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The 7-OH dosages head shops advertise in their windows are insane. One pill containing several times as much as anyone without a substantial tolerance could reasonably handle. Wildly unethical on so many levels

it's like heroin, right? fucked up

Dopesick sounds too cool

It's also insane that "Only drink half the bottle" in tiny print for dose disclosure is allowed. No one is drinking half of a five hour energy style shot bottle.

Thanks for the warning! Ugh.

There is a lot of insanely dangerous, unregulated supplements people can just get at the gas station, it definitely needs to change

Last Week Tonight also did a thing on it. https://youtu.be/mRZqHzDG_c8?is=KzM-FKOw4wBpStcK

Seriously. My husband's best friend went to rehab for that shit specifically. Bought it initially thinking it was like kratom. It was a quick spiral from there.

Seeing the packaging being readily available for random distributors to provide and just pop in what ever they feel like is insane. The “same” product (label, pill capsule) being different things is terrifying and vile. Regulating supplements would help but that ship has long sailed :/

That was a good episode. He really focused in on the the slimy cryptocurrency-coded guys behind it

Detroit News ran a good story about some one’s addiction and recovery. Really opened my eyes. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/l... archive.is/x7abc

well 7-OH is one of the compounds in kratom and it is possible to be addicted to kratom. it still acts on opioid receptors but has a safer side effect profile

That stuff is just like opiates but with significantly worse side effects like liver damage. If this shit is available at gas stations, why not just make morphine available without an Rx?

I've seen that stuff in head shops, looked it up just to see what it was and was like "how the fuck is that legal?"

The FDA can’t until the DEA classifies them as a bannable drug. In the US we passed a law in the 90s that makes it very difficult for FDA to regulate items sold as “supplements”. It’s a huge problem but Congress hasn’t acted to fix their screwup. www.msn.com/en-us/health...

Probably mentioned in the replies here, but John Oliver did a segment recently on gas station drugs that included 7-OH.

my own opinion is that there are certain substances that simply should not be sold with any veneer of legitimacy or safety. Like straight up opium (if you boil poppy seed pods, you can still get benefits from it without possibly getting addicted to heroin).

Extra level of frustration because it shares the same name, people try it as their well meaning friends have used regular kratom and recommended it for this or that. I had to warn my mom about it because regular kratom might help her, but she's not online so she had no idea there was a difference

Literally just got out of six months of 7OH hell because I thought it was just like, kratom+ and it’s watermelon flavored so how bad can it be?

i was dopesick from this stuff a while back and i legitimately felt like my entire body was being ripped out of my anus. horrible.

I was just looking over the FDA info sheet on it that goes over various tests that have been done on 7-OH and based on those it’s more in the neighborhood of 2-3x the potency of morphine, so up around heroin in strength, which is *crazy* to have sold unregulated in gas stations

Can you die from an OD?

It’s fucking crazy that you can just buy this stuff, I’m glad I never tried that crap.

(Or probably the FDA, not the USDA -- being a drug takes precedent over being an agricultural product, I guess.)

bsky.app/profile/kenv...

A lot of (true) psychedelics come from fungus (so, not a plant, no leaves). And opium is from the seed pod (or seeds? can't remember which) Technically, marijuana is from the reproductive bud, not an energy making leaf. I'm sure there are others ... 😎

Yeah I just think if you want legal drugs you gotta have good information

i think a lot of drugs should be legal but also pretty strictly regulated and at least *some* friction introduced into the purchasing / consumption cycle. you should have to walk into a specialized retailer to get this kind of shit

Ya, the real problem 99% of the time is advertising and packaging. I am increasingly convinced that we simply need to ban advertising completely if we want to unfuck things. The law also just needs to be way quicker to punish businesses for anything adjacent to lying.

Him,the Mormons and Orrin Hatch www.nutraingredients.com/Article/2024...

God remember regulations? Those were the days.

all drugs should be legal but you have to buy them from one of those good guy bartenders on tv who says "you look like you've had enough, pal" after the second or third drink.

Like don't get me wrong, as a Sackler family victim, opiate addiction is terrifying but we have swung too far to the right and people now HAVE to rely on this type of shit for pain management. It's the selling it like "yeah man it's just to chill you out bro" or "ENERGY SUPPLEMENT WHEE!" that's bad.

This is what happens when legalism is promoted above all else and becomes synonymous with ethical and safe. The de-criminalization of drugs requires shifting the culture through education in addition to more housing/recovery resources.

You'll never believe who supports removing any warnings from gas station drugs: bsky.app/profile/kenv...

This just happened to me with gabapentin. Had no idea what it was doing to me. Gave my really bad withdrawals.

it's at least in a locked glass case so you'd have to ask the cashier and get carded for it, which makes me feel a little better, but seriously do some research before buying and taking this stuff y'all

At the same time, however, I've been informed by several people that it is the only thing keeping them from getting addicted to heroine 🤷 so ya know, there is another side to this story. Complicated situation

yeah and think of all the normal blue collar people who got hooked on oxy because they hurt their back and a doctor they trusted told them it was safe. so many lives ruined

Perhaps worst of all, they're giving gas station dick pills a bad name!

