Kratom, 7-OH and Gas Station Drugs: What Every Parent Needs to Know, with Dean Francis

[00:00:00] He saw online a promotion for kratom, a plant-based herbal supplement that you could take for energy and focus, and it was just presented so well, and he’s always trying to be healthy and supplements, and so he did it. He said everything in his life got better. He would take it before the workouts. His workouts were better, and he thought he discovered kind of a wonder tonic.
Within about two or three months, he was having to take more and more of it to get the same results, and he starts now with anxiety and all these things, and all of a sudden, the downward spiral begins, and he’s not associating it with the green powder that he is shaking in the water bottle on a daily basis.
He thinks he’s got an herbal supplement
[00:01:00]  Welcome to Hope Stream, the podcast for parents of teens and young adults struggling with substance use and mental health. I’m Brenda Zane. I’ve walked this path with my own child’s addiction and high-risk lifestyle. Each week, we help you gain clarity, learn new skills, and most importantly, find real hope in what might feel helpless.
You are not helpless, and you’re not alone anymore. Find more resources at hopestreamcommunity.org.
Hey friend, I know because you have read the title of this episode that you are anxious to get into the nitty-gritty on a substance many of you are seeing your kids use, experiment with, and that is kratom. While you are doing your deep breathing, I will do mine, but I’m also going to introduce you to Dean Francis, because Dean is a dad on 
[00:02:00] fire who decided to take action and do something about what he saw nearly destroy his son. Dean is the founder and president of End Kratom Addiction. He founded the organization after his son Cameron spent nearly eight years addicted to a substance he found online, which was marketed as a safe herbal supplement. Cameron was a college athlete who was on the verge of running a sub four-minute mile.
He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t out seeking drugs or addicted to anything when he discovered what he thought was a supplement he could add to his morning routine. He was deceived. When Cameron’s family finally got answers in an emergency room in 2021 from a physician who explained plainly that kratom acts like an opioid, they were furious, but not at Cameron. They were livid at an industry that had marketed a dangerous and addictive product as 
[00:03:00] harmless and at a regulatory system that had allowed it When I say that Dean is on a mad mission, it is not an understatement. It was really fun to sit down and talk to another parent who, after watching their child go through unimaginable hell, couldn’t not do what they’re doing today.
You, my friend, are gonna learn so much because I learned so much. Dean shared what kratom actually is. He talked about the myth around this being a safe, natural plant from Southeast Asia. We talk about where it is sold, what kind of products it is sold as, why addiction treatment for kratom alone isn’t really a thing, and importantly, Dean breaks down the enormous business side of this industry and talks about the dollar signs that start with a B behind the mass innovation, 
[00:04:00] production, and marketing of this substance. Dean shares the journey that his son Cameron has been through and is still on in his efforts to untangle his body from the broad-ranging effects of an addiction that unknowingly began with kratom. Be sure to check the show notes so that you can get more information on the documentary Dean and his team are producing, as well as how you can get involved from a legislative standpoint to get kratom listed as a Schedule 1 substance.
This is a must-listen episode for every parent, not just parents who have kids currently struggling. Every parent needs to be aware of what is available right down the street at a gas station or a smoke shop. So share it widely. And hear now from a dad with a mad mission, Dean Francis, founder of End Kratom Addiction. Enjoy. Hey, Dean. Thank you so much for coming on Hope 
[00:05:00] Stream and talking all things kratom. It is top of mind, especially right now, and I am super glad to have you here, so thanks for taking some time out of your busy day. It is great to be here with you, Brenda. It’s quite an honor We were just talking, unfortunately, this is really pertinent timing to have this conversation because I think they’re still being investigated, but just this last day or two, there were two deaths at Ole Miss with kratom involved.
I don’t know, maybe you know more than I do there. We don’t know everything about what was going on, but certainly it was present. Do you know more than, than that? Do you know what’s kinda going on with that? No, all we know is there’s an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old, and both have all the indications that it’s an overdose death, and in both cases, there was packaging, kratom packaging, and which is what caused the coroner’s office to announce and warn everybody to steer 
[00:06:00] clear of kratom. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so we’ll be tracking that to see what happens. But I’m really glad to have somebody on who knows this inside and out because it is so confusing as a parent, right? We’re trying to keep track of so many things. Is it legal? Is it not? Why is it at a gas station? Why am I It’s, it’s just n- mind-numbing.
So thank you for spending some time to get us all straightened out. Let’s start with your son’s story, Cameron, because he obviously is what got you into this, as, like, my son got me into it, and I would just love to hear s- about it because I don’t think kratom was a thing when my son was in his hard years, so like, one thing we, we avoided.
