GREAT FALLS — A Montana mother has spoken out after her son died last year from what appeared to be a safe, natural supplement known as kratom. It is a plant that comes from tropical evergreen trees in Southeast Asia, marketed as an alternative for pain treatment and vitality, but scientists warn that it can be as addictive and hazardous as opioids.
"My son died on September 12th, 2024, from kratom," said Kelli McCann of her son Ben Wilcock. "He had been using it for a long time and felt it was safe. He believed how it was marketed — as safe as coffee.”
McCann and public health advocates discuss the dangers:
Ben was an operations manager at a beverage company. He suffered from psoriatic arthritis and disliked pharmaceutical pills, so he turned to kratom, combining the powder into tea. For seven years, he lived a normal life until the day he failed to show up for work.
Police found him dead on his couch, with his laptop computer still open. The coroner later ruled that his death was caused by acute mitragynine intoxication, which is an active ingredient in kratom.
Pharmacist Jennifer Brandt explains why kratom is so dangerous: "What mitragynine is converted in your body to is 7-OH, which is 10 to 13 times more powerful than morphine. They're getting addicted to it because their body is converting it into the substance 7-OH."
Kratom has the ability to produce both stimulating and sedative effects depending on the dosage. It has the potential to ease anxiety and depression, and make you more sociable, but it also has the potential to induce seizures, liver toxicity, substance use disorder, and even overdose-related death.
However, not all kratom is made the same. The drug is currently unregulated in the United States, and as a result, you never know how potent the kratom dosage you will receive will be. The intention may be innocent, meant to ease your stress, but before you know it, it could be the last thing you ever do.
"People think there's going to be no withdrawals," said Jared Spyhalski, clinical director of Rocky Mountain Treatment Center. "But they get stuck on it because it also has its own withdrawals as well."
The lack of regulation only complicates problems. Kratom is illegal in seven US states and 19 countries; however, it is allowed in Montana. It might appear on retail shelves disguised as candies, seltzers, or other common items.
Beth Morrison, a substance abuse prevention specialist with Alliance For Youth in Great Falls, said her team visited gas stations and convenience stores in Cascade County and discovered clerks who were mostly uninformed of the dangers their products posed.
"The way I can explain it is like going out in traffic with no road signs — it's just chaos," McCann and Morrison told reporters.
Despite warnings from the FDA, DEA, and NIH, lobbyists continue to advocate for controlled access, citing user testimonials that kratom helped them overcome opioid addiction. However, medical professionals warn that without sufficient study and regulation, customers are gambling with their lives.
Deaths related to kratom have more often than not been attributed to the user having more than one drug in their system at the time of death by lobbyists and kratom companies. But the argument doesn’t hold up in cases like Ben's.
"Unfortunately, when you take something that's not FDA-approved, like a dietary supplement, then you're really gambling with your life," Brandt told the crowd. "You're the test subject."
For families like the McCanns, the gamble has already proven too costly.
From the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration:
WHAT IS KRATOM? Kratom is a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia. Consumption of its leaves produces both stimulant effects (in low doses) and sedative effects (in high doses), and can lead to psychotic symptoms, and psychological and physiological dependence. Kratom leaves contain two major psychoactive ingredients (mitragynine and 7-hydroxymytragynine). These leaves are crushed and then smoked, brewed with tea, or placed into gel capsules. Kratom has a long history of use in Southeast Asia, where it is commonly known as thang, kakuam, thom, ketum, and biak. In the U.S., the abuse of kratom has increased markedly in recent years.
How is it abused? Mostly abused by oral ingestion in the form of a tablet, capsule, or extract. Kratom leaves may also be dried or powdered and ingested as a tea, or the kratom leaf may be chewed.
What are the effects? At low doses, kratom produces stimulant effects with users reporting increased alertness, physical energy, and talkativeness. At high doses, users experience sedative effects. Kratom consumption can lead to addiction. Several cases of psychosis resulting from use of kratom have been reported, where individuals addicted to kratom exhibited psychotic symptoms, including hallucinations, delusion, and confusion.
What does it do to the body? Kratom’s effects on the body include nausea, itching, sweating, dry mouth, constipation, increased urination, tachycardia, vomiting, drowsiness, and loss of appetite. Users of kratom have also experienced anorexia, weight loss, insomnia, hepatotoxicity, seizure, and hallucinations.
What is its legal status? Kratom is not controlled under the Controlled Substances Act; however, there may be some state regulations or prohibitions against the possession and use of kratom. The FDA has not approved Kratom for any medical use. In addition, DEA has listed kratom as a Drug and Chemical of Concern