I think our country's absolute refusal to have any conversations around common sense drug policy is going to lead to even more deaths. And the fact that these "supplements" are so unregulated means those pushing these narratives will alsO evade accountability. Shitty place to be!

OR, the other possibility...

Narcotics are pretty much my bright line that there exists substances that are too dangerous for a layperson to self regulate. It’s like invisible radiation. You can doom yourself and not realize it. Addicted by the end of the first dose.

Informed is key part of consent.

Listened to your old episode on Gary Young today and I would like to blame all this on Orrin Hatch.

John Oliver's HBO show did a full episode on this stuff like a month ago: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZq...

Follow the money bsky.app/profile/kenv...

And there do need to be limits about what is sold where. I think for example this stuff should require slightly more effort than stumbling to the corner store for a cuppa

Maybe we should be able to buy narcotics from a pharmacy where the potency and ingredients are known. #freedulf

They had a profile on gas station drugs on John Oliver's show. They sell the packaging on Alibaba to people who put their own pills in, so even if you've taken something from exactly identical packaging before, you could be getting a completely different drug the next time.

Also a recent LWT piece: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZq...

I worked at a gas station in the 2000s, some of the stuff we sold to 3rd shift factory workers was basically meth

What’s the channel? That sounds interesting

Abstinence Only works as well for drugs as it does for sex.

You absolutely can. Make sure he's taking raw leaf and not some fucked up synthetic that is highly concentrated, ask him where he buys and try to help him find reputable manufacturers that test their product. There is a lot of harm reduction you can do.

It's definitely coming into focus why the local purveyors of this stuff appear to be pumping money into the MN GOP and a *bunch* of local races here.

gas station sober don't mean what it used to

It’s a very sad day

Im a ray-ban person.

I wish there was an upvote button on here, because I don't like "liking" posts like this

👀

there are kratom/7-OH shops all over Tucson - it seems people get addicted to this stuff, then need more and more, and sooner or later they are using oxy or heroin, while sellers market kratom/7-OH as a way to get off of oxy/heroin

I am coming along in my harm reduction and need to prioritize the people who use drugs vs. my education and stigma about the situation I don't know how I feel about banning substances in the context of being a student in this area AND the fact this is in gas stations is FUCKING CRAZY to me

Agreed, Kratom is so wildly dangerous for something so accessible

The Last Week Tonight episode on gas station drugs was fascinating

Like every time I have to change my blood pressure medication dose I feel like shit for weeks.

Thankfully many places like MI were able to stave off a full ban because at least enough sfate legislators knew the distinction, and this is a working class state with a lot of folks already on disability and crumbling rural healthcare, so they quietly let it die in the senate.

Pretty cool that if you Google 7-OH the first three links are stores that will sell it to you online, then the first non-sponsored result is ab article about how dangerous it is

A friend is in their second round of rehab for this, the medical detox alone took 3 weeks. The marketing and accessibility of this shit is so fucking predatory.

Jeez, a quick search and that looks to be horrendous shit to be taking. 😳

And it’s 13 times stronger than morphine. Yeah that shit should not be allowed to be sold without regulation. Yet here we are in regulation free America.

Had to check and of course

RETVRN

Grow opium poppies and make tea (or leave the tea in a slow cooker without a lid until you have gunk that’s a bit easier to get down than the tea, which is the worst tasting substance I’ve ever consumed

Same as what happened to online gambling laws.

John Oliver has a great episode on this topic.

Yeah the sativa of our youth (as older millenials) atleast just kind of sucked, but atleast it had no dependancy issues.

As a chronic insomniac I get pretty desperate for something to knock me out, I don’t even know the name of the pill I bought but it worked way too well and I felt like I was lucky I didn’t drink that night or take my other sleep meds. Definitely got spooked from trying that again.

This is an unsung benefit of electric vehicles. If you don’t go to gas stations you are protected from some very odd impulse buys

And yet someone does ad reads for dick pills now.......

Just remembering the time I had an Ambien addict go full drug-seeking and demand an ambulance to the ER because he couldn't sleep and they'd give him some... ...he did not get his candy.

Fun fact: For a while now I've been misunderstanding you when you've said, "Kratom," and instead thought you were referencing Krokodil.

It's like if we let convenience stores sell crushed up morphine pills next to the Slim Jims. The lack of regulation is terrifying, but if there's a dollar to be made in exploiting desperate or bored people, someone will find a way to put it in a colorful wrapper.

John Oliver did a story on this recently. youtu.be/mRZqHzDG_c8?...

youtu.be/mRZqHzDG_c8?... Not knowledgeable enough to know how goo this segment was but its easy to get through and I learned quite a bit about how fucked up some of these various gas station dick/other pills were.

It's rather telling that up here in Canada, where there is relatively strong supplement regulation compared to the US, the gas stations & even the indie convenience stores are not rife with this stuff. Even then, it's still available online, but that's instantly radically less accessible.

one of my friends is going through it right now, he's basically convinced himself it's like coffee and we're pretty certain he's put himself into debt supporting this addiction

Meanwhile we're banning THC drinks from being sold even in a bar, to "protect the children"

I think we should ban everything. Like literally everything. Breathing? Illegal.