But tell me a little bit about Cameron. I’d love to know more about him and how this all got started. Yeah, I always give him a lot of credit because he went public with his story almost two years ago to help other people. Mm-hmm. He’s been very 
[00:07:00] transparent, not only about how he got addicted, but the very long journey of ups and downs. So, but he was an elite college track and cross-country athlete. He was on the verge of a sub four-minute mile. I remember in 2017, I went to an indoor track meet. He ran about a 4.3 mile, and I just knew, like, that spring he was gonna do it. And it’s like any other sport. You work so hard for so many years, and this was his dream.
Well, it was right about that same time he saw online a promotion for kratom, a plant-based herbal supplement that you could take for energy and focus, and it was just presented so well, and he’s always trying to be healthy and supplements, and so he did it. And he would tell you when he first took it, it did exactly that. He said 
[00:08:00] everything in his life got better. He would take it before the workouts. His workouts were better. Studying. You don’t get high from it, but you’re exhilarated. You feel great. And he thought he discovered kind of a wonder tonic. And in retrospect, as I tell this story, ’cause none of this made sense during the time, but- Sure, yeah
in retrospect, within about two or three months, he was having to take more and more of it to get the same results. And then his running went the wrong way. He got worse, and he starts now with anxiety and all these things. He’s always had lots of friends. He’s never had any issues. And all of a sudden, the downward spiral begins, and he’s not associating it with the green powder- Right.
Of course … that he is shaking in the water bottle on a daily basis. Like, there’s nothing to hide. He thinks he’s got an herbal supplement. Yeah. And 
[00:09:00] he eventually left college, moved back home, and his parents, where our heads are spinning, are like, “What is going on?” And we got him a counselor. He was taking Prozac.
And then the next thing you know, he’s drinking, and we’re like, “What?” And so now we’re trying to… He’s like, “Well, I guess I need help with drinking.” And of course, he was just self-medicating the opioid withdrawal. Now that makes sense to us. Didn’t make any sense then. And then fast-forward to 2021, so about three, four years of this downward spiral, and he wakes us up in the middle of the night and s- feels like he’s gonna die, so we rush him to the emergency room, and the ER doctor took one look at him and said, “You’re on drugs.”
Like, “You gotta tell me what you’re taking.” And a little bit of an argument ensues, like, “I’m not on drugs,” you know? He said, “You’re taking something.” He said, “Well, I take this thing called kratom.” Well, the doctor had never heard of that, ’cause again, this is 2021. Right. You know, he goes back to the 
[00:10:00] computer, does a little homework, comes back out, and he says, “Kratom is an opioid, and you have a serious problem, and you are gonna require a lot of help.”
It, it was way worse than what we were understanding. We were underestimating even at that point what we were being told, and so the, the next several years are just the ups and downs of any other opioid addiction. There’s a couple moments, car accidents, he coulda died. And so anyways, m- making lots of progress today, but still not quite himself, and I got mad about it and started End Kratom Addiction.
Mm. Wow. That’s so scary because I’ve heard the, some version of this story so many times, right? That at first it was great, and then there is that downward spiral. So as parents, I can only imagine what you guys were going through, just blindsided 
[00:11:00] when you find out like, oh, this is actually not just a green shake supplement type of thing. This is actually addictive. I- is it an opioid, or is it some- categorized as something else? No, without a doubt, it is an opioid. Now, let me clarify. When you consume kratom, the primary compound is called mitragynine, and when it metabolizes in the liver, it becomes what’s called 7-hydroxymitragynine, or nicknamed 7-OH, and that is an opioid.
You could say mitragynine is a partial agonist, and so in other words, a weaker opioid, but 7-OH, the FDA says, is stronger than morphine, and it binds to the opioid receptors. This is where all the opioid effects from kratom are coming from, so when you hear people say, “My pain is 
[00:12:00] gone,” they’re right. Right. You- when you’re taking something stronger than morphine, okay? So you do hear these kind of success stories, but then like any other opioid, you have massive amounts of horror stories of addiction, psychosis, death, on and on. Yeah. Just some, like, basic groundwork. What is the s- kind of, are there street names for kratom that parents might be hearing, or do kids just call it kratom?
Like, is there something else that they, their ears should perk up about? I think normally it would just be called kratom. Okay. But just like today, a lot of people still don’t even know what is that. Right. And so I’ll give you a, kind of a visual here. So this is a, a kratom powder, and you can tell just by looking at the packaging, it just looks very harmless.
It’s just a natural leaf- Yeah … from Southeast Asia is where it comes from. 
[00:13:00] And you scoop out the powder and put it in your water bottle and off you go. Now, by 2020, 2021, they began coming out with what are called extracts, where it’s just a more concentrated version than the powder, and so a little bit more like a shot, kind of like a 5-Hour Energy drink. In fact, that’s often how this one is sold right here. This is the second most popular kratom product in the country today. Yeah. And it looks so harmless, and often is kind of marketed as a natural alternative to 5-Hour Energy. And this one is actually mixing it with kava. And don’t ask me why, but when you mix kratom and kava, there’s, like, another level.
