Kratom Culture Magazine Winter 2021

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HEATHER D HAWKINS

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Kratom entered my life back in 2012 when my GP cut my Tramadol prescription in half. Needing 4 a day, I would naturally run out early every month and end up in agonizing pain. A friend then mentioned kratom and i asked her where i could get some. She said, "The Psychedelic Shack" in Pensacola. So i headed over to their nearest store and bought 15g of Captain Kratom capsules for $30. I found it relieved my pain and boosted my energy, but knew i couldn't afford $30 every few days, so i went on Facebook and searched for Kratom. That's when i found the American Kratom Association and joined several Kratom groups. After learning where to buy Kratom at affordable prices, I began advocating to keep Kratom legal because I knew it was important to be able to access this life changing herb. This magazine is an effort to reach people to let them know how important it is to keep kratom legal!


"THE POWER TO RELIEVE PAIN IS EVEN GREATER THAN THE POWER TO INFLICT IT." Jim Hogshire




Dijon Evans

Advocate extraordinaire by Marisa Michaels



The Inspiring Story of Kratom Advocate Dijon Evans To the people involved in the Facebook kratom community, most have heard of Dijon Evans. Evans is an outspoken kratom advocate and volunteer for the American Kratom Association. Most are familiar with her presence in many kratom groups. She is a moderator on the American Kratom Association’s forum, and she has even been featured in one of the AKA’s pro-kratom commercials that have been seem nationwide on several cable networks. To the people who know her, she seems completely woven into the fabric of the kratom community and a respected member of the Kratom Consumer Council. To many it seems as if she has been fighting for kratom forever.


Dijon Evans was really introduced to kratom in October of 2016, right around the time that the DEA was attempting to ban kratom in the US. At the time Evans was suffering from a multitude of health issues, including full body CRPS with organ involvement. Her doctor dropped her as a patient through no fault of her own, and she was thrown into withdrawals from abruptly stopping 30 years of high dose pain medications. As she told her story to a friend in a Facebook lapidary group she was a part of, another person in the group was kind enough to introduce her to kratom.




As Dijon said to me “When this friend told me about kratom, I rolled my eyes, said thanks, and made fun of it! But, even as I was making fun of it, I had also secretly been making plans to take my own life; that is how sick I was. So, despite making fun of it, I truly had nothing left to lose, so I began to research it, something I was very good at!” Evans immediately joined a very large kratom group and sat back, waiting patiently for someone to slip and admit that it was a big scam. She was convinced it was just a way for a few people, “vendors”, to scam money out of desperate people who had been, like her, abandoned by their doctors and had nowhere else to go. She was convinced that this plant she was told about was just a couple steps away from the black market or death, maybe even both.


“What I ended up finding was hope” she said. “I hadn’t realized that I had lost all hope, until I saw it again in others. Until I began reading the stories of all the people posting who kratom had saved. I started asking more and more questions. I think I was driving people up a wall with all my questions,” she teases, “But I began finding answers. I found top scientists, and leaders in the opioid epidemic and our government who believed in kratom. I decided to take a chance.” Evans, at one time in her life before all her health issues, had been studying to become a doctor, so she was able to understand the science that was coming out at the time. She believed she truly had nothing to lose, and knew she had to try it. “I was either going to try kratom and find out it didn’t work, or I was going to take my own life…something I didn’t want to do, but felt it was my only option. So, it was either take kratom, or take my life. It wasn’t a hard choice in the end. After 7 months of research and questioning and doubting, I finally just had to take a leap of faith and order some kratom.”



