Last week, Top Tree Herbs co-founder Soren Shade had the pleasure of chatting with Brian Gallagher on the Kratom Science Podcast.
If you haven’t listened to the Kratom Science Podcast before, it’s a must. Many of the greatest minds in kratom research and policy have contributed to it, from scientists like Dr. Abisheak Sharma and Dr. Oliver Grundmann, to consumer advocates and lobbyists like Susan Ash.
2024 Update: the Kratom Science Podcast released its final episode in January of 2024, when Brian Gallagher left Kratom Science to work independently. You can still find Episode 47 of the Kratom Science Podcast and others on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
If podcasts aren’t your cup of tea, you can read a quick recap of the conversation below.
Appalachian Brainwashing
Early in the conversation, Soren spoke to Brian about his childhood in rural Appalachia. Growing up, he was taught that poverty, ill-health, and crime in his small town was the result of drugs at large.
For years, the mainstream media has feverishly written and spoken about how America (especially Appalachia, and even more narrowly, West Virginia) is in the midst of an “opioid epidemic.” Soren, who was a primary observer of the supposed crisis, believed this narrative was true.
Dr. Carl Hart—Exposing the Truth Behind Addiction Narratives
Soren’s perspective changed in Dr. Carl Hart’s famous Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior class at Columbia University (where he met Top Tree co-founder Sam Weber). In this class, Dr. Hart explained that statistics showing the number of deaths credited to opioid use were highly inaccurate.
There were two major issues with the common narrative: first, the opioid death statistics were misleading, and second the social context of drug use had been problematically overlooked.
Misleading Information in Opioid Death Statistics
Of the reported opioid overdoses, a vast majority were in combination with other substances, like alcohol or other sedatives. Moreover, even those statistics were not satisfying, as toxicology reports are often inconclusive. (As a side note, coroners are surprisingly not required to have any sort of medical degree—in some states they are actually elected officials.)
In short, nobody knows how many people die of opioids each year due to the shortfalls of autopsies and the fact that co-ingested substances are oftentimes not reported when present.
But that’s not the most important point.
Social Context: an Essential Missing Piece of the “Opioid Epidemic” Puzzle
Soren shared with Brian the essential message that Dr. Hart taught his students: that they needed to look past drugs to determine where society’s problems stemmed from. Drugs were an easy scapegoat, but not the root cause of socioeconomic issues.
To explain further, Soren spoke about the rising atmosphere of despair in his hometown. Many of the jobs in the “rust belt” were shipped off to foreign countries or automated. Some companies in the area had to lay off workers to account for a general economic decline.
This slow and steady reduction of the flow of capital to these small towns has resulted in a decline of population, education, job prospects, and culture.
High schools in this region are consistently reporting falling test scores. Adult and juvenile homelessness is rising. Deaths and crimes of “despair” have skyrocketed.
Flipping the Argument Upside Down
The popular spin the media has put on these foreboding current events is that they are the direct result of the rising use of harmful psychoactive substances.
Contrarily, Dr. Hart hypothesizes that the vast majority of drug users have overwhelmingly positive experiences with drugs. He argues that the alcohol, pills, or combustible vegetable matter are what helps adults feel better in the absence of economic opportunity or a sense of purpose.
The Meeting of Top Tree’s Founders
In addition to imparting essential knowledge, Dr. Hart created a setting where incredibly important friendships were forged. Sam and Soren, the co-founders of Top Tree Herbs, solidified their friendship in Dr. Hart’s class. In Drugs and Behavior that they were taught how to scrutinize scientific literature for the facts of the matter.
In his conversation with Brian, Soren explained that they first recognized the stark difference between traditional use off kratom in Southeast Asia and how it was being used in the United States in Dr. Hart’s class.
In Southeast Asia, kratom leaves have been brewed into a tea for centuries, while in the US, people swallow the micronized powder of the leaves whole.
Soren’s Work on Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia
Brian and Soren then moved on to discuss the latest season of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, which Soren helped produce.
While they didn’t spend much time discussing the latest season, Brian did ask him which of the episodes was his favorite. ULTRA LSD is Soren’s favorite visually, while Synthetic Toad Venom Machine is the most interesting to him conceptually.
Making Pamphlets and Relationships
Soren then brought up the recent reissuing of the 1983 “Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert” pamphlet. Hamilton, Soren, and a number of other producers recreated and printed the pamphlet to raise over $200,000 for the Micheal J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research.
The relationship that Soren formed with the small, employee-owned print shop, CREAM, which made the pamphlets for them persisted. For a few years, CREAM dedicated a section of their warehouse as a clean space to fulfill and ship all the orders placed for Top Tree Herbs. Later, they screen-printed a small batch of custom long sleeve kratom shirts for Top Tree.
Don’t Be a “Tosser,” Drink Kratom Tea
From there, the various topics converged to the one that Soren now spends his day to day life focusing on. That is, making a good cup of kratom tea.
Before starting Top Tree, Soren and Sam scrutinized Dr. Oliver Grundmann’s 2017 study of over 8000 kratom consumers in the US. It revealed that almost half of the kratom consumers surveyed make a beverage from their kratom. Of that, over 10% take it as a tea.
So why were there no tea bags!?
Soren and Sam were surprised by this missing element, so they dedicated themselves to creating the first crushed-leaf tea bags to help the kratom community have a better experience with kratom.
Hinting Towards the Future
For more insights on the topics covered in the Kratom Science episode, check out the science behind kratom tea, and this article on a survey with Dr. Grundmann that was completed a few years ago.
Many thanks to Brian Gallagher and the entire Kratom Science Podcast team for having us on.
