Withdrawal, and How to Stop

Stopping kratom can bring on withdrawal, and nobody can tell you in advance whether it will, how hard it will be or how long it will last. No study has compared stopping all at once with stopping gradually, and no taper schedule has research behind it.

This level has covered why you take kratom, how often, tolerance, breaks and dependence. This last lesson covers what withdrawal is, how common it appears to be, what makes it more likely, how long it lasts, how to stop with a plan that holds, what not to do, and when to bring in a physician.

What Is Withdrawal?

It’s what can follow when a body that has adjusted to kratom goes without it.

As the last lesson covered, physical dependence shows itself as withdrawal¹ when someone who takes kratom regularly stops all at once or cuts back sharply. Clinicians count withdrawal as a condition of its own, separate from a use disorder. It is a sign that a body adapted, not proof of addiction.

The fullest published description comes from Malaysia. In a 2014 study, researchers surveyed 293 regular kratom takers across three northern states, all of whom had taken it for more than six months. In Malaysia kratom is usually taken as a tea, leaves brewed in water and served by the glass, as the second lesson of this level described. The physical symptoms they commonly reported were muscle spasms and aches, trouble sleeping, watery eyes and nose, hot flashes, fever, less appetite and diarrhea. The psychological ones were restlessness, tension, anger, sadness and nervousness.

Know who was in that group. More than half scored as severely dependent and another 45 percent as moderately dependent, and the checklist used to record their withdrawal was built for cannabis. That is what one heavily dependent group reported. It isn’t a list of what to expect, and any one of those symptoms can have another cause.

How Common Is It?

Nobody has a reliable figure.

The expert forum from the lesson on breaks concluded that how common it is among American kratom takers is not well established. In a 2017 online survey of 2,798 people who had taken kratom in the past year, 9.5 percent said they’d had withdrawal from it, and another 17.5 percent said they possibly had. Their average score on a standard withdrawal scale fell in the mild range.

The 395 volunteers from earlier in this level were asked about stopping for a day or more. Most of their scores were mild to moderate, and few were severe. Both groups chose to answer online, and both describe a group, not you.

Does Everyone Who Stops Get It?

No, and the research is split.

The forum described two controlled studies that looked for withdrawal with the standard opioid withdrawal scales and found none. In one, run in Canada, 198 people new to kratom took it for up to fifteen days in a row, and their scores didn’t differ from placebo. In the other, 26 men in Malaysia who had taken kratom daily for about six years showed no signs of it.

Both come with a catch. The first gave newcomers smaller amounts than regular takers use. The second only watched its volunteers for 10 to 20 hours without kratom, and its authors said that was too short to catch anything that showed up later.

One man from the interview study shows why that matters. When he stopped for three weeks during a move, nothing began until three days after his last serving. Then came restless legs, muscle clenching, cold sweats and irritability.

The forum’s own reading is that people vary a great deal, and that withdrawal is not reliably present in heavy takers either. Nobody has mapped who will get it and who won’t.

What Makes It More Likely?

How often, how much, and what came before kratom.

The forum found withdrawal reported more among people taking more, more often, over a long stretch, and among people with a history of opioid use before kratom. In the 2017 survey, having had opioid withdrawal in the past and being male both predicted it. In the Malaysian study, people drinking three or more glasses of kratom tea a day had higher odds of severe dependence, withdrawal and craving they couldn’t control. That glass count is the study’s figure, not a line with safety beneath it, and it mixes how often with how much.

The forum added a note about products: where alkaloid levels are raised above what the leaf naturally carries, the chances of dependence and withdrawal may differ. That is one more reason we don’t suggest extracts to anyone new. And as the second lesson of this level showed, frequency is the part within your reach.

How Long Does It Last?

Nobody can give you a timeline.

There is no accepted clinical definition of kratom withdrawal. The scales researchers use were built for opioids, or in the Malaysian study for cannabis, and the forum called for measures built to fit kratom. So any day-by-day course you find is invented. What the Malaysian researchers did conclude is that symptoms grow more severe with prolonged use.

Should You Stop All at Once or Gradually?

Nobody has tested it.

There is no published study comparing the two for kratom. The forum listed gradual tapering among the approaches waiting to be evaluated.

What exists is people’s accounts. One man in the interview study stopped after a stretch of taking too much. He went back after his parents died and he needed kidney surgery unrelated to kratom, and he said he would never quit cold turkey again. The woman from the lesson on breaks cut back gradually before each of hers. Those are two people’s experiences, not a method.

Then there’s what we hear, and it’s a small sample. People rarely bring this to the place they buy kratom, but it has come up in conversation now and then. The way we put it to people is that it matters more that this be right than that it be quick². In those conversations, the people who got there had mostly taken their time coming off, and stopping all at once had worked out less often. That isn’t a study, and it’s worth exactly that much. Which pace fits you is a physician’s call.

Why There’s No Taper Schedule Here

A taper schedule is a set of numbers applied to a body, and nobody has run the study those numbers would have to come from. As the lesson on breaks noted, researchers have not agreed where moderate kratom consumption ends and heavy begins, so a schedule has no starting point. Any schedule you find was invented by whoever published it.

Why Plans Fail, and What Makes One Hold

When a plan doesn’t hold, the pace is often the reason, not the person’s resolve. A plan set faster than anyone could keep tends to get dropped early, and the dropping gets read as a failure of will when it was a problem with the plan. That is our reading of those few conversations, not a finding.

What helps is deciding in advance, writing it down, and giving the plan more room than you think it needs.

Name the goal first: cutting back, pausing or stopping for good. Pick an end date and work back from it, then add time. Write down what you do as you do it, because memory smooths it over. Tell somebody, since a plan nobody knows about is the easiest kind to drop.

What Not to Do

Don’t reach for something else to get through it. Alcohol, another botanical, or a sedative or prescription drug taken without a physician adds a second problem to the first.

Don’t stop a prescribed medication as part of this. That decision belongs to whoever prescribed it.

The forum also cautioned clinicians that opioid medications such as methadone and buprenorphine should not be the first answer for someone reporting kratom withdrawal, especially someone with no opioid history, because they can create an opioid dependence that wasn’t there before. It’s worth raising if you talk to a doctor about stopping.

When to Bring In a Physician

Before you start, if you’ve taken kratom regularly for a long time, take other medications or have a health condition. Say kratom by name, and say how much, how often and for how long. If symptoms get worse rather than fading, or anything alarms you, seek medical care rather than pushing through. If the two of you settle on a plan, our Tapering Planner³ holds it where you can both see it.

Key Takeaways

• No study has compared stopping all at once with stopping gradually, and no taper schedule has research behind it. Pace is a physician’s call.
• Withdrawal is a sign a body adapted, not proof of addiction. It’s more likely with taking more, more often, and with a history of opioid use.
• One study that found no withdrawal watched for less than a day. One man’s symptoms began three days after he stopped.
• The plans that fail are usually the rushed ones. Give yours room, write it down, and don’t fill the gap with something else.
• Before you stop after taking kratom regularly for a long time, or if you take other medications, talk to a physician, and never stop a prescribed medication on your own.