When her order finally arrived a week later, within 20-25 minutes of taking kratom, Evans felt relief for the first time in a long while. When her husband, James, got home he found her sitting on the couch and smiling. “When he saw the twinkle in my eyes, and the smile on my face, he knew. He knelt on his knees next to me and we both cried. After 40 years of excruciating pain and serious depression, I was ok. I wasn’t completely out of pain. I wasn’t cured. But I was OK for the first time in a very long time.” Kratom, quite literally, saved her life. Dijon speaks about 40+ years of medical malpractice and over 200 surgeries she’s endured. She’s suffered from a lot of physical and emotional trauma from all her health struggles, and her family has had to watch that struggle. It is her long, painful history with doctors and illness, that has inspired her to advocacy. “My best advocacy efforts are in keeping kratom legal. I help people believe in themselves and not discount what they are going through and experiencing. Being a volunteer for the American Kratom Association, even through the fear of confronting government officials and educating them, has given me such pride! Despite all the health issues I still have, I can say that I never gave into complacency. I never thought, eeh, someone else can do it. I push through and do what I can because this plant saved my life. And even though I am still terminal, and I still have setbacks, I have a sense of purpose now that I haven’t had in decades.”


Dijon spends her days enjoying a new relationship with her daughter and grandkids. She has reconnected with family and friends. These are all things she thanks kratom for. You can find Dijon posting on Facebook in various prokratom groups, and on the AKA’s forum when she isn’t volunteering on the grassroots Kratom Consumer Council as the State Chair for California. Always one to help another chronic pain patient or new kratom consumer, she is usually the one sharing her inspiring story and educating others on the benefits of kratom.


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Q&A with William Poole of My Trees of Life How did you find kratom? A friend recommended it to me, back when I was still taking pain medication for my back. He told me about this plant called kratom, claiming it worked. I had heard about it many years prior, but I always had the impression it was something more superficial, maybe it had slight benefits but nothing that could really get the job done. What he and others were saying just seemed too good to be true. But I gave it a shot, and was very impressed. It actually worked. So I kept taking it, and after a couple months I began to notice some interesting, unexpected benefits. My depression and anxiety were gone, whether I was taking the kratom or not. My motivation was back. I quit smoking pot, something I had taken part in almost my entire adult life. I transformed into a happy, hardworking individual. My spiritual faith also grew. It was like the kratom had triggered some sort of healing within me, I felt healthy and alive, and still do to this day. What fascinated me most about this was that this was the opposite of what I was used to with long term use of taking something that takes pain away. Normally with other substances, you go downhill over time, not up. It was then that I realized that this plant was an absolute miracle.


Why do you take kratom? I continue to take it because I like it. On one hand my back flares up from time to time, and the kratom does a wonderful job and taking care of that. But on the other hand I do enjoy a good cup of kratom tea, even if I don’t medically need it at the moment. I don’t get high, and it works as a great coffee substitute in the morning. The right blend also works as a great night time cup of tea. It supports my day much like coffee would, unlike other substances that may take away or distracts from it.



How did you get interested in growing trees? I was already working with plants, so it seemed obvious to me that I had to get some kratom trees and start working on a business model around that. I also feel strongly that if we truly want to protect plants that are being threatened by governments around the world, then as many people as possible must grow them. We saw what happened with cannabis with the “overgrow the government” movement, it sure as heck worked.


What gives you your passion and drive to sell? It’s important to me that whatever I do for a living is something that I believe in. For example, I could never work at a job that had values counter to mine, on the contrary my work must be my passion. So when I first realized the miraculous potential of kratom, I knew I had to dedicate my life to it. I believe the name, “My Trees of Life” immediately conveys the message that there is that passion behind it. It is a biblical reference, referring to the real tree of life who is Jesus Christ. I understood that because of the healing that kratom brought, this tree was a metaphor. I’ve struggled with drug abuse in my past, and never thought there would be anything that would take away the long term negative effects I was left with, such as depression and the subconscious desire to relapse. Kratom washed all that away. This is why it is a metaphor for the real tree of life. In every package one will find a scripture card, and my hope is that this will plant seeds, so to speak.



