, and they've done a lot of studies in mice and all the studies in mice. like none of the mice die you know they're not and and the number one opiate addiction study they did was a University of Ole Miss whatever that Mississippi so Ole Miss Christopher McCurdy he's a guy they're doing the research and he really feels that this could be the savior for the opiate

40:25epidemic he feels that they need to make it stronger he feels I need to extract it make it stronger and that would be used for the opiate epidemic so that's why I said, I think there is potential for it to be studied as both a dietary supplement and as a drug. Because if you can, if you can make something out of kratom, that's going to help a lot of people, you know, it's like, what's the big, I don't really see it as a big problem if, if it could be both. Right. You know what I mean? Like let them make their money and whatever, but keep it legal for us. So in doing your documentary, what have you, what have you learned about the push to try to make it illegal? And when, when did it all start? It all started, I think, um shoot when did it start started like over the summer um i actually started doing the documentary a little bit before it i was like well maybe people she should know about this

41:11maybe this is something so you were doing it just to let people know about it and then along the way it started to be threatened it was weird it was like i started doing it going like is this going to be a movie or is this more like an infomercial like what is what is this gonna be you know right like i don't i don't want it to be like an infomercial because i'm not selling it or making your money off of it. I want it to be something that's very honest about what this product does. And so to me, the ban and the controversy is the best thing that it could ever happen because now people know about it and they're aware. As long as it doesn't get banned, we're okay. You have a knack for that. You know, you think about it, like in prescription thugs, you're making this documentary on pill addiction and then you get hurt during the middle of it,

41:53start taking pills and become addicted to pills during the middle of a documentary on pill addiction i'm either uh blessed or cursed i don't know what i don't know what that is you know you you might fucking manifest it or something man i i hope not because actually the next documentary is about cancer oh the reason well the reason i'm doing that the reason i do all my documentaries is because like i said we have the power to change the way people think and we have the power to open up people's minds about things that they might not know about well and also explore things you're very good at exploring things in a very objective way in a very honest way. And I think that that's so important in today's day and age, because it's so hard to know where, why a person's promoting something in one way or not promoting something in another way.

42:37It's like, what is the interest behind it? What's the motivation behind it? Sure. So to know that there's a guy like you who's doing this stuff, just completely honest and open and raw like that. It's very, very important. Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. Like number one, And being being respected by somebody like you just means so much to me because, you know, all my life, all I ever wanted to do was like I always wanted to prove myself. I always thought I had to prove myself as a kid, like I did this or that. But I feel like these movies just kind of automatically do that for me. I think you're absolutely right. Automatically validating like everything I've tried to do my whole life. You know, I wanted to be a big feature filmmaker and make Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

43:13And that couldn't be the first that's the furthest thing from my mind right now is to make movies that are, you know, big action movies that are mindless. I want to make big, you know, big documentaries that are smart. Well, it's interesting as life goes on and, you know, you change and evolve and, you know, your motivations change. But I recommend your movies to a lot of people, man, particularly the prescription thugs because of this. So many issues have come up over the last, you know, it seems like the last couple of decades in this country are just unprecedented numbers of people that are addicted to pills. It's crazy. There's a couple million people like walking around completely checked out. And I feel like it definitely needs to be. I still I can't wrap my mind around why the government hasn't stepped in and said we have to fight this opiate epidemic. I think they're getting paid off.

44:01Why isn't the government making the companies that make Oxycontin? Like, for example, Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma admitted, like, we got all these people addicted. We lied to doctors. They admitted it, and they got fined. But the fine was only, like, a little tiny percent of what they made. You get fined $200 million, or even if you get fined $1 billion, you made $8 billion, who cares? You don't even feel it because you're going to make another billion next year, another billion after that. They actually call it the price of doing business. They build in those fines into the product so they know, hey, we're probably going to get fined on this for $400 million. Let's just build it into the cost of the drug. I mean it's an insane system that we have here for products that are supposed to help people.

