A Leaf of Faith

Many claim a supplement has freed them from a life of prescription pain pills,

while others say it is a dangerous unregulated substance.

It's called kratom.

What we're hoping to have today is a meaningful discussion,

and we have, joining us, a panel of kratom proponents,

documentary filmmaker, Chris Bell...

Why does this always happen to me?

It seems like I always end up in the middle.

In my first film, Bigger Stronger Faster,

my brothers were both using steroids, and I wasn't.

I was stuck in the middle of following the rules, or being the best.

In my second film, Trophy Kids,

I ended up in the middle of anxious parents

living vicariously through their children's sports dreams.

Pull your head out of your ass, dude, seriously.

Can you be any stupider? How dumb!

In Prescription Thugs, I exposed Big Pharma...

- How many pills a day were you doing? - Ninety.

...as well as my own addiction to opioid painkillers.

See, the thing is, before I was a filmmaker, I was a powerlifter

and I wasn't half bad.

Lifting gave me purpose.

I was a shy, chubby kid.

But when I started breaking records,

and lifting more than my older brother Mad Dog,

people began to notice, and it felt good.

I even got my little brother Smelly involved.

At one point, we had so many trophies from lifting,

that we'd just throw them in the garbage.

I no longer wanted to be like my heroes.

I just wanted to be the strongest man in the world.

But what I didn't realize is, all that wear and tear on the human body

comes with a price.

And, for me, that price was...

Pain.

Shortly after Bigger Stronger Faster,

I had both of my hips completely replaced

due to a genetic condition.

My dad had hip surgery at 17. So, it runs in the family.

This is a double hip replacement surgery. And I'm only 35 years old.

Sounds scary, right? Well, not for me.

They told me I was going to be walking the same day.

This is what they mean by walking the same day.

I'm high on painkillers. So, all I can picture is myself

all jacked and tan, in a Rocky montage, making a comeback.

The more it hurt, the more pills I took.

But when I was about to turn that corner and run up the stairs,

my brother Mad Dog died in a sober living facility, at 37 years old.

After seeing my brother die, and knowing that drugs were at the core of it,

you would think I would stop taking pills.

But at that point, it was too late. I was addicted.

My life was going off the rails, but I wasn't the only one.

It seemed like our whole country was popping pills.

American account for the use of approximately 99% of one specific opioid,

a powerful painkiller called hydrocodone.

Every day, 91 Americans die from an overdose of opioids,

which include prescription painkillers and heroin.

We know that four out of five new heroin users

started on prescription pills.

We saw more people die of drug overdoses

than die of car accidents.

In and around Huntington, West Virginia,

28 overdoses occurred in one five-hour span.

The point that everyone is missing is that we don't have an opioid epidemic,

we have a pain epidemic, and we're just treating the wrong thing.

You've been doing a documentary about all the different components

of addiction, of selling these pills,

and yet, you still got sucked into their web.

Yeah, exactly, that's how powerful it is.

But you are about as educated about it as a person can be.

I think now I am.

During the making of Prescription Thugs, the film was delayed,

and the funding got pulled,

and I didn't know how to handle it.

I relapsed and ended up back on pills.

They say you haven't made it in Hollywood until you've been to rehab.

So, I went out to Malibu to face my demons head on.

But after 90 days of rehab, and doing everything that was asked of me,

there was one big glaring problem that rehab couldn't fix:

I was still in pain.

I had kicked my addiction and was back on the straight and narrow.

I began searching for alternatives to relieve my pain.

So, after I got done with the opioids,

I was on Dr. Drew's show,

and he said, "Well, you should try Advil and Tylenol in combination."

"That's going to be better than an opioid for your chronic pain."

So, I said, "Okay." I start trying that.

Then I get a phone call from my friend who lives in England,

who tells me he just had a kidney transplant

because of all the NSAIDs he was taking.

NSAIDs are non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.

Things like the painkillers found in Advil, Aleve, and aspirin.

So, what's the answer? Am I supposed to just live with the pain?

Then I get a call from a familiar voice.

It's good to see you. I missed you, man. I haven't seen you in so long.

- We haven't even talked in a while. - What's up?

My friend Horshu said he'd discovered the holy grail,

a natural painkiller that won't kill you, called kratom.

- When did you start taking it? - About nine months ago. Yeah.

- And how do you feel? - I feel great.

Yeah, so we talked in Prescription Thugs,

you had "a massive, massive, massive stroke," in the words of your doctor.

