Is kratom better now?

[Greyfeather]

My anniversary as a Double M member is coming up and so I was thinking about the first month: all the exciting info. and vendor recommendations. Folks here so helpful, even with my dumbest questions. Anyway, I recall reading some posts about kratom in the earlier days, and it seems like vintage kratom is very special.

So for those of you kratom vets, whatcha think? Is the quality of kratom better now or is the old fire still hotter?

[KBull]

I wouldn’t call myself a veteran. I’m a 4+ year daily user since first day. Aside from my honeymoon phase, I would say kratom is way better now. Then again I was not finding the best vendors or leaf for my first few years, so my input isn’t the best. I do remember some HS a few years back that may have been the best leaf I’ve had though, but overall there’s been some amazing quality lately. Curious what veterans say on this as well

[MycatTimmy]

Good question Greyfeather. I’ve wondered the same thing myself !

[onespeedstop]

Not really an 'old timer' as far as kratom goes, but almost 3 years now, and no, no difference really. Sometimes you get some garbage/weak stuff, but most of the places I've gotten it from have been pretty solid - for all 2 1/2 or 3 years. That said, maybe it was all waayyyy better in 2012, I wouldn't know ha-ha.

[brave777]

I use to think that older kratom was better but i was mistaken, i realized it was my raised tolerance that made my decision to think that. Their is such thing as weak kratom or a weak batch. I agree with that 100%, once you try more then 10 time and different days or years you get same results, simply weak batch. I mean it still works but Just plain weak. So my conclusions right now that there was weak batchs then and there are weak batches now. You can't escape it and you will run into them, it doesnt mean you need to toss them away, they still work just not as pronounced as you wished. This applies same to good batches, there was good bathces then and good batches now. If you felt it the first time and you liked it, most likely it will be good except for some folks its 1 time hit some reason, if that happens put it away and come back later to it, i say this because there are many factors after first burn was mehm just put it away for now. All in all, all kratom works, some less pronounced some more, no biggie as long it works, right? sure there are very few that complete junk but that is very very rare. Kinda like that mystical island trash rush we had. or clean your life back in reddit days. but that is very rare that it happens but it does happen.

[burnmaster3000]

I don't think its better, Its carried on about the same since I first got into it in 2016.

We do have a lot more vendors now, which is nice.

[RubberToes]

I have found the kratom I experience today to be "consistently" better than years past - partly from managing my tolerance and largely having been educated here on MM Herbals, this has yielded better results for me.

i have some middle of the road kratom that I use on a t-break, three or four days of low servings on this and I am refreshed to once again experience heightened effects with more potent kratom, with very little discomfort.

[brave777]

Probably better because we all not buying from 2 max vendors like years ago. we got such big variety now. Some got extra long legs with nice green energy effect, some very heavy couch lock reds. Some very nice uplift feel like TFH with clean effect with no extra heavy or to fast to the point where you need to lay down. Lol But even to fast i learned to mix with a heavy red and you get your self a perfect blend and it dont have the negetives and yet you get a nice heavy sedating with an energy boost in it. Blending is a skill, once you know how one batch feels i already get thoughts of what it could blend very well with. If you do it right with blends the kratom you dont like much, all kratom is becomes sweet. So better? or more choices to pick these days? i would say we got more choices over better. Even 2016 kratom can blend very well with latest purchase. Experience is all you need, practice blending and if dont like the blend keep trying until you hit the gems. I had very bad blends before where it made me to sleepy and weird feeling in them. it happens. I noticed from my personal experience its best if you blend only two batches, the more batches you blend the more likely you will get a meh. when you know exactly how 2 batches feel you have a high chance hitting gems. I would also say its better because of variety and more discussions about vendors. Thanks to this forum i learned a lot and also out of free will and the love of kratomites leave my views, in hope it helps others trying new stuff. Blending, or if you do get one batch that you like a lot, i usually never blend it. I think people should only blend if they want to spice it up. like if its to fast to add a slow batch to the mix..

[herbalhippie]

When I was experimenting with blending I got some very nice blends with only two strains. Seems like anything more than two was just weird. 4 was unpleasant.