44:40Well, it's also this disingenuous thing that politicians do where they pretend they're looking out for the people. But yet how come you haven't heard a single politician in decades say a word about cigarettes? Obama got into office. He was smoking cigarettes when he got in. Which is just, that's half a million people just in this country die prematurely every year because of that. And I think, you know, if we look at tobacco and we look at the problems with tobacco, what's the big problems with it? They put all these chemicals in the tobacco. And if they could just ban that, I don't think actual natural tobacco is that bad for you. Well, how many people are dying from cigars? Not a lot. Not a lot. Not that I know of. I mean, maybe it's abuse. Maybe if you get crazy with it. But that's kind of like wine. You know, wine is great.

45:21But if you drink wine like four or five bottles a day, you're going to kill your liver. Yeah. It's just like so many things. But I feel like things like that, like wine and like wine feels like kind of like Kratom has this sort of self-limiting thing. Like wine, you could drink too much of it, but you feel so shitty. Right. And it's like Kratom's kind of the same way. Like as you take too much of it, you'll just feel so crappy that you're going to know never to do that again. What does it do? Like how does it make you feel crappy? Because you said you're taking too much. Just stomach ache. Stomach ache, nausea. you know and when I say so I guess I should I should mention that what I actually took I don't even know if it was kratom what I took was a product and I'll never do this again it was it was like some extract that somebody gave me and I tried it and that's what made me sick so

46:03it could have been way stronger than regular kratom there could have been something else in it but that's sort of that was my first like okay be smart about this look at the look at the packaging a lot a big problem with kratom is most of the kratom that's on the market this is the only company in the entire country or world that packages kratom like a dietary supplement every other supplement if you look on the back it'll say right here not for human consumption no that's a problem can they buy can people buy this right now yeah they could buy it yeah for now sure yeah and this company is from vegas so that they do a lot of business um in vegas they're actually in health food stores in vegas explain it to people so they could get it and obviously you nor i have any stake in this at all this is called urban ice urban ice organics they have a website yeah

46:48I have a website. I believe it's urbaniceorganics.com or urbanice.com. I'm not even sure, to tell you the truth. But any head shop should have Kratom. They saw a lot of this in Vegas, so in Vegas it's all over. But the other thing we talked about is why are they making illegal? The guy who owns this company made a lot of money off of it. I'm sure. Millions and millions of dollars. So when you make millions and millions of dollars, people want to know, like, hey, dude, you didn't go through the process. And I think we, Kelly and I were just talking like what the process to make something a, you know, dietary supplement is a long, arduous process. And I feel like Kratom may need to go through that process because like we don't have enough information on it and it hadn't been studied. It's sort of something that slipped through the cracks. Like nobody really knew about it. It wasn't that popular.

47:38And it's been around for 2000 years and no one ever decided to say, hey, this is a dietary supplement. Wow. Now, these other ones that you were talking about, the other ones when you were saying if this gets illegal, there's two that are similar. Name those again. What is it again? Soursop, I think, is one of them, and Akiyuma, which is like – I don't think it's Japanese or something. But Akiyuma and Soursop, I've never tried them. I don't know. I've just read about them. But they have a similar effect allegedly? That's what it says, yeah. That's what they say. But they haven't been as popular. So maybe – I feel like they're not as popular because they're probably not as good or strong, but I don't know. So, man. So do we have they isolated? Like, what is the pressure to try to get it illegal?

48:22Yeah, we we've kept trying to isolate, you know, and we've talked to the people that are against it and their Congress people that are against it. There are grieving parents that are against it. We you know, like nobody in big pharma is going to come out and say, hey, we're going to make this a drug. Right. And screw all you like they're not going to really say that. So it's really when you get into Washington, like we were just in Washington for a week and everything's so shady and underhanded in my mind. Like all these people are are working together. They're all in cahoots. You know, like everything's in everything seemed to be like, I don't know, just the congressman that I talked to, Mark Pocan from Wisconsin, marijuana and Kratom are both illegal there. And he's kind of fighting for it to be legal.

49:03And like I said, he's one of the only congresspeople I met that was like willing to go to bat for these kind of things. And I think we need more Congress people like that that are looking out for the citizens. So there are state laws against it? There's six states, I believe, that have banned Kratom. I think Wisconsin's one of them. Tennessee, Alabama. I don't remember the rest of them, but there's a couple states where it's banned. And what do they cite when they say that it's— Deaths and danger and kids taking it. Everything's about protecting the children and saving the children. But, you know, none of the people in the Kratom industry have never said like, hey, let's age restrict this. Let's make it, you know, 21 and over or 18 and over or 25 and over. It doesn't, you know, whatever, whatever they want to do. Like no one's even the FDA has never even come and talk. Like it's impossible.

