For Bohn, the move will make it much more difficult to do the research she had planned. “It’s a real stress,” she tells WIRED. “Right now I want to test it for additional safety studies, and I can’t do it, I can’t ship it, I can’t touch it. I can’t do anything.”
For drug users who hope to use it to wean off opioids — despite the lack of clinical evidence that the drug is effective in humans — it’s the removal of a potential off-ramp to their addiction.
Jim Bates has been on various opioids, including prescription pills, heroin and fentanyl, since he was 25. About two years ago, the 53-year-old Duncan, Oklahoma, kitchen manager became addicted to 7-OH, a concentrated compound found in kratom that activates the brain’s opioid receptors. “That shit blew my mind,” he says, noting that he was introduced to a vape shop. “It was a lot like heroin.”
He eventually graduated to a similar chemical, called MGM-15, which felt more like oxycodone—the effect he preferred. (The DEA placed both 7-OH and MGM-15 on Schedule I over the summer.)
It got to the point where MGM-15 “was all I thought about,” says Bates. About 11 months ago, he started searching the Discord and Telegram groups he was in for advice on how to quit.
“I introduced SR-17, which was a freaking miracle,” he says, using a common shorthand for the chemical. It took him about three weeks to unlock MGM-15, using SR-17018.
Previous attempts to get off 7-OH had caused him “anxiety like you wouldn’t believe” along with restless legs during withdrawal, he says. But with SR-17018, he experienced no physical withdrawal symptoms. “They’ve never created anything like this,” he says, adding that he didn’t experience a high or “euphoria” from taking it.