[brave777]

When I was experimenting with blending I got some very nice blends with only two strains. Seems like anything more than two was just weird. 4 was unpleasant.

On this note, if you blend more then 3 or 4 or even 6 then you might as well take 10 grams a dose, in order to feel all you have to consume more. How i realized this??? easy, purple 8 in 1 from gaia a while back was shit at low dose, then someone said how much they were taking, i tried it and it worked! so if you are a low ball then for sure max should be 2 blends or just leave as is no blend. my dose around 4-6 grams so i can do 2 blends or even 3 sometimes. If i remember correctly you are around 2g dose? so yeah, i would advice not to blend or 2 max as a blend.

also if you blend, then raise grams per dose. Works better. Your receptors get filled with different alkaloids instead of lets say you make 4 blends and its 2 grams. .5 grams is not much to notice the feel so might as well make it 4or 5 grams. Or just stick with one batch. anyone else notice this?

[herbalhippie]

Yeah, no. I don't want to raise my dose. I dose at about 1.5-1.75. Maybe 2.0 on a really bad day.

[RubberToes]

I also find that a blend of two enhances, where a blend of three or four often has unpleasant results, though i still stick to my sweet spot.
Going over my sweet spot produces even more unpleasant effects for me

[f1vefour]

I've been taking kratom daily for a couple of years, and on/off for another two.

About 6 or 8 months ago I got several variants of kratom from 2018 from someone who had impulsively stocked up. It was without a doubt better than anything I've gotten in the past two years. Now I've had great leaf from a lot of good vendors but that stuff was just on a different level.

That's been my experience.

[brave777]

I've been taking kratom daily for a couple of years, and on/off for another two.

About 6 or 8 months ago I got several variants of kratom from 2018 from someone who had impulsively stocked up. It was without a doubt better than anything I've gotten in the past two years. Now I've had great leaf from a lot of good vendors but that stuff was just on a different level.

That's been my experience.

that is very hard to tell. In theory their might be some truth because the news advertising how evil kratom has brought way more customers then they expected. I read plenty of comments back in the day on reddit how people found out about it. The demand sky rocketed and so the production at the source? Not to mention on all the scares of production being stopped from borneo. Kratom made it on the stocks list as well and i sure many cashed out well on it. so i assume this affected the quality but buying from small batches small vendors makes up for it. Before we only had few vendors and big once, like Herbal salvation and Gaia from top of my head. Now we got tons of smaller batch with small vendors. So yes and no would be the right answer and it depends who you ordering from. Even bigger vendors have stepped up with the quality. Like Liza and Smiley. Recent liza proves great choice and loved it. Your not always going to be happy but i am sure 70% of the stuff these days is a nice hit.

[f1vefour]

I buy from all over, small and large vendors. Lately my ratio of good vs meh is about 50%, in other words the good makes up for the stuff that just doesn't do it for me. Except this last batch from Botanical Bunny, none of it hit at all and the grind on the Red Maeng Da Jong Kong is like sand, I really hate that.

[brave777]

I buy from all over, small and large vendors. Lately my ratio of good vs meh is about 50%, in other words the good makes up for the stuff that just doesn't do it for me. Except this last batch from Botanical Bunny, none of it hit at all and the grind on the Red Maeng Da Jong Kong is like sand, I really hate that.

never ordered from BB. So dont know much about them except judging by the comments its hit or miss.

[attilathejund]

I feel like a broken record at this point but I'm roughly a 12 year vet of daily kratom use. Got into in my early to mid 20s, and I'm now 37. This is what I'll say about quality and how I've felt about it over the years:

In the beginning, it was a rather cost prohibitive hobby. I spent more time on message boards trying to find reliable and cost effective vendors than I did actually ordering the stuff. There was some real trashy kratom out there in the early days where people would complain about finding cat/ dog hair mixed in with their super coarse kratom. So many people were just trying to make a buck because they could charge 10 dollars an ounce for the stuff but have pretty mediocre product. So, in that regard, the old kratom was definitely not better. However, there were a few vendors out there that treated kratom in the same way people like TFH do: They made sure they had really great product before they sold it. As a result, the price on that stuff was even more ridiculous but you felt like you got what you paid for. Especially because kratom was nowhere as ubiquitous as it is these days (it was pretty rare to find it in a head shop even).