49:52And this is the big problem. It's impossible to talk to the FDA or DEA. I just spoke to the spokesman for the DEA last week, Melvin Patterson. And I said, hey, Mr. Patterson, I would really like to come down and do an interview with you. He's like, oh, yeah, sorry, we don't do that. And I want to say, well, you work for me. Like, you know, we pay their salaries. I know people hear that all the time. But, like, I think there just needs to be more transparency. 100%. In the DEA and the FDA. You can't find out. The FDA is like Scientology. Like, you can't find out anything about it. Like, when you try to do research on it, you try to find out, you know, who's doing what or whatever. There's not a whole lot of transparency. And that's why documentary filmmakers like me have to use, like, the Freedom of Information Act. Where if we request something from the government, you know, they have to give it to us.

50:39And that's something that really helps us. So this is a I mean, we're talking about what a rabbit hole this is. But this is a weird rabbit hole for you to have started this out as something like you're you're finding this plant to be beneficial. You see all these people that are benefiting from it. You're like, hey, this is a great subject. I'm going to let the world know about it. And then as you're doing it, it there's you start feeling this dark push for it to be schedule one and to start making it legal. What's that journey been like? um weird you know i think um scary a little bit because uh you start this thing and i thought it was just going to go you know go down the two i mean i thought they were going to maybe make it illegal and then you know maybe we have nothing you know because once you make something a schedule

51:19one drug it's impossible ask the people the marijuana people it's impossible to take it off of schedule one right it's it can happen but it's really hard so i think the the idea is not to get it there in the first place well there was talk about the dea removing marijuana from schedule one this summer and they backed out of it. I just read like some more about that today. That's still kind of up in the air, huh? Well, they got close to it and they said they were going to reconsider it. And apparently a lot of people were very hopeful. They thought this is going to be it. Schedule one's ridiculous. No medicinal value. I mean, they've shown marijuana to cure some forms of cancer. To say there's no medicinal value for it is completely ridiculous. We need to start dumping our money into researching these plants because like how like, look, you have these

52:02pharma companies and i don't know if you've seen this show on discovery where they show you how they come up with new drugs they basically take like there's a machine it's like this fucking robot and it takes like every fucking substance in the world and combines it until like it makes millions and millions of different different kind of fucking like things you know different kind of drugs and then they start testing it on like every different disease to see if it works so it's like it's like shooting in the dark it's like they have no like they're like there's a machine that'll just make a drug and then they figure out if it works on something rather than like we already know that kratom works for this this and this and we already know that marijuana works for this this and this why not put the money into studying that rather than shooting in the dark making some weird

52:43you know combination have you seen that that no i haven't seen it at all but that sounds almost like it sounds like uh they're like like you know the like they use those algorithms to try to work the stock market it's something like yeah similar they're just throwing numbers up yeah well there's a lot of them that come out real bad i mean i know a dude who uh had a stroke a young guy from vioxx that stuff oh yeah yeah you should probably know about that arthritis medication yeah i know a guy in his 30s had a fucking stroke on that stuff yeah yeah see that's serious they pulled it off the market yeah they pulled that off the market i think there was 55 000 deaths from vioxx and kratom zero oh weird marijuana how many zero there you go how strange yeah man that's uh There's a business in selling people pills. We live in a twisted world. We do live in a twisted world.