And we had a distributor from this company who’s no longer with the company who said the first thing he learned in sales was that the average 
[00:14:00] customer buys six of these a day, and- Wow … they’re $11 a piece. Now, it says clearly on the warning label, which you can see is such, such small print, and I don’t even know how you read it, but it does say, “Don’t take more than one of these a day.”
But the company itself, it appears, according to that person, knows how addictive it is. Six a day, that’s a lot. And so they would give out free samples to kind of get people going, and just a lot of devastation from these things. Yes, and if, for people who are listening and not watching, first of all, hop over to YouTube, ’cause that’d be the better place to watch the podcast.
But what Dean’s holding up is Feel Free, I believe is what you are holding up, and we had somebody in our community that sponsored a, it was like a recovery marathon a couple months ago, and what were they passing out at the finish line? Feel Free. I kid you not. This is, 
[00:15:00] now this is recent, just recently? Yes. Wow. It is so disturbing, and they had no idea. They just thought it was, like, a 5-Hour Energy type thing. They had no idea, because you can just go buy it. So I would recommend go to the YouTube channel so you can see the products that Dean’s holding up, because it is important to know, because one thing I was gonna ask you is it sounds like Cameron was not at home when he had started to use, but it doesn’t sound like you would’ve been concerned even if he’d been in your kitchen making this, because he’s shaking it up in a shaker.
No, even when he moved back home, we knew he had this green herbal supplement, and I didn’t think anything of it. Nope. So I always find this interesting, because in the United States, we tend to find ways to ruin lots of things that have worked in other places. Clearly, this is something that’s been used for 
[00:16:00] hundreds of years in Southeast Asia, and probably other countries, and they have not figured out a way to ruin it and make it what we have. Clearly, this has turned into a huge business. Can you talk a little bit about the business side of this? Because obviously, that’s, I would imagine, what’s driving the product innovation, the availability, all of those things. Yeah. Let’s kind of start with Southeast Asia. So the, part of the false narrative is that kratom has been used safely and responsibly for hundreds of years in Southeast Asia.
Well, first of all, it is outlawed for commercial sale in four of the five nations where it’s grown. Number two, when it’s been used with minimal damage, we’re talking about a field laborer picking a leaf off a tree and chewing on it during the day to get a little energy boost, 
[00:17:00] okay? Right. Right. So it doesn’t take just, like, a few scoops of this, and it’s the equivalent of, like, 10 leaves. You’re right. Right. When you get into these extracts, it would be, like, 20 or 30 leaves, and this is just- Yeah … in one of these, okay? So now we’re concentrating these opioid compounds. So th- this is night and day to say this is a harmless leaf. Right. No, it’s not. It’s a vicious lie, but the people behind it, it really starts in 2012.
Now, people will say, “Oh, it’s been around longer,” and there’s some truth to that, but it wasn’t much of an enterprise. It became a much bigger enterprise when a man named Keaton Pelayo entered the scene in 2012. Now, if you’ve never heard that name, you might remember a product called Spice. Does that 
[00:18:00] ring a bell? Yes, and it is still out there. Well, he is, was the central figure behind Spice. Mm. The synthetic cannabinoid that was highly addictive- Yeah … and killed a whole bunch of people before the DEA stepped in and shut it down. That’s Peyton Paleo. And he quickly pivoted into kratom. He obviously was very clearly aware that kratom had the same addictive abilities of Spice, right?
These are massive profit margin type products, and because they’re addictive, you can make a lot of money. And so he jumps in. The name of his company when he first started, by the way, Brenda, was called OPM. If you say that a little faster, it’s opium. Opium. And very 
[00:19:00] direct. He was very direct. And then for marketing purposes, like too direct, he changed it to OPMS, and he is– That is the largest seller of kratom in the United States today. He is the primary funder of the American Kratom Association, which is the lobbying arm for the industry. And if there’s a villain in the story of kratom, it’s the American Kratom Association, but the funder is Peyton Paleo, and that’s how this thing took off.
I’ll stop there for a moment. Yeah. Somehow that does not surprise me that there’s lobbying, and I imagine this is a multi– we’re talking multimillion-dollar industry. I would have… We’re not talking like- Bill- … oh, this is- Yeah. Oh, bill. Oh, B. Yeah. Billion. Oh, yeah. This is a multi-billion dollar industry, especially today. Today it’s, I’ve heard estimates of 5 to 7 billion 
[00:20:00] annual sales. Hey, can I tell you about something that might be perfect for where you are right now? If you have ever felt like there’s just nothing left to try or like you just don’t have the energy to keep going one more day, I want you to know that there is a place specifically for that. It’s called The Stream Community.