All of that said, I don't think the stuff that was great back then was any better or worse than the stuff that is great today. I think vendors know so much more about the plant these days than they did back then and create much more consistent batches as a result. Moreover, with how widely known kratom is these days, there is not a lot of room for vendors selling crappy products and getting away with it. This may result in some people thinking products today are better than they were before.

Lastly, I think it truly is subjective. After doing this for so long, I can't even tell the difference between the various colors of strains. They either work or they don't. I've had whites that have left me feeling sedated. I've had reds that have given me anxiety. As we can see from the 1000s of posts each day, one man's trash is another man's treasure in the kratom world. As such, I always feel like I'm rolling the dice when I order something that seems to be universally praised.

[f1vefour]

As we can see from the 1000s of posts each day, one man's trash is another man's treasure in the kratom world. As such, I always feel like I'm rolling the dice when I order something that seems to be universally praised.

So much this, I try to never say kratom from X vendor is trash just because it doesn't work for me. I will however comment about the grind of the kratom since this is very important to me as I t&w, especially if it is so course it's like trying to swallow sand.

[Greyfeather]

@ attilathejund

Hey, Cool story! You answered a few questions that I didn't even ask. Cost was a subject that I was wondering about. 2012 seems like AGES ago. It's surprising all of the other things we didn't have then that we take for granted now. I didn't even know kratom existed a year and a half ago. It must really have been a "niche" substance then; now vendors are everywhere (some selling garbage on very fancy sites). It's like you're a contemporary hippie . Would you mind sharing how you discovered kratom?

[attilathejund]

@GreyFeather

Hey, just glad I could share! I should just reiterate that everyone's experience is different and may have more fond memories of the past. I just remember it being so much more of a hassle on so many levels (paying for the stuff alone was a nightmare since there were so few companies accepting paypal at the time as they would get shut down and things like Venmo, etc didn't exist in 2008). It was a niche substance to a certain degree but the number of vendors seemed to double, year after year. What is odd to me is that there are so many that just do not exist anymore these days and if they do, they're still charging crazy prices. I just visited one of my old sites to see if they were around and they're asking 90 dollars for 250g, just to give you an idea of what prices were like back then.

I'm trying to recall the first time I tried kratom but I imagine it was after reading about it on Erowid. In my early 20s, I dabbled in a few research chems just to give them a try (a bunch of my friends were studying chemistry and while I wouldn't say I was doing them "strictly for research," we did use them very responsibly and wrote about them afterward) and I think kratom came up as a result. I didn't think too much about it at first but I gave it another shot after reading about a vendor people were praising on Blue Light (old message board for drugs). Bought some, loved it, and the rest is history. I've maintained or lowered the same dose since the beginning and told myself that if I start fiending or needing more than what I take, then its time to stop. I've kept this mantra all these years and have been in good to great health the entire time. Once you learn all of the tricks (lots of water, when to take it, how to take it), it is pretty easy to make things work.

It is still weird to me that I'm one of the longer consumers on this board!

[CatfatherB]

@GreyFeather

Hey, just glad I could share! I should just reiterate that everyone's experience is different and may have more fond memories of the past. I just remember it being so much more of a hassle on so many levels (paying for the stuff alone was a nightmare since there were so few companies accepting paypal at the time as they would get shut down and things like Venmo, etc didn't exist in 2008). It was a niche substance to a certain degree but the number of vendors seemed to double, year after year. What is odd to me is that there are so many that just do not exist anymore these days and if they do, they're still charging crazy prices. I just visited one of my old sites to see if they were around and they're asking 90 dollars for 250g, just to give you an idea of what prices were like back then.