53:35The fact that people are going to keep that from somebody who's in pain is ridiculous. Well, I'm hoping that as time goes on, we're slowly starting to understand that it is impossible for your doctor to know all the ramifications and repercussions involved in any drug. There's just no way. I was just on the show, the doctors, with a doctor whose son was taking Kratom. His son was a drug addict, and he kind of found out about it. And then his son said, Dad, I'm going to get off all the heroin. I'm going to start taking Kratom. And he said his son has been on Kratom now for, I don't know, like six months. He's been sober. He's been happier than he's ever been. And this doctor is 100% down with it. And he was on the show The Doctors With Me, and he was arguing with, you know, there's a guy from, what's that show, Intervention. One of the dudes from Intervention was on The Doctors With Us,

54:25arguing like, yeah, people get addicted to Kratom all the time. And it's like, dude, you're a marketing guy. Like these people in rehab, like you got to understand the reason why if you Google Kratom rehabs come up is because rehabs have marketing teams. They're trying to get as many people into the doors as they can. So they tell you Kratom's bad and they put it on their website. Narconon is a big rehab center. They're owned by Scientologists and they're all over the Kratom thing saying like, are you addicted to Kratom? Call us, you know, and it's just like I feel like the people that get addicted to her. Like I went to rehab. I've been in rehab with people that were there for marijuana. And you want to just be like, dude, what the fuck are you doing here? Like, but. Remember Celebrity Rehab? Yeah. Yeah. But people do have a problem with it. So it's okay. Like, you can go to rehab for anything. Right.

55:12So going for Kratom is no different than going for, like, depression or something. Or gambling. Yeah. You can go to rehab for gambling. So I don't know why they're marketing it to people. I think it's kind of sadistic in a way. Like, they're looking for people that are on Kratom, you know, to, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know why they. Well, perhaps if they don't have any personal experience with it, maybe it's not as nefarious as we think it is. Maybe they're just ignorant. Sure. And the good rehabs aren't doing that, I should say. Where I went, Cliffside Malibu, they don't have a Kratom thing on their website because they're a legitimate rehab center. I was talking about celebrity rehab. I remember when Eric Roberts was on it. It was hilarious. Everybody else is shaking and throwing up and sweating. Eric Roberts sitting there with a newspaper, a cup of coffee. He's got slippers on.

55:53He was just in there for pot. Yeah. Like there was no withdrawal. There was nothing happened. They're like, oh, what does it feel like? He's like, I feel fine. I just don't have weed. Well, the problem with when you tell somebody that they have a problem, they start thinking, fuck, I have a problem. Yeah. You know, like if you ever had a cop behind you and you never did anything. No, but you're like looking in the rear view mirror and you got both hands on a wheel. Yeah, you're like, how's my license? Is it good? It's good. My license is good. Did I pay my insurance? Fuck. Do I have a gun? There's no gun in this car. Why am I fucking freaking out? Yeah. Am I speeding? No, I'm going the speed limit. But meanwhile, there's something if someone tells you, hey, you've got a problem. You've got a problem. You might not think you have a problem, but you've got a problem. I'm like, fuck, I've got a problem.

56:35What's my problem? Your problem is kratom, or your problem is sex, or your problem is whatever the fuck it is, exercise. You're addicted to exercise. Someone can tell you you have a problem, and then most of us are at least a little insecure. Almost everybody I know is at least a little insecure. And as soon as someone accuses you of something, you start considering the possibility they're right Yeah, and then sometimes you try to hide it more Yes That's my, you know, as an addict, I was like, okay, well now they're on me I better really, really hide this I had a conversation one day with my dad I'll never forget it My dad is like the nicest person in the world You've seen him in the movies And one day I was out of money I'm in my 40s and I'm out of money That's ridiculous That's stupid, you know what I mean? Because I was a drug addict

57:18So my dad said to me, I don't know what's wrong with you, but I think you're a drug addict or an alcoholic or something. But there's no reason why a guy in there, 40 years old, should be out of money. And I'm like, you know what, man? He's right. And it was that conversation that it was about three months before I went to rehab. But, like, that was the conversation. Huh. It was that conversation. It was my dad being disappointed in me. It was, like, that conversation that really sort of shook me to the ground. Like, somebody telling me I had a problem, it, like, kind of shook me to the core. because he yelled at me when he said it and he never yelled at me. Wow. Well, sometimes that's all you need is one person's opinion who you really love. Yeah, booting the ass from dad. Yeah, and you go, shit. And my dad's been through everything. You know, he's had cancer.