It’s a private online community for moms who are walking the same path you are with a child who’s facing substance use and mental health challenges. Inside, you’ll find other moms who don’t need the backstory explained. They just get it. You’ll also start learning practical skills that can shift the dynamic between you and your child because I know you really want to see change.
You can try The Stream free for two weeks, and if you sign up now, you could be on a live support chat or a coaching call within 24 hours. You do not have to do this alone 
[00:21:00] anymore, my friend. Head to hopestreamcommunity.org/try. We’ll get you set up on your free two-week trial, and I’ll see you there. Okay, let’s get back to the show
And I was trying to determine if it was like Schedule I or not, and it’s so confusing. It’s like, well, there’s this and then this, and it’s almost like, well, if it’s a Tuesday and it’s raining, then it… And you’re in Kansas, then it’s this. Can you help us understand, like, is this legal? How is it available in gas stations?
What is going on? Yeah. So the short answer is it’s unlawful to import kratom for human consumption, and it’s unlawful to market it for the purpose of a food, dietary supplement, or drug. And so it’s like, well, how is it happening? So in 2014, the FDA identified it clearly, and they issued an 
[00:22:00] import alert that says it’s unlawful to import it for human consumption. And we have DEA agents, former DEA agents, that are part of our team, and they all say it’s still like finding a needle in a haystack. You got 1.2 million shipments a month hitting our borders. Only 200 of them are kratom, and it’s easy for them to mislabel them to potpourri or fertilizer or whatever. And they say unless it’s Schedule 1, if it’s a Schedule 1 drug, that elevates the priority at the border.
Their algorithm goes to a point where it would get caught. And so anyway, that’s partly how it gets there. They do catch it from time to time, and there have been people who have gone to prison for it. But anyway, that starts in 2014. They started the ball rolling towards making this a Schedule 1 drug.
They worked with the DEA, and they put all the evidence together. 2016 comes, the DEA announces its intent to make it a Schedule 1, and boom, here comes the American Kratom Association, which had 
[00:23:00] formed in 2014, and it’s led by a man– They recruited a man named Mac Catto in 2016. This is important because this is how– This is why you and I are having a conversation today. You can summarize it in the name of one person. It’s a guy named Mac Catto. So they recruit him in. Mac, quick history there, he was the former chief of staff for US Senator Orrin Hatch many years ago, helped him get elected. Orrin Hatch is the one who authored the dietary supplement laws that’ll, that are for our nation today, which if you think about Utah, that’s the wellness supplement state, right?
Okay. And so he’s doing kind of the good thing for his constituents to make it easy to bring a wellness supplement to market. Well, that turned out to be a very bad thing now because it’s being exploited so badly. But nonetheless, they recruited Mac because of his relationship 
[00:24:00] to the dietary supplement space and his connections into DC. Also, Mac became the chief of staff at HHS, so lots of connections into our government agencies. While he’s at HHS, he then indicted on seven felonies, and he pled guilty to two of them in his plea agreement. Of those two, one of them, he funneled money from the HHS to his wife illegally And he funneled money from a nonprofit he started to his wife illegally.
He was sentenced to a year in prison, only had to serve maybe four months. He comes out, ends up getting involved. Do you remember the Pan Am Flight 110, I think, that was bombed by these guys from Libya? 270 
[00:25:00] people died. He ends up becoming sort of a bit of a lobbyist, visiting with the families of people who’ve died and telling them, this is on an NBC News undercover news report you can still watch today, and Tom Brokaw back in the day.
Anyway, undercover, he’s offering the families a million dollars if they will sign on to support to have the two Libyan bombers The trial for them moved to another country where they’ll get a better favorable hearing. Okay, this is just, this is who this guy is, okay? Like, I mean, I can’t make this up. This is insane.
Right, right. But he gets involved now with kratom. He recruited a guy named Matt Salmon, who was a member of the U.S. Congress from Arizona. Matt went and used his influence to get 51 signatures from other 
[00:26:00] members of Congress to tell the DEA to back off. “This is not Schedule 1. You shouldn’t do it.” The members just trusted him. I’ve talked to some of these members since. They are infuriated with him. They got totally duped into it. And then they also contracted an expert scientist named Dr. Jack Henningfield, who wrote a 52-page report to tell the DEA, this is in his report, that kratom has no more abuse potential than nutmeg or chamomile tea.
And you’re like, “Well, who is this guy?” He’s the same scientist that Purdue Pharma used to present OxyContin as a non-addictive substance and dismiss all the deaths and to… And literally the Ohio Board of Pharmacy this year did a comparison of 
[00:27:00] Dr. Jack Henningfield’s presentation of kratom and OxyContin. They’re, like, the same. This is who the American Kratom Association is. This is who Mac Harrell brought into the picture, and they won. They stopped the DEA, and then it happened again in 2018. Another FDA commissioner, new administration comes in and goes, “This is a opioid. It’s a Schedule 1.” And they brought in the same people.
