I’ll Never Stop Advocating for 7-OH
/By Crystal Lindell
It looks like the federal 7-OH ban is actually going to go through this time, and it’s probably going to happen right before Thanksgiving, on November 13.
I guess they just want to make sure everyone who uses 7-OH is miserable and in pain for the upcoming holiday season. Cheers!
RIP 7-OH. You changed my life, and died far too young.
The fact that they aren’t even taking public comments this time is gut-wrenching. They really don’t care about us at all.
But I will say that I am grateful that we still have one last month with legal 7-OH. I have tapered down significantly, and have hope that I can get fully off it in the next few weeks with almost no physical withdrawal symptoms.
Unfortunately, as a chronic pain patient, it’s not just about avoiding physical withdrawal. I’m still not sure how I’m going to functionally live my life without it.
In fact, when I got the news on Friday that the DEA had updated their letter of intent, I had just taken my morning 7-OH dose, which I need to be able to get ready for the job I only have because of 7-OH.
I’m very worried that I’m going to lose my job when I lose 7-OH.
I started working full-time again in April, and it’s been great! I have already worked my way up to manager, and finally have health insurance again.
I also have called in sick zero days since I started, despite the fact that I have intercostal neuralgia in my ribs, which causes extremely debilitating pain throughout the right side of my torso.
Over the 13 years I’ve suffered from it, it’s been very difficult to find any medications that help with that pain. Even strong opioids only did so much. I worked a corporate job from home for many of those years, and even with morphine and hydrocodone, I would have to miss work because of the pain.
But then 7-OH came along and changed my whole life.
The fact is, 7-OH works on my pain. It works really well. And, it even helps me with energy as well. I assume that is because 7-OH comes from kratom, which comes from the coffee family of plants.
There’s some controversy in the 7-OH community about whether or not it’s relevant that it comes from the coffee plant rather than poppy plants. Some people say it’s disingenuous to pretend that 7-OH doesn’t impact your brain’s opioid receptors, which it definitely does.
But so does coffee. And as a user, I think it’s disingenuous to try to separate 7-OH entirely from coffee.
It is clearly a coffee-related drug. Coffee is one of those things that you will naturally drink less of if you don’t need it, and in my experience it will even start to taste different. As it happens, this is also my experience with both kratom and 7-OH. My body does not want to take more when I don’t need it.
I used to drink 2 cups of espresso a day, but since I started taking 7-OH, I’ve quit coffee entirely. I just have no taste for it, and the 7-OH does a much better job of giving me the stable energy I need to get through the day.
Before I end this column, I do want to reiterate that I will never again be purchasing any products from any of the ”qualified vendors” that support the American Kratom Association. I would call on all fellow 7-OH users to boycott them as well.
The AKA fought for this 7-OH ban because they think it’s eating into their profits.
So, instead of making their own products more competitive, they decided the best course of action was to prevent people like me from using their competitors’ products.
Even worse, the U.S. government is going to enforce the ban, by imposing “administrative, civil, and criminal sanctions applicable” – not just on 7-OH manufacturers, distributors and retailers, but for simple possession. Even research about 7-OH will be a criminal offense!
Land of the not-so-free, I guess.
I don’t know what my future looks like without 7-OH – but I do know what my past looked like without it. Multiple days each month bed-bound, unable to reliably show up for work, no health insurance, and lots of really, really bad pain days.
I refuse to accept that I will be forced back into that life, and that there are no other options.
I’ll never stop advocating for 7-OH to be legal, no matter how hopeless that fight feels. After all, if medical cannabis can be reclassified and taken out of Schedule One, anything is possible.
The life I have rebuilt is too valuable to give up on now.