57:59He's had, you know, half of his intestine pulled out. He's had all these issues and they're not due to drugs or alcohol. So it makes me feel even more guilty because, like, my issues are just due to something I'm doing. Right, right. Well, except arthritis. Yeah. I'm feeling it now. I don't know what it's doing, but something's going on. Got a boner? No. Does that happen? You should have probably warned me. No. Shit, man. I wish. No, just I feel good. It doesn't, it's not negatively affecting me in any way. I don't feel slow or anything like that. That's what I was assuming it was. I mean, literally, one of the things that I wanted to do before talking to you about this, I wanted to do no research. Because I literally wanted to just go in with my ignorance so that I can question you from ignorance. Interestingly enough, if you try to do research, it's kind of biased right off the bat from Google.

58:51Like I said, when you search Kratom, a lot of times what comes up are the rehab centers that are paying to be. Let's try it right now. And then if you type in Kratom ban, you'll get more of a across the board, up and down. I'm going to try it with Bing because I've been using Windows. So let's see if they have the same thing. What did you say? Mocking Bing? I don't know. Oh, no. Bing is not bad, man. I don't have any problems with Bing. Okay. Kratom Red on Amazon.com. See, they're trying to sell you it. Oh, they're trying to sell it. Yeah. Kratom Red. Okay. Drug abuse. Kratom effects. Okay. Narconon. I did not know Narconon is owned by Scientology. That's crazy. I didn't know that either, but I have my buddy Anthony Roberts. He was like, when I was doing Bigger, Stronger, Faster, it was like this dude that would always hit me up online about stuff, and he kind of knew everything.

59:40So I hired him to work on this movie as a researcher and a writer, and he's been teaching me a lot about how to find stuff. Let's see what the Narconon people have to say about it. Effects of drugs. So it's narconon.org, the effects of drug abuse. It says, Kratom is a relatively new drug to the U.S. and Europe and has been used for many years in Southeast Asia as an anti-diarrheal medicine. Hey. Does it really? You know, I've heard that. Yeah, a lot of people. So you got diarrhea, you take Kratom. A painkiller and a recreational drug. Kratom is the popular name for a tree, and the drug comes from its leaves. The drug may be bought in leaf form, but in this country it's more likely purchased as a capsule with a powdered leaf material or chopped up in the form of a leaf that can be used for a tea or for smoking. Yeah, this says tea on it. Do people make actual tea out of this?

60:30Yeah, they make tea out of it, yeah. Does it taste like shit? It tastes like shit. I think it tastes terrible. It's pretty bitter, you know. It says the effects of Kratom come on rather quickly and last between five and seven hours, although high doses can last longer. It's heavily promoted as a legal, undetectable safe drug that can be used to come off stronger drugs. It is not illegal in the United States, but the breakdown products of Kratom can be detected in some drug tests. Is that true for people who work at UPS or something? I haven't seen that happen, no. I don't think that's true. They might be scaring you? Yeah. They're probably trying to get you to join up? No, I don't think it would show up on a drug test because it's not an opiate. It's not the same ingredients. It says the breakdown products of kratom can be detected with some drug tests. Maybe. Maybe some drug tests that are looking.

61:15Well, there is a specific drug test that looks for it, you know, that will go in and look for just kratom. And that's what they use when somebody commits suicide or whatever. And they said, oh, is there kratom in their system or whatever? You know, and there's 15 deaths from kratom. 14 to 15 deaths are all polypharmacy, which means we're taking several different things. Right. Most of the time it's like polypharmacy, but it's like, oh, they were taking Xanax, Vicodin, and Kratom. And you're like, well, why would you blame it on the Kratom? It seems like the least egregious of all of them. If it's only in combination with other pharmaceuticals, that sounds crazy. Then there's no deaths. Yeah. I mean, that's like marijuana. It's like who knows how many people have died on marijuana and other drugs. It's funny that you bring up Thailand because they're using Thailand as an example here.

62:07More than 13,000 people were arrested for kratom-related crimes in Thailand. That's just because it's illegal in Thailand to preserve the opiate industry. They conveniently ignore that. So the drug is abused for its abused for its sedative or stimulating effects. Not used. It says abused. Well, see the thing is I I don't think that like taking a normal like a you know I think if I took you know 50 pills a day that would be abusing it I maybe take six pills a day maybe at the most ten and you're even the term pill is a weird word because what you did basically Take is powdered plants. Yeah Well, the term drug is a weird word if you went back and read that statement that you just read and Substituted the word plant it wouldn't sound bad at all the plant comes out of the powder the plant is this the plant does that It wouldn't sound bad, but when you use the word drug, it really paints it in a corner.