They stopped it again, so it went to the states, and we’ve been stuck ever since. So you got some states that have banned it, some states that say they regulate it, but the studies show that regulated states have no better results than the unregulated, and it’s a mess, and it’s confusing for everybody. It is super confusing, and that is I would say it’s shocking, but it’s actually not shocking that those are the characters involved 
[00:28:00] in this. And I mean, I know I’ve seen the documentaries on people that say it’s gotten them off of opioids, that it’s this harmless tea. They go in and they– to these tea shops, and they’re sitting at a bar drinking kratom tea. Like, what– I’m trying to figure out w-what they’re defending. Like, are they defending a group of people who say, “Oh, no, this is really helping me get off opioids,” or what’s the story?
Is there a story? Well, yeah. The narrative is for them to protect their– all the vendors and manufacturers. Their narrative is it’s been used safely in Southeast Asia for all these years. And then over here, they’ll quickly like to say it’ll help someone get off of an opioid addiction, which that’s a tough one. Could it? Maybe it could. Are there some people that claim they have? 
[00:29:00] Yes. But then you talk to most people in addiction treatment say, “No, it just creates another addiction.” It doesn’t do that. Right. The FDA certainly says they’re– that’s not proven to be, but they use that in front of the state lawmakers ’cause that sounds good after the opioid crisis.
And the last thing they do is they’ll bring in people that testify that they’ve had chronic pain for years, and the prescriptions didn’t work anymore, or they couldn’t get access to their prescriptions, and kratom has now given them a new life. And there is some truth to that. I would actually say to everything they say, there’s this little kernel of truth, but it’s only to protect the massive amounts of lies behind it.
Right, and the massive amounts of money, clearly. Oh, wow, I’m just– my head is spinning. Do– Just I’m asking for parents ’cause I know that this is running through their mind. What other forms would they potentially see it in? So maybe their kiddo’s not– doesn’t have a green drink in a shaker. Is 
[00:30:00] it– Would they be taking it in, like, a capsule format? Feel free. The little blue bottle clearly is pretty identifiable. But what might they be seeing? Because I don’t know that people know what to look for, parents know what to look for. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that one is a popular one, the Feel Free. You see a blue bottle anywhere around, that would not be a good thing.
Are there some capsules? Yes. It’s possible you could also see, in addition to these kind of shot-looking, you know, things, you could see some capsules like that. That’s from OPMS. That’s a very popular product, and that’s possible. Today, there are also these products that are called 7-OH. Yeah. Um, and so let me just show you a picture of that, too.
So they’re tablets. Okay. So go back to confusion. So in about two years ago, in 2024, another person entered 
[00:31:00] onto the scene. His name is Vince Sanders. Vince and his wife were sentenced to three and a half years of prison each for marijuana distribution years ago. Pretty much everyone I refer to as you’ll find has done time in prison or maybe like Payton Paleo should have.
And so Vince Sanders looked at the kratom industry thinking, “Wow, what’s going on? That’s a highly addictive product.” And he figured out that the, when you take it, again, the body will produce 7-Hydroxymitraginine, or 7-OH. And that’s the primary compound that’s creating all the opioid effects, and the addiction, and everything else.
And so all he did was figure out how to oxidize the kratom powder, you’d say- Mm … or liquid, doesn’t matter. But he figured out how to oxidize this so that he could produce the 7-OH outside the body, 
[00:32:00] and put it into tablets. So he was just being more direct about- Perfect. Let’s skip all the other stuff. Let’s just mention that “Oh, we don’t need to worry about the body producing it. We’ll just do it.” Now, when you take this, this is going directly to the brain. Now you’re loading up massive amounts of opioid fast. So like Cameron probably would tell you, it was three to six months or so of the powder before he was really dependent on it at an addictive-type level.
These shots, these more concentrated, you’ll find people getting very, very dependent on them within weeks. But now when you go to a 7-OH type product, you’re talking about days. It’s fast, and if you don’t have tolerance built for it, you’ll have people that take it the first time then overdose and die. I mean, it’s really serious. And so our government has been announcing that they’re gonna schedule 
[00:33:00] any product that has more than a certain percentage of 7-OH in it. Hasn’t happened yet. Could happen any day. It’s been kinda dragged out. We don’t know why. Everybody agrees this truly is evil, but it doesn’t solve the problem. The, the body’s gonna produce the 7-OH, and we’re gonna go right back to where we were all along Right.