What's your take on the kratom ban looming overhead? This is something that the kratom world has dealt with for many years - this cloud overhead threatening to ban an entire plant species. Think of the implications of that, that a group of bureaucrats would think that they have the authority to cause the extinction of a plant. Once a plant is gone, it’s not coming back. I think people need to understand and accept that these attempted bans will not end anytime soon, until we have a serious reformation in this world concerning the corruption in the medical field. It’s important that people don’t get burned out fighting for our rights. We have held them back this long, and can continue to as long as we don’t give up.


What's your favorite strain and why? When it comes to all the different kratom “strains” on the market, I want people to understand that they aren’t actually strains. “Strain” is a botanical term, to describe a plant that is of the same species, but differs slightly genetically due to either selective breeding or plants in nature growing in different regions/climates. Many people believe that something like White Indo is actually represented by a plant, and this supposed plant is different than say a Red Bali. This isn’t the case at all. At the moment, pretty much all kratom comes from Indonesian farms. The farmers harvest the leaves, then have different drying methods to create white, green, or red. Vein color is not a thing, and gets misused on a lot of vendor menus out there. The farmers take their different colored products they dried for, then make blends. For example, something like a White Borneo may be a pure white, while a White Bali may have 10% red mixed in. It’s literally that simple. It’s very similar to what you find in the other tea markets with green, black, and white tea, being that it is pretty much all due to the drying methods. Having said that, my favorite blend at the moment is Red Borneo. Reason being it’s just what I respond to best at the moment. Every few months I will get bored of what I am taking, and will move on to something different. I like to try several, and just find what my body is ready for next. That is one of the things I love about kratom, there are so many blends, and a simple 10% difference can change the chemistry enough to where there is always something for somebody.



MBC KAVA KORNER TO LEVEL UP THEIR GAME

BY AUSTIN KILHEENEY


When Merchandise by Cory was born in CEO Cory Kilheeney’s basement, he never could have imagined scaling to the point where a state of the art packing facility was even a possibility. “We’ve always reinvested every dollar we made. My philosophy has been to continue to grow until we are ready to explode. Growing our customer base has never been the problem; it’s been keeping up with it. Moving to this new facility is going to let us not only keep up with any and all future business, but it’s going to let me slow down and really innovate, rather than always focusing on the next big move.” Originally, MBC was going to operate out of a new business hub being built locally. As business continued to grow, COVID delayed construction of the hub drastically. Miraculously, a regular customer at MBC Kava Korner introduced Cory to the team at Back Mountain Harvest Assembly, who had just moved to a newly built worship center. Being strong believers in the business and Kratom, they agreed to let Cory transform their former parish into a fully functioning packing space.


It’s been a long time coming; but ask anyone who knows Cory and what he is about, and they will say it was only a matter of time before MBC Kava Korner got to this point. Cory lives his life and runs his business on one major pillar: just be honest. “Without honesty and integrity, we have nothing. I built this entire operation based on those two principles.” This kind of honesty has built a loyal customer base and motivated a passionate group of employees; creating an environment that draws people in and makes them better for it. David Rand, MBC Kava Korner’s Operations Director, emphasizes this:


“If anyone can get it done, it’s him. He’s a man of his word, a fixer. If something needs done the right way for the right reason, I can always count on him to make the best move. Too much is never enough, he wants the best for everyone, something better.” Rand has worked at MBC for a few years, but has seen enough to know Cory is unlike any boss he has had. “He always looks out for others. The best quality a person can have is one who always picks up the phone. That’s him, always looking out for people.”


As MBC Kava Korner enters the next chapter of their story, it’s hard not to reflect on the journey that brought them here. Five years ago, MBC was operating from Cory’s home, mainly as a vape company. The business acted as a fun side hustle as he progressed in his main career at General Motors; a stable, six figure corporate job that promised growth and opportunity. However, he was bothered. Despite prominent advancement in his career, he was dealing with a lack of fulfillment. As his phone continued to explode with new customer requests, the “side hustle” started growing to the point where a decision needed to be made. It was no longer possible to balance this emerging business with his corporate job. “I sat down with Mary (Cory’s wife), and just came to the realization that the only way this was going to truly grow is if we dove in completely.