62:57Well, drug is such a weird word because it covers too many different effects. It covers stimulants, depressants. So here's what it says. A person using this drug may expect or may not expect or want the following undesirable effects of kratom. Edginess, nervousness, vomiting can be severe or prolonged. Nausea can be severe or prolonged. sweating, itching, constipation, delusions, lethargy, respiratory depression, tremors, aggressive or combative behavior, psychotic episodes, hallucinations, and paranoia. There's a big thing you just mentioned there. Respiratory depression has not been shown with Kratom. And that's what kills people with Oxy. What about hallucinations? Do people hallucinate on Kratom? I've never met one. Psychotic episodes? Never met one. Aggressive or combative behavior? I never really experienced that. The only thing I can say that I have experienced

63:50are people that feel better and are in better moods. Here's an interesting one. Addiction effects may include, number one, loss of sexual desire. People are like, fuck this drug. Loss of what? It will actually prolong you during sex. Oh, shit. Prolong you. So make it harder to finish, basically. Darkening of the skin or face. What do you want to be, black? That's an effect. That's why I take it. A negative effect. Well, you know where that comes from, darkening of the face and the skin? Oh. It comes from in Thailand when they did the study in 1975. They were researching the workers, the workers out in the fields. So they're researching these workers out in the fields that were chewing the kratom leaves. Saying, oh, they're turning brown. Because they're out in the field in the sun. They're out in the fucking sun. So stupid. So like, these people are turning brown. Oh, my God. That's so stupid.

64:43And that's listed as a side effect, melanin. Well, and then you'll have people like Congress people and other people that are fighting against this try to use that as a fact. Here's where it gets really weird. Withdrawal effects of Kratom are very similar to those of opiate-like heroin or prescription painkillers. Let's hear those. Here's the withdrawal effects. Diarrhea. I thought it was anti-diarrhea. Make up your fucking mind. Muscle pain. I thought it's good for pain. Yeah, it's great for pain. Okay. muscle tremors or jerking you were actually the the uh vet yeah all his muscle jerking and twitching goes away they're saying that that's a side effect restlessness and sleeplessness does it help you uh you know i haven't no i haven't like really stayed up all night on it but you know i look any you know there's adverse effects to everything that we could possibly

65:36ingest right so it's more like let's like take a big group of these adverse effects and see which ones occur more often you know in people and it really it really hasn't been shown across the board to do all these things to everybody you know so like there was one guy that was on kratom for three years and they said he's got to be addicted to kratom we're going to study him we're going to see what happens when he when we take him off kratom you know when he gets off kratom so he gets off kratom and you know what happened to him what he had a runny nose whoa yeah scary that was The only thing that he complained about was like a runny nose. Here in large font, it says, Narconon can help the person who is addicted to kratom in large words. And then it goes back. Well, every drug has different effects. Oh, man. The route back to sobriety is much the same from person to person.

66:30Recovery must include relief from incessant cravings near the beginnings of rehab. You know what we said about, we were talking, I actually heard your podcast and you brought me up on another one of your podcasts and we were talking about time, the amount of time it takes to get sober. Yeah. And I still believe that, right? I still believe like it takes time. To reset. Sure, but the thing that we have to talk about is like you don't just take this and get off of opiates. You take this and you go to AA meetings and you go to whatever works for you. Counseling. Yeah, you go to counseling, you go to a therapist and you talk to them. You talk to them about why you couldn't get off the drugs and you tell them you're taking this and you say, hey, let's see if we can if we can solve this problem. You know, but like, right. It's let's not be stupid about it.

67:18Like I went to the doctor and I got when I when I was addicted to opiates and I would drive around my car crying. I'll be crying saying I just want help. You know, my brother was dying from this. I knew he was going to die from it. I knew it. So I was driving around. I would cry. I'd be like, I need I need rehab. I need help. I don't know what to do. every rehab I called was like four thousand dollars six thousand dollars and I didn't have the money at the time I was a drug addict you know I was broke if I if I had known about something like this back then it would have completely changed the person I am now I would have I would have lost five or six years you know wow that's fucking crazy it's just crazy it's it's so it's so weird when you're a grown adult and all of a sudden you find out about something that's It's been around for thousands of years. It's been helping people.