And the 70H is also available at these, like, smoke shops and the gas stations and stuff, right? ‘Cause I’ve heard so many parents say, “Yeah, I have no idea where they’re getting this.” And it’s like, I think they’re just going down the street and getting it at the store. Yeah. I’ll give you an example. Here in Virginia, we passed a bill that took effect July 1st, where 70H products are no longer lawful.
You can’t sell them. I just have to go drive a little bit. I’ll find plenty of places that still sell them. We passed a law in our state that says you have to have a warning label that states, “This product may 
[00:34:00] cause dependence and opioid-like withdrawal.” It’s kind of bold, right? None of our places have done it.
This industry knows that states have a difficulty with enforcing any of these laws. Right. So even a ban of stuff, these are criminal-like people. They only understand one thing, and that’s a federal felony that puts you in prison for 20 years. When you go to that, which is Schedule 1, that changes everything.
But the states are really struggling to deal with it. There’s actually 13 states that have now outlawed it for any commercial sale, so it’s growing fast. There’s almost 300 localities across the country that have banned it or made it illegal. It keeps growing and growing and growing because of all the death and addiction, but even then, the states still struggle with getting it done. This needs to go back to the federal level. Clearly, because, I mean, y- you just think driving down the street, 
[00:35:00] there’s 50 gas stations on one road. I’m in Seattle. Who’s gonna police that, right? Like, nobody’s going and checking on every one of those stores, and who knows what they have under the counter, and the kids all know where it is.
So it feels like just pushing against a really strong tide to try and get anything done on that level. Another question that I know is running in parents’ minds is, if you give your kiddo a kind of standard drug test, is this gonna show up? Yeah, I think more of the drug test will test now for mitragynine, but y- you would need to ask, you know- Right
’cause it might not. But if your child is addicted, they’re not gonna be able to go more than so many hours without taking it, and so the mitragynine would somehow show up in that test. Now, what gets sad is this gets expensive, and so you’ll find people that have never 
[00:36:00] taken an illicit drug in their life, but out of desperation, they’ll turn to fentanyl because it’s so cheap. Yeah. It’s– Heroin was a little more popular a while back, but now fentanyl’s so cheap. You’ll find people– ‘Cause I think you know this, in opiate, I’ve had people that have, you know, been through opioid addiction, and they say, “Look, we would rather die than go through opioid withdrawal.” And now, after watching our son Cameron, I get it.
Like, it’s that intense. Right. You don’t care. You’re gonna do whatever you have to do. Yeah. It’s one of those things that I think parents have a really hard time wrapping their head around, especially when we are, like, we’ve sort of been trained to fear fentanyl, right? And then you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know.
That, there’s that thing over there, this kratom thing. I don’t know what it is. It looks natural. It’s sold at gas stations. Can’t be that bad.” So this is incredibly good information to have. Just kind of related, but a little bit not, we have a community for moms. I would say the majority of 
[00:37:00] people listening to the podcast are moms, but we do have a significant number of dads. Coming from a dad standpoint, what was it like for you, and what would you say to other dads who might be watching their D1 athlete start tanking or… And maybe it’s not kratom. Maybe it’s something else, but I just– While I have a dad in front of me, I’m really curious to know what that experience was like for you to see him start going downhill, and kinda what was your process for coping with that?
Yeah. I think as a dad, probably the coping was feeling like I’m doing something. Like, just not doing something and dwelling on it is overwhelming, and you go into a state of fear, and you’re, like, paralyzed in fear. And so I think the coping for me was just taking action. It was reading something, learning something, 
[00:38:00] contacting a treatment center, talking to people. I just underestimated it. You really can’t think of kratom– I just can’t emphasize this enough. You can’t think of this as a somehow a separate addiction. No kratom addiction. No, no, no. Right. You need to think this is like heroin. There’s no difference between them, ’cause Cameron tried to wean off of it way back when, and that’s where I watched some of the opioid withdrawal I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies, and he just wasn’t able to do it, and I found a medical detox center in Rich- in Virginia That was advertising that they detox for kratom.
And I was like, “Whoa.” And I don’t even know what detox is at this point. I’m still learning, but- Right … I, when I called this wonderful woman, she says, she said, “You know, uh, Dad, I just want you to understand, I hope you understand, we can detox for alcohol in a day, but for kratom and heroin, it takes five.” And she put it in that same category, and I 
[00:39:00] wish, I’m just telling you, I just wish so much, so does Cameron, someone would’ve said, “Look, if you don’t understand opioid addiction, you need to really grasp it immediately.
This is like stage III or IV cancer, and you better take it as serious as you can.” A- and if you get onto 7 OH, by the way, that’s even another level. You can’t, I mean, people don’t wanna take off time from their life. They wanna try to keep going, like you’re gonna get a cast and somehow get better. If you’re severely addicted to an opioid, I would highly recommend considering going somewhere for 30 day- I’m sorry, not 30, 90 days.