- Does it help with that? - It helped me immensely.

- How do you handle pain? - I take kratom.

- How did you handle it before? - Look, man, I would stand up,

I'd stand up, I'd walk like this. You remember.

I'd be walking like this.

You know what I mean? Hunched over for 20 minutes,

- you know what I mean? Walking slow. - Yes, slowly...

Now I just stand up... Stand up, walk around.

You know, when that study came out,

- I was like, "65 wrestlers under the age of 50..." - Yeah.

- ..."have died. And they blame steroids all the time, right?" - Yeah.

It's not steroids. It's the wrong combination of drugs.

It's probably alcohol with Vicodin, with cocaine, you know what I mean?

I knew as long as I stuffed myself with painkillers,

I couldn't feel it, and I couldn't feel the pain.

And I would go as long as I could until my body couldn't go anymore.

Yeah, Vicodin and vodka were my closest friends.

- Wow. - And my closest enemies.

Once I had the stroke, I refused to go back to pain pills.

You know, before I had the stroke,

I was doing about 90 pain pills a day for seven years.

And then when I had the stroke, when I recovered,

I refused to go back to pain pills. And I found kratom.

Horshu pointed us to Vegas to meet his friend Kelly,

who's been selling kratom since 2010.

He owns one of the top kratom companies in the country. I used to be into boats

and boatracing, and so forth, and I was in an accident

where, you know, I broke my orbital,

and broke the right side of my face in a boat crash.

When I went to the doctor, especially for the orbital, there is nothing they can do.

So, they give me pain medication. They give me Percocets.

And he gave me, I want to say 60 pills, with three refills.

- Worst off, I'd need it for... - Yeah, a week.

Yeah, a week maybe.

Maybe four or five days, maybe.

Like everybody else, I started taking the Percs,

and they kinda become a habit for me.

Then you start thinking about, "Well, shit,"

"my day might not function quite as well"

"if I don't take this, I better take it."

It led to the point where now when I wanted to stop, I was going to get sick.

Somebody had introduced me to kratom. I was involved in the head shop industry.

I owned a couple of smoke shops at the time.

And introduced to kratom,

and it was a real easy transition out of the Percocets.

What's so special about this stuff? Why should we care about kratom?

You know, for one, because it's been so helpful to so many people.

We know that it's been a medicinal plant for hundreds of years.

There were tribes in Indonesia that used to build their village

around a series of kratom trees,

because it was central to their way of life.

So, if people have been using this for hundreds of years,

Why have I never heard of it?

Dr. Darshan Singh has been studying the traditional uses of kratom

in his homeland of Malaysia for over ten years.

I've been spending a lot of time on kratom research in Malaysia,

and in Malaysia I'm known as Dr. kratom, okay?

So, I'd been going in, trying to understand why people use kratom.

If I were to make my own kratom tea for personal consumption,

I would just have to go behind my house and just pluck maybe like about 20 leaves,

just brew it, and I would just switch off the fire,

and then allow it to cool down, and then just consume it the whole day.

So, you guys don't have an opioid crisis like we have...

Oh, we have opioid addiction problem.

People are using kratom to self-treat opioid abuse,

alcohol abuse, and crystal meth abuse.

You can actually use kratom to treat chronic pain.

And you can also use it to treat opioid addiction,

because opioid addiction is also associated with pain.

In traditional settings, those who are using kratom,

they are not labeled or stereotyped as drug addicts or drug users.

They do not engage in criminal behavior.

If you were to compare heroin or morphine users on the street,

they do engage in risky behaviors,

they do commit crime, because they have to support their addictive behaviors.

While kratom users, in traditional settings,

they use kratom for medicinal purpose.

And people living in Southeast Asia,

like from where I'm coming, Malaysia,

people have been using kratom for over 200 years, okay?

And you need to make sure that you have

genuine distributors of kratom in the United States.

If kratom is so great, then why haven't I seen it on store shelves?

Probably 'cause you can't get it at your local pharmacy or GNC.

For now, you have to venture into your local smoke shop.

And that's not usually where I get my medicine.

So, this is more what I would picture, like, a supplement to look like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Happy kratom.

I was in the army for six years, and I have friends with PTSD, who...

They give them this drug and that drug,

and they all have bad side effects, and they get hooked on them.

But they can use this, not get hooked on it,

and not have all the bad effects.

I'm not going to say it's going to cure it 100%.

But it helps them live day-to-day without having an outburst,

or having a flashback.