The Mystery of the Vape Shop Kratom

A listener gets in over his head with an unfamiliar substance

Mitragyna speciosa (kratom) Image Credit: sarin photo / Shutterstock

Hello!

We have a new one for you:

This week we have for you ... not a whodunnit, but a what did I do? A listener tries a substance he doesn’t know much about and not long after, his life begins to change. Afterwards, he wonders — what was that, and why was it so easy to get? Search Engine investigates. 

How we chose this story this week

Kratom packaging designed to look like illicit drugs, referenced in the episode via The Tampa Bay Times

Part of our show’s mission is to just look for where we can be most helpful. As in, where are there gaps in the information or explanation ecosystem that a scrappy, small team could try to help plug? Kratom seemed like one of those holes. There’s information about it online, some of it good, some of it bad, much of it in between, all mixed up in one big bouillabaisse.

We talk a bit in this episode specifically about Reddit, which is becoming, in our diminished era of internet, many people’s first stop for information about all sorts of things. Reddit is a fine place to go if you’re trying to figure out which TV to buy, or if you want to argue about which album a band fell off on. I use it that way. But I think it’s a suboptimal place to go if you’re determining which semi-licit substance to put in your body and at what dose.

My thinking about this is still evolving, but right now, I view Reddit as a great compendium of other people’s experiences and opinions. The site’s main weakness, as I see it, is that it’s too easy for a reader to drift into using Reddit as a compendium of expertise.

In the case of drugs like Kratom and Tianeptine, Reddit offers a vast survey of user experiences. Academics consult it for this reason. But it’s also important to remember that the people here sharing information on subreddits aren’t often experts themselves. It’s a place where anyone can make a claim, and anyone else can validate it. If you ever have the experience of reading a Reddit thread where strangers explain something you have firsthand expertise of, you will know the uncanny seasick feeling it gives you — “are they this wrong about everything?”

Anyway, that’s part of why we’re here, doing our best to accurately discuss kratom and other mu-opoid receptor agonists with the help of academics and fact checkers on our podcast. Once we better understand what these substances are, we can begin to re-imagine the ways we currently package and sell these drugs to the people who need them.

Just curious, what do people think about the idea of having more drugs behind the counter in America, European-style? Do people support a world where we lean more heavily on, or have more access to, the expertise of pharmacists? Sound off, as always, in the comments.

More materials

Kratom: History, pharmacology, current user trends, adverse health effects and potential benefits - Dr Oliver Grundmann

Kratom: The Forbidden Leaf — Hamilton Morris

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In an old church in Amsterdam! Photo by Wesley Verhoeve

The Search Engine team just returned from Amsterdam. Sruthi and I got to do an onstage stage event with journalist Elja Looijestijn. We talked about starting Search Engine, the joys and sorrows of running a small business, and we did a full breakdown of how we made our Berghain episodes.

We were also invited to visit the podcast publisher Dag en Nacht, which is part of the audio company Podimo. Dag en Nacht was actually inspired by a podcast company I used to work at in the US, which made it a surreal experience to visit there.

In fact, I found the whole experience fascinating. To be in another country where podcasting has found a distinct foothold, but where the artistic and commercial paths of the medium have run differently than here. (Short version: No huge boom but no huge bust. People in the industry seem generally happier and more optimistic, and their optimism was pretty infectious.)

Thanks to the wonderful Lieke Malcorps for making this whole thing happen.

It was also nice for the whole team to get out of the office and meet some people across an ocean who enjoy the show. We’ve all been thinking we should do this more often. Maybe we will? If you work for an institution in another country that wants to fly a small team of North American podcasters to come talk about what we do, shoot me an email? pjvogt85@gmail.com, as always.

the team! also from Wesley

A music recommendation, a podcast recommendation

I’m really enjoying the new Jamie xx album, but this track especially.

And Sruthi’s really excited about the new podcast We Live Here Now.

This is a series from friend of the show Hanna Rosin and her partner, Lauren Ober, a radio talent of her own. The show starts with a confrontation the two had with their new neighbors, who are family members of Ashli Babbit, the woman who died after being shot by police officers on January 6th.

Sruthi said she’s loving this series both because it’s a compelling listen and because it feels daring — one half of America talking to the other half — — in a moment where the fatigue for communication itself is quite high. We’ll probably recommend this on the podcast, too, so when we do, pretend you’ve never heard of it. Cool? Cool.

Okay! That’s us for today. We don’t have a new episode of Search Engine this week but we’re planning to share, on Friday, an episode of another show we love. I have fully lost my voice and I’m really hoping it recovers well enough for me to record the intro to that show by Thursday? We’ll see!

Life’s an adventure, see you soon,

PJ