Yeah. Forget the 30-day stuff. Yeah. 30-day stuff won’t get you anywhere. Yeah. It’s probably, it’s 90 and up, and just get it over with because you’re risking your life. It’s not just the addiction, it’s the fact that when you’re addicted, and you, let’s say you get desperate and you take some fentanyl and it’s laced with something, and you die. And I mean, like, you’re at risk of dying, and d- it’s just none of this 
[00:40:00] stuff is worth it, let alone losing five, 10 years of your life. Yeah. I’m glad that you said that because I think people just think of the substance itself. So, okay, kratom or heroin or whatever it is. I don’t even think there is heroin anymore.
I don’t know why I said that. But- Yeah … what they’re not thinking about is what you talk about, the ripple effect, like what you have to do to then get the substance ’cause it’s so expensive. And at that point, your body is telling you, “I don’t care if you have to steal from your dad. You are going to do it because you’re not gonna go through withdrawals.”
Like, it’s not just the substance, and that’s really good to hear about, not good, but helpful to hear about the fact that this is not, like, a kratom addiction. This is an opiate addiction and needs to be treated as such. So that was kind of one of my last questions I wanted to ask you about, was from a treatment standpoint, and from even from, like, the medical provider 
[00:41:00] standpoint, do you know more than them usually? Like is this something that you feel like the medical system… If my kid showed up at the ER tonight, and he was Cameron a few years ago, right, and he’s taking these pills Do they know? Like, are they up on all of this? Yeah. So I feel pretty strongly about this. I think the addiction treatment community is, in America, is broken.
It’s very broken. I think you have a lot of good people in it that mean well, and so the people at the detox center or maybe at the 30-day residential place or whatever it is, right? But there’s no one connecting all the dots. There’s no continuum. Cameron one time did a 30-day residential, getting more serious about it, and I said to them, I said, “Okay, so now what’s the next step?”
And it was to go to an out- IOP, an intensive outpatient program, where you have testing, you show up every day, four days a week or whatever it is. And they had identified a really 
[00:42:00] great place And I said, “Now are you sure that when he gets out, he’s gonna be able to start into the IOP immediately?” And they’re like, “Oh, I’m, I’m sure it is.”
And I said, “Well, I wouldn’t mind if you checked because it’s, I mean, the demand is very high right now in our area for not just kratom, other drugs” And I said, “I would hate for him to leave here and show up and they go, ‘Oh, we can’t get you in for two or three weeks.'” I said, “That’s a gap that can’t happen.”
Yeah. “Oh, I- I’m, I’m sure Mr. Francis. We’ll make sure. We’ll call. We’ll check on it, okay?” But the reality is it’s not their responsibility to some extent, and whatever happened, I don’t know who’s to blame, that is exactly what happened. Cameron went to show up. He was all the good intentions in the world, and they said, “Ugh, you know what? It’s gonna be two, three weeks before we can get you in” And there’s where the 
[00:43:00] addiction mind kicks in. Nobody’ll know. Yes, yes. Maybe I’ll just have a little bit. Yep. And just like that, he went right back. It is so broken and so I think as a parent, you gotta get involved, and I would just say 90 days is the minimum residential for opioid addiction.
I know people, my executive director, she was able to get off of it on her own. She plugged into daily calls. By the way, there’s a group called Kratom Quitters, kratomquitters.com. She’s a co-founder. They have meetings four times a day. Wow. And it’s for kratom recovery, and it quickly grew, by the way, to almost 15,000 people.
It’s scary to me how many people today are actually addicted to kratom and are struggling. And Cameron said when he would go to the AA meetings or they would kind of look at him like, “You’re addicted to what?” Like, I mean, y- you’re a square peg in a round hole. And so to plug in, when you can talk to other people that are addicted to kratom, it’s 
[00:44:00] very, it’s incredible. And so they have success stories where people have been able to wean off over time, but those people are plugging into one, two, or three calls a day. Like that’s your, I mean, it’s your lifeline. So it can be done. I don’t mean to say that it can’t be. If that’s what you need to do, you don’t have the resources, you can’t get into a place, there are people you can meet.
They’re doing it. They have done it. I’m not trying to say it’s easy. It can be done. They’ll give you all the support that you need. But if you can, if your insurance or you have some resources, and you can just… ‘Cause there’s a big deal, you already know this, 90, 100, to 100 days, that kind of range of complete sobriety, like you really, I mean, it’s a big deal.