I'm trying to recall the first time I tried kratom but I imagine it was after reading about it on Erowid. In my early 20s, I dabbled in a few research chems just to give them a try (a bunch of my friends were studying chemistry and while I wouldn't say I was doing them "strictly for research," we did use them very responsibly and wrote about them afterward) and I think kratom came up as a result. I didn't think too much about it at first but I gave it another shot after reading about a vendor people were praising on Blue Light (old message board for drugs). Bought some, loved it, and the rest is history. I've maintained or lowered the same dose since the beginning and told myself that if I start fiending or needing more than what I take, then its time to stop. I've kept this mantra all these years and have been in good to great health the entire time. Once you learn all of the tricks (lots of water, when to take it, how to take it), it is pretty easy to make things work.

It is still weird to me that I'm one of the longer consumers on this board!

You or Gumby, I'd think would be using it the longest, I remember when the trading post came out and Guby put some of his stuff from 2013 on the trading post with the receipts for em'.. some of those original prices were pretty expensive.

[herbalhippie]

It blew me away that Gumby had all those receipts. He's obviously MUCH more organized than I am.

[CatfatherB]

It blew me away that Gumby had all those receipts. He's obviously MUCH more organized than I am.

Definitely!! Seems like a few people who've been taking kratom for long periods are now joining double M, maybe they will stick around and offer up some of those vintage gems on the trading post?

[attilathejund]

I have about 2 kilos worth of stuff that is over 6 years old, haha.

[f1vefour]

I have about 2 kilos worth of stuff that is over 6 years old, haha.

From where?

[attilathejund]

All over the internet, honestly. At some point I just mixed all my reds, greens, golds, and whites into sealed separate bags and put them away in storage. They're all things that didn't do much for me but I'm half tempted to give them another shot to see how they have aged.

[f1vefour]

Yeah I've done that before, it never worked out unfortunately.

[RubberToes]

I remember at one time i was buying Kratom on Amazon, it was so convenient, it was then just considered a supplement!
Giving out payment info to some of the old vendors was pretty sketchy, although I never had a problem.

I feel todays vendors and websites are very polished and the product mostly very good - at least with Balz's list and the help from other members here on MM. If you are willing to do a bit of research here on MM, you can find Kratom that fits your profile and hopefully not have a closet full of MEH!

[f1vefour]

Yeah I've had good luck from smaller vendors and even some just getting started.

[CatfatherB]

Y'all could put those Vintage batches on the trading post for an auction here!?! "Vintage" sells!!

[KBull]

@atillathejund the tricks “lots of water, how to take it, when to take it.”

Spot on brother! That’s seriously what it’s all about, and kept me rolling smooth for 4 1/2 years with no problems at all. Of course I had my stint where I was over doing my doses, but will never go back to that. Water water water, that can’t be stressed enough. People at work think I’m insane for how much water I drink! It’s so crucial for us. Not to mention a healthy thing to do!

[onespeedstop]

It is kind of crazy how many kratom selling websites seems to have started up the past couple of years. I can imagine how it would have been difficult to find 10 years ago since it was pretty 'unknown' then. Now we have more than we can keep up with, plus sellers like TFH and some of the MeWe people who don't even sell through a Google searchable website. Seems like it's the 'golden age' of kratom. Hopefully they don't strip mine the forests for it and ruin a good thing. Or start making goofy laws against it.

[brave777]

All over the internet, honestly. At some point I just mixed all my reds, greens, golds, and whites into sealed separate bags and put them away in storage. They're all things that didn't do much for me but I'm half tempted to give them another shot to see how they have aged.

Mixing a bunch into one pile had always gave me negative results. I rather have something weak but take it more in a dose gave me better results. I am not making this mistake again. I honestly think vendors can easily screw up as well, one bad mix and a bunch of kilo's at waste. they got to be dam sure its a good mix to risk it.

[onespeedstop]

Mixing a bunch into one pile had always gave me negative results. I rather have something weak but take it more in a dose gave me better results.

^ That was my experience as well. Plus I was to believe that there's only one color of kratom (green, as the leaves are) and red/white/yellow/gold/etc. are either dried differently and/or mixed already.