Thus, MBC was now full steam ahead with Cory completely at the helm. Before he dove in head first, he wanted to make sure people knew this wasn’t all about business. So, he started a support page, recruited non affiliated admins, and recorded his “story” for the page to show this really is a page for support, not business When the regulations on vaping made it impossible to thrive as a small business, Cory decided to pivot. He had found a sector of the world that he thrived in: alternatives that help people. This same mindset led him to botanicals. Being ten years sober, Cory has been to Hell and back multiple times over. One of those trips back, however, left a lasting idea in his head. While in Florida, he had his first experience with a Kava bar. Kava, typically referred to as Kava Kava, contains alkaloids called kavalactone. Consuming Kava root can make your mind and body feel refreshed, typically resulting in feelings of calmness, relaxation, and happiness.


When he got back to his home state of Pennsylvania, he couldn’t stop thinking about this idea. A non alcoholic bar, where people could come in and have a good time without getting drunk or being pressured to drink. As someone living a sober life, he yearned for a place to go and enjoy the camaraderie and social aspect of a bar. Being in that Florida Kava bar gave him that feeling, but knew he could put his own spin on it to make it his own “It wasn’t until I tried Kava that I understood that it’s a lifestyle, to enjoy the company around you. That’s the mentality I wanted everyone to have who went to my shop.” MBC Kava Korner was born. Cory wasn’t trying to match the same energy as that Florida Kava bar; that was a bit too wild. He put more of a focus on family; the classic trope of someone pouring their heart out at a bar, the “Cheers” style group greeting when a regular walks in, and events focused on togetherness like hosting game nights and cornhole tournaments. With Mary coming on board as the manager and his daughter Kendra being a regular visitor, the Kilheeneys walked the walk when it came to making Kava Korner a family business.


It worked. A non alcoholic spot for people to come and enjoy themselves fit a serious need. Doing a “shell” of Kava with friends became an epic tradition, with the bartender or sometimes even Cory or Mary themselves shouting “Bula!” before slamming it down. As new customers started coming in, however, he started receiving questions about something new: Kratom. “When we were a growing vape shop, we were always bringing in new products and trying to stay ahead. When the CBD craze started, I wanted to come out first with a great and affordable product. Thank God, I have always tried products first before making them available to my customers. I ended up purchasing tainted CBD that almost took my life. From that point on, I made the decision to let my product speak for itself rather than be first to market. That’s why it took me a minute before I started selling Kratom; I wanted to be as educated as possible about it before bringing it to market. I spend the money on the most accurate labs, I build personal relationships with Indonesian farmers, and I don’t let anything go out to my customer base until it has been tested multiple times over.” Every product released by MBC Kava Korner is carefully vetted and prepped, ensuring top notch quality. Keeping prices low and affordable for everyone is essential to Cory, remembering the times he didn’t have money to spend but recognized the importance Kratom has to people. He should know, he is a daily kratom user himself; and the significance of that echoes through the Kratom support group he started.


“MBC Facebook group is here for everyone from all walks of life. Whether it's about kratom or not, we are here to support each other. When in the group, you know you don't stand alone.” says Stephanie Rodzon, one of the main admins on the page and a longtime Kratom advocate. So, now, in a new, much larger space with a crew that has been with him since the beginning, Cory looks forward to continuing to do everything the right way, but on a much larger scale. “Those of you that have been with me since the beginning, thank you, and get ready for bigger and better things coming from us. To my new customers and the people reading about us for the first time: give us a shot, I promise we will take care of you. It says it right on our front page: Discounts are available once a relationship is established. Bula!” Considering where they came from and where they are now, it seems like a bad idea to bet against him.


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