30 days, 60 days, like you’re at risk Especially for adolescents, right? Because they’re also don’t have a fully functioning brain. So absolutely, kratomquitters.com. We’ll put that in the show notes as well 
[00:45:00] as more information on Dean and kratomaddiction.org. I want you to tell us about, I know you have a film coming out, and tell us about that and any other news that we need to know about so that we can help. So endkratomaddiction.org is a great place. We also have a YouTube channel I’m pretty excited about. We’re building out more and more content there. I actually got to interview, by the way, Dr. Stephen Lloyd recently on my podcast. If you’ve not heard that name before, he is– Michael Keaton plays out his story in Dopesick.
Yes. And so I would basically say, by the way, if, if you’re a parent and you haven’t watched Dopesick, you need to watch Dopesick, okay? 100%. Now, I’m not trying to say it’s easy to watch. It’s hard to watch. It’s painful to watch, okay? When Michael Keaton as the doctor gets addicted, and you watch him turn into a monster.
But from episodes three to seven, it is the real-life experience of Dr. Stephen Lloyd, and I got to interview 
[00:46:00] him. No physician is more passionate about how kratom needs to be eliminated from the United States than Stephen Lloyd. The idea that there’s an industry duping kids, especially into an opioid addiction.
Anyway, you can hear him on my podcast. It’s a great one. That’s awesome. Um, and so anyway, but our YouTube channel is @endkratomaddiction, and there’s no spaces. You just put in “endkratomaddiction.” Okay. And you can find some really good stuff there. I mean, and we’re constantly putting stuff in. It’s really good.
But what I’m real excited about is the film. So we have a documentary that’s coming out. It’s called The Truth About Kratom, and it’s uncovering a lot is what it’s doing. It’s helping you really understand who this industry is, what’s happening. You hear a lot of stories, and we’re real excited about it.
So yes, you can go to our website and be able to watch it for free, and you’ll also see there there’ll be a place where you can sign our 
[00:47:00] petition. So our goal, we’re just starting it, but our goal over the next couple of months is to get a million Americans, and I’m gonna guess that most of them are probably moms and dads- but probably even more so the moms. Yep. Okay? But you’re in the perfect network, Brenda. There’s a lot of- I got all my girls on it. They’re like, they’re the best at networking and sharing it, and so we’re asking you to use your unbelievably God-given women abilities to help us spread this. When you sign the petition, it basically says to make kratom a controlled substance, which would take care of all this.
By the way, if there’s any clinic– If there’s any therapeutic value in kratom, somebody can go out there and go through all the clinical safety trials and regulatory evaluation and bring it back as some kind of, you know, prescription or whatever. Great. That’s fantastic. This industry has no interest in that, though.
No. They have no interest in that. Not, none, zero, none of them, and so they could have been doing that for years. So anyway, when you sign the petition, an email will get sent 
[00:48:00] to your two US senators and your member of Congress. Asking them to sign on to a letter that we have now circulating in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.
That’s amazing. And that letter is telling the DEA, “This needs to be a controlled substance.” And so if we have a million people doing that, that’s like three million emails. We already have a ton of traction. We already have a ton of US senators, a ton of US house representatives that are all absolutely in favor of this, but they need support.
They need people. They need Americans saying, “We stand behind you. This is the right thing to do. It should’ve been done in 2016.” Right. And by doing so, you’re not only protecting your kids, your grandkids, you’re protecting all kinds of kids and grandkids going further. This will permanently 
[00:49:00] solve the problem. Amazing. I love it. Thank you so much for this information. If you go to the show notes, we’re gonna have links to all of this so that you can see the documentary, get all the signatures. I promise you, we got a lot of moms who are fired up about this, so we will be your little army of champions to get this to Schedule 1.
And if you wanna learn more, but definitely go to the YouTube video so you can see the products that Dean held up, and we’re with you. Let us know how we can help however, and thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Yes. It was, again, a pleasure and an honor, Brenda, to be with you. I’m very thankful for people like you.
The work that you’re doing, especially with families on addiction, it’s a big deal. Nothing more important than our family. It is. Well, thank you so much.
[00:50:00]  Okay, my friend, I am so glad that you are here with me today. Do you want the resources from this episode? If you do, head to hopestreamcommunity.org, click Podcast, and you will find this episode, along with 300 or so others, and every link that we mention. And if you haven’t tried it yet, we offer a free two-week trial of our online community for moms, The Stream.
No credit card needed, no commitment, just go to hopestreamcommunity.org/try and we can get you set up with a free two-week membership. And if this is your first time here or if this whole approach feels new and uncomfortable, that is normal. You can grab a free e-book I wrote called Worried Sick. It will help you start seeing new ways to respond to your child and find new ways to approach this whole situation that feels very confusing.
[00:51:00]  You can find that at hopestreamcommunity.org/worried. You, my friend, are an elite level parent. You are doing an incredible job. You do things most parents never have to do, and I am so honored to be walking this path with you. Take ridiculously good care of yourself, and I will meet you right back here next week.