In 2009, when Jacey Blaylock was 17, she and a friend decided to take an early October trip to the Castle of Muskogee for its haunted house. But the outing spiraled into crisis when the pair was hit head-on in rural Cherokee County by a man in a speeding car who strayed into their lane.
Blaylock, now 33, is still dealing with the effects of that day when she was pinned inside the vehicle for 45 minutes. It would take her a year to learn to walk again, though moving would never be the same because her foot was mangled.
“For lack of a better word, it’s kind of deformed,” Blaylock said. “It’s hard to walk on. It causes me a lot of pain. My hip and pelvis were also crushed and also cause me a lot of pain.”
After the accident, Blaylock, who is on Medicaid, tried numbing injections in her neck, opioids, and pills aimed at nerve pain. But the medications weren’t as effective as she hoped. In 2018, she discovered something new: kratom.
Kratom is a plant native to Southeast Asia where it was traditionally used to control chronic pain. The drug has had a controversial rise overseas: in 1943, growing kratom trees was banned in Thailand as the government tried to protect its monopoly on opium. In 1979, kratom was designated a Schedule V drug with cannabis. But by 2021, Thailand had decriminalized kratom, saying it wasn’t as dangerous as portrayed.
The United States is now grappling with the question of how to regulate kratom. In Oklahoma, the drug is still legal, though one of its compounds, considered central to its analgesic properties, 7-OH, is drawing scrutiny from both state and federal authorities.
Research suggests that 7-OH, or 7-hydroxymitragynine, is 13 times more potent than morphine. It’s what Jacey Blaylock eventually began using to manage the pain caused by her car accident. After kratom gained popularity, gas stations began selling a concentrated form of synthesized 7-OH, which Blaylock used alongside kratom.
“It’s like night and day the difference between when I have it and when I don’t have it,” she said.
But lawmakers are putting a damper on 7-OH. In late July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration place the novel opioid in Schedule I, citing a high potential for abuse. In Oklahoma, a law banning products containing more than 1% of 7-OH goes into effect in November.
While stories about kratom addictions are proliferating and a Reddit community dedicated to quitting the drug has drawn more than 50,000 members, supporters of kratom and 7-OH think bans are short-sighted.
Dr. Michele Ross is a scientific advisor for 7-HOPE Alliance, a nonprofit partially funded by the kratom industry, dedicated to advocating for 7-OH. Ross, a neuroscientist based in Oklahoma City, uses kratom herself due to fibromyalgia pain and believes more regulation would be better than a ban, noting that if 7-OH is classified as Schedule I, it will be difficult to study as an option to help wean people off more fatal drugs. Boosters of 7-OH point to a complicated claim that there’ve been no deadly overdoses linked to the compound, though there have been deaths associated with kratom.
“You’re dealing with people who maybe tapered down from heroin to 7-OH, and that’s safe, right?” Ross said. “But now they don’t have 7-OH. What is their next step? How do we help and support them? We don’t like to touch on these conversations. We like to pretend that people in recovery don’t do this. Or that people in chronic pain just do yoga or breath work, and their pain will go away. These populations are highly marginalized and under-supported, and they are going to be hit hard by a federal 7-OH ban.”
7-OH users may not know how much or exactly what they are consuming, though. Labeling requirements vary by state and don’t always accurately portray the strength of what’s inside. Dr. Jason Beaman, chair of forensic science studies at Oklahoma State University, said concerns around lack of regulation trump ease of access.
“You don’t know what you’re taking, and if the argument is, ‘Let’s just have strange substances available at gas stations as a replacement to health care,’ that’s not a good argument,” Beaman said. “Like, ‘Oh, I can’t go to the heart doctor, so I’ll just get my heart medicine at a gas station, but don’t regulate it, so I can do it?’ Chronic pain is a serious issue that needs to be addressed by medical professionals with a treatment plan that lets you try different modalities.”
Over the past 10 years, Beaman has seen many patients in both addiction treatment and psychiatric settings struggling with kratom abuse, and he’s not convinced the secrets of the understudied drug are worth learning.
“Absolutely, I’d be a fan of studying it in a controlled environment,” he said. “At this point, though, I don’t know that I see benefit in just regulating it, as I think we have more appropriate substances available.”
Jacey Blaylock may soon be looking for a more appropriate substance herself as she withdraws from 7-OH after the looming ban.
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” she said. “I just know it’s not going to be a whole lot of fun.”