68:03And you're like, I try to pay attention. How the fuck did I miss this one? For me, being like the guy who did bigger, stronger, faster, always talking about supplements and everything, I missed it too. Wow. I know about every supplement on the market. I know everything Onnit makes. I know every supplement that's out there. I look at them. I want to see what they do. And I missed it. That is really fascinating. It's just really, really fascinating. So now we're in this state where the DEA held off its Schedule 1 distinction, right? They were going to designate it as a Schedule 1. Sure. And the DEA isn't, I think, this big monster that everybody thinks. Everybody's like, oh, the DEA and blah, blah, blah. I think the DEA, I believe, from what I've gathered from this whole situation, is they're not happy about what happened. They didn't know.

68:56they weren't aware that this many people use Kratom and are happy about it. I think that they really didn't know. I don't think it's like, I don't think it's as devious as people think. Like, I don't think it was a big, you know, it definitely could be something that is pushed by big pharma. But I feel like the way that the DEA has reacted so far has been, you know, pretty normal, pretty like reasonable. Like, yeah, reasonable. Yeah. Like it's been like, like, Hey, okay, I'm sorry. Let's open up a website and take some comments. Well, I really hope people listen to this, get to it. Give the address out one more time. It's KratomComments.org. KratomComments.org. K-R-A-T-O-M Comments.org. And so December 1st, once December 1st rolls around, which is right around the corner, what happens if they get a bunch of notes? I mean, they have to get 10,000? Is that what it has to be?

69:50Well, they don't have to get any certain number, but I think if they get 10,000, And it's like, that's the number we were at. Everybody was aiming for. Was aiming for, you know, like what's great is I've actually become friends with a lot of people in this Kratom community. And it's not the kind of people that you would think like, you know, I feel like when I went to the Kratom March in Washington, D.C., I didn't know what kind of people I was going to meet. You know, but I met, you know, mothers and grandmothers and, you know, like all these people that were like they were like my mom, you know, and I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting to meet a bunch of people like hippies. What's up, dude? And that kind of guy. Saying like, yeah, man, the government sucks. Let's keep this legal. Tower 7, bro. Look into it. It was vets, veterans that fought overseas for us and have risked a lot for us.

70:35It was mothers and grandmothers and people like that more than it was of these devious characters that they think are using Kratom. Wow. So this is a really important issue. And when is your documentary going to come out? We're hoping the documentary will come out early next year. So it's just a matter of how fast we can get it together. We're almost done shooting. Okay, so now it's just the editing process. And then also, are you going to wait around to see what happens after December 1st? Yeah, yeah, we'll wait around. We're going to start editing. We're starting editing right now. So basically, you know, if things happen, for example, Bernie Sanders is one of the guys who signed the Kratom letter. I want to talk to him. I'd love to talk. He's kind of an amazing guy to me. I would love to pick his brain about this and see what he thinks.

71:19So it's impossible to nail these people down. But you never know when you might get five minutes with Bernie at a rally somewhere. You know, so we're going to continue to try to get those those bigger names that we wanted to get. I think they're important. Orrin Hatch is involved in this. Orrin Hatch is a senator from Utah that's been very involved in the dietary supplements for a long, long time. So we'd like to get his opinion on it. And, you know, but like it's kind of crazy. I would hope that the DEA and the FDA would listen to this interview and like sit with us and do an interview. I would love to like just let them speak their mind. I don't do interviews where I go in and ambush people. No, you don't. I let them speak their mind. No, you don't at all. I think I took it probably an hour ago, right? How long? I take it. 10, 15 minutes into the show. It's yeah.