[jabro70]

I think as far as consistency is concerned, the leaf is better now. Sure there were some Fire Batches, but I think they were fewer and farther between than now.
Of course I can only speak for 2017 and newer leaf for the most part. I do have some older strains I got in some trades, but none of those have really blown me away.

[mivanqua]

When I was experimenting with blending I got some very nice blends with only two strains. Seems like anything more than two was just weird. 4 was unpleasant.

Its like the strains are fighting each other or something. Two is my limit. I have a container that has the dregs of all of my greens since the beginning. It has DG, KOG, HS (the good stuff,) Motark, etc. and the first dose i took, i was REALLY anticipating it, and it wobbled me out pretty bad pretty quick. Disappointing. I have about 40 grams of.this devil blend I'll very likely cut when days are tough with a nice red or something.
Generally i do.them one at a time. I have a bag I carry that has various amounts of 8-10 different strains and when I want different ones, I switch them out (about once a week.) Rarely do I mix them.

[BallzDeep9]

... Now we have more than we can keep up with, plus sellers like TFH and some of the MeWe people who don't even sell through a Google searchable website. Seems like it's the 'golden age' of kratom. Hopefully they don't strip mine the forests for it and ruin a good thing ...

Good News. Top Shelf kratom, wild harvested from mature trees... IS or must be, as good today as it was 10 years ago.

However, the USA kratom "industry" HAS changed big-time, over just 3-4 years... Supply and Demand. Does anyone remember the great sell-off November 2017 - The Great Panic ?? ALL online vendors got completely wiped out. Caused by mostly false rumors posted on Reddit and Facebook, that DEA would ban kratom soon. This was just 1 year after DEA reversed on their ban in 2016. So there was lingering fear about them doing it again...

Then 2018, a BOOM year for kratom demand... think about this: All USA vendors, 100's of them.. contacted Indo suppliers around same time, and ordered massive quantity ~ Not quality! Indo's responded to the huge up-tick in demand, by shipping any powdered crap they could find. American dollars falling off trees!! Around this same time.. many "profiteers" demanded that Indo prices be lower. Much lower... Early 2018 was the start of "Cargo Kratom"

Basically, WE are spoiled children here! I do feel bad for those on Facebook and elsewhere.. Guys who buy 20 Ton loads of Cargo Kratom, ain't getting any small batch goodness.. they are getting Blue Tarp special ~ Huge loads of below average leaf.. and that crap is being sold on some real fancy websites. A very interesting thread on Reddit Kratom Korner, talking about AKA and a few vendors (Gaia, Bowers, Powers, etc.) who demanded the Indo's lower their price to $6 per Kilo. Or less! Those vendors imported boat-loads of Salmonella infected leaf... which was sold on Google searches, SEO marketing, fancy websites!! https://www.reddit.com/r/KratomKorner/c ... n_closely/

[pray4peace4]

In my short experience with kratom, starting in mid 2016, my batches from 2016 through 2017 were almost exclusively superior than those later, with TFH being a notable exception & one Indonesian supplier I use. I still have some of those old batches & they still are awesome. Other batches I bought after 2017 are definitely not superior for me, not even close. I read a post on a different forum where someone put his substandard kratom in an Instapot & pressure cooked it in water for about 30 minutes, then collected the goo. He said it worked really well. I gotta try that out.

[f1vefour]

In my short experience with kratom, starting in mid 2016, my batches from 2016 through 2017 were almost exclusively superior than those later, with TFH being a notable exception & one Indonesian supplier I use. I still have some of those old batches & they still are awesome. Other batches I bought after 2017 are definitely not superior for me, not even close. I read a post on a different forum where someone put his substandard kratom in an Instapot & pressure cooked it in water for about 30 minutes, then collected the goo. He said it worked really well. I gotta try that out.

Yes, I'm almost certain this is due to the boom in kratom sales and the harvesting of trees which are too young.

[guitartodd77]

I think the best way test quality deltas between the old stuff and new stuff side by side is to take at least a 30 day tolerance break and then do the Pepsi challenge with each. Do it blindfolded as well in order to remove all of your pre-conceived notions of quality, age and strain type. I bet you'll find the quality isn't a great deal different.

Just my opinion.