72:07Yeah. I mean, I guess I have like a mild, very mild stimulant sort of effect that I feel. But it's it's it's nothing nothing to be concerned with. You're not dying. I'm not. It doesn't me. You know, I mean, it doesn't really like I've taken some stuff before. I was in Colorado this weekend and I took a lot of edibles. Whoa. Who are those fucking people aren't screwing around, man? They're going deep in Colorado. Yeah, man. I heard your special talking about edibles. That was amazing. But you're pretty sensitive to them too, right? I guess. I don't know, man. I'm more sensitive than Joey Diaz. Joey Diaz, like I'm on that level, like 300 milligrams. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. That's what you take? Oh, I don't even do it because I just have, I would have to take too much of it. Well, one time I did a podcast with Sam Harris recently and I have this spray that is a thousand milligrams.

73:00Like, I guess it's a thousand milligrams in the whole bottle, but it's like, I don't know. I don't know exactly. That's just a spray? Yeah, this is the more mild version. This one's 175 milligrams. THC? Yeah, it's like 20 milligrams a pump or 10 milligrams. Between 10 and 20 milligrams a pump, depending on how strong the stuff is. Who makes that? This is Jombo. Jombo makes a bunch of great stuff, all organic. These like honey. Jombo. Where do you get that? Dispensary? I'll hook you up. Hey, you want one of these? Take this one. All right. Take the spray. Enjoy. Don't get crazy. You know what's weird? I don't like to smoke pot I like this stuff better Because I'm just so used to taking things like that And I also feel like I don't want to get back into the whole My girlfriend would flip out if I started smoking pot But to use some edible stuff And play around with this And see if it works for pain and stuff like that

73:52To me is something that's very viable Isn't that funny where people worry about Smoking is like oh he's smoking drugs But if you're spraying breath spray Under your tongue it's like He's just relieving pain You know, I just think we need to open our minds to a lot of these substances that are out there that can help us, you know. Yeah. You know, it's great to say don't take anything. That's not the world that we live in, though. Right. Well, CBDs, you know, CBDs are great because they're not psychoactive at all. Yeah. And Shannon Briggs, who was just in earlier, said that has helped him tremendously. That's pot. That'll get you fucked up, son. Be careful. Be careful. Very careful. But, you know, the difference being the edible version of marijuana has a very different psychoactive effect, too. That's why a lot of people think they're getting spiked.

74:34You know, like they'll eat a pot cookie and they'll think, oh, my God, somebody put acid in this. Because it's really psychedelic in the way it's processed by the body. Your liver produces this metabolite called 11-hydroxy metabolite. And it's just way more powerful than THC. You're the only comedian that I've seen bring, like, science into the act. Oh, into that bit? That was amazing. Like, I was blown. You know, just to kiss your ass a little bit, that entire special is at the top of the game. Oh, thank you very much, man. Bill Burr and all those dudes. Thanks. I'm hustling. That's great. So I wanted to get you. I don't have a whole lot of time, so I wanted to get you in here today and get it done. But what else can you tell people about this and what else can be done? I think that people need to go to KratomComments.org, leave a comment. People can, you know, they can call the DEA.

75:22They can ask for Melvin Patterson. He's the spokesman. They can leave a message with him. I think this KratomComments.org, though, is going to be the most effective. And also, like, people need to seek it out. and people can hit me up on Facebook or Instagram. I'm pretty readily available. So if people have questions and want to hit me up, then just hit me up. I mean, I'm at Big Strong Fast on social media and I will answer questions as much as I can. Like I'm not, I don't hide from people, you know? No, you don't. And when the documentary's out, can you come back in and I'll watch it? Absolutely. We'll talk about it and hopefully we'll have some good news about it. And all right, folks, I'm high on Kratom right now. It doesn't do anything. My brother wants to get back in here with you too. Okay, I love that dude. Smelly, yeah. Can I mention something about him? Yeah, for sure.

76:01He's got a big sale going on for the Black Friday. If you enter the code ROGAN, it's 20% off. Is that for his slingshot? Howmuchyourbench.net is his website for slingshot. All the slingshot products. I had to plug them. Okay, beautiful. Well, shout out to Mark. All right. Well, thank you, Chris. Really, really appreciate it. And do you have a name for this documentary? Right now we're calling it A Leaf of Faith. A Leaf of Faith. I like it. I like it. So if you have a new name, people will have to go, I think I dig that name. It's cool. Let's go with it. a leaf of faith. Beautiful. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's like a fucking wrestling match talking to you.