Since me ‘n’ the misses have finished our degrees (just waiting on the results now…) & almost finished moving house, hopefully we’ll be doing some cool blog & Coffeesh0p stuff soon.

For the blog, firstly I intend to do a couple of interviews with some interesting people. While I like to talk a lot about drugs, medicines, pharmacology, etc, I’m also a bit of a nerd, so I’m looking forward to talking to a few like-minded people who run drugs-related sites. I’ve also got a bong I’d like to give away, but I want to do it in a much more awesome way than the last competition. I’m thinking …joint rolling contest? Would that be something you guys would be interested in? The details (and legality) would need to be worked out, but that sounds like it might be a laugh. I figure before you should be granted bong access, you must first appreciate and master the art of rolling.

Any other suggestions? If you can suggest anything better, I’m all ears. Well… mostly.

Now uni has finished and we’ve moved into a bigger house, we can finally give Coffeesh0p a go full-time, something we’ve been looking forward to for ages. Firstly, now we have more space, we can start buying entheogens (such as Salvia & Kratom) by the kilo directly from their source. That should mean we’ll be able to sell them to you for much cheaper. Also, we’ve got the room to expand our range again, so keep an eye out for loads of new products. If there’s anything we don’t sell that you’d like, leave a comment and I’ll try and hunt it down.

Since I’ll now be making Coffeesh0p (and this blog, of course) my number one priority, I’ll be able to make some interesting changes. I’ve already done a bit of housekeeping stuff, like made the basket page look a little friendlier and put some cooler buttons on all the forms. I also had a go at adding a delivery address option on the checkout, but that’s not working right. (If anyone wants stuff sent to an alternate delivery address, btw, just email me. ) I’ve got a few ideas on what to do next, but I’d also reallllly like your input. In fact, here’s your chance to be a harsh as possible – what looks shit? What’s completely defunct? How could I make it look 110% more awesome? What essential, must-have features are we missing? If you can think of anything at all, please enter a comment below!

In case the idea hasn’t sunk in yet, I’m looking for your opinion on all these things. Leaving a comment couldn’t be simpler – just enter a name & email (don’t worry, no one but me will see your email address, and it doesn’t have to be a real name), and then pour your opinion all over the comment box. Hit submit and you’re done. Even if you’ve never left a comment anywhere in your life and this is the first bit of communicating you’ve done online, please write something!

© Synchronium – stealing other people’s ideas since 2006.

Wellllll, my dissertation is finally handed in, so I thought I’d write a bit of a long post about Kratom today. Kratom is probably my favourite entheogen, so I’m surprised I haven’t written about it before. Actually, it did get a brief mention in JWH-018, Spice & Me (to the disappointment of a couple of kratom vendors more interested in profit than helping to spread factual information), but I think it’s worthy of a post of its own. I also recently added a tonne of kratom products to Coffeesh0p that I want to talk about too, so a post about kratom is about due.

It’s a shame that I don’t have any more presentations to give (well, kind of, because I hate giving presentations) because Kratom would definitely be the subject of the next one. So…

What is Kratom?

Kratom refers to the leaves of the Mitragyna speciosa tree that’s native to Southeast Asia. A member of the Rubiaceae family, Kratom is also related to the Coffee plant (Coffea spp.) and Psychotria viridis, a hallucinogenic shrub used throughout the Amazon. It’s effects include analgesia (ie, it’s a pain killer), stimulation at low doses and sedation at higher doses accompanied by euphoria. Sounds awesome, right?

Kratom Use

So, how is kratom used? Traditionally, workers of Southeast Asia would chew on the fresh leaves for a mild stimulatory effect and also as a pain killer. Sounds like a perfect natural remedy to get you through a long day, but unfortunately, fresh leaves are pretty scarce outside their country of origin. Luckily for us though, dried leaf retains its potency, so can be shipped worldwide – just don’t try and chew it. Dried leaf can be be brewed into a tea, refined into an extract (which can also be brewed up or eaten) or smoked, although the effects of smoking it are limited.

Kratom tea is generally prepared by boiling your leaf (see below for dosage info) in water and lemon juice for about 15 minutes. This is then strained and more water/lemon juice added to the leaves and the process repeated. The lemon juice is important, as the citric acid present in it acidifies your tea, meaning more of the alkaloids present in kratom will be extracted into solution. Once the leaves are strained for a second time, they can be chucked away, leaving you with a murky brown liquid that doesn’t taste amazing. This large quantity of liquid can be boiled down further to reduce the volume, but it’s not essential. You might want to add some sugar or honey for taste though. My lab rat and his gerbil friend tend to make their tea up to the nearest 100 ml, so it can be taken as 50 ml shots throughout the evening. Turning your particular dosage of kratom leaves into approximately 200 ml of tea is enough for 4 shots. If you’re new to kratom, try spacing these shots out every half an hour to an hour. This way, you won’t take too much and you can experience all of the subtleties kratom has to offer instead of diving straight in at the deep end. Alternatively, some people just throw all of their crushed leaf into a glass of juice, stir it up and just knock it back. This can be just as effective if you’ve got the stomach for it.

As far as smoking goes, it’s really not that great. If you’re going to smoke kratom, it’s far more rewarding to smoke some alongside a cup of kratom tea than just smoking it exclusively.

Kratom Dosage & Effects

An effective dosage for one person may be completely different for another person, as a tolerance can develop, especially with daily use. Other factors can also affect how much you might need (more on that later), so the best thing to do is start off with a low dose and increase it by small increments each time until you arrive at a dosage you’re comfortable with. This advice should be followed whenever you try something new, not just for kratom.

Here’s a rough dosage guide:

Dosages greater than 15g can be too much for some people, while dosages above 25g will be too much for most people. It’s statistically likely that you are included in the “most people” group, so please be careful!

Kratom Pharmacology

Kratom contains a number of active alkaloids, including mitragynine, 7-hydroxymitragynine & mitraphylline, which are structurally similar to the hallucinogenic tryptamines (eg LSD, psilocybin), as if this plant wasn’t interesting enough! At low doses, these alkaloids are thought to act on the adrenergic system (the same sets of receptors that respond to adrenaline & noradrenaline), responsible for the plant’s stimulatory effects.

At higher doses, however, these compounds start to activate your opioid receptors. These are the same receptors that opiates such as codeine, morphine and heroin bind to which cause the same sedation, analgesia and euphoria associated with opiate use. 7-hydroxymitragynine actually appears to be 17x more potent than morphine at these receptors. Powerful stuff! It’s no surprise then that:

1. Kratom can be used to help opiate addicts overcome their addiction
2. An effective kratom dosage depends on any pre-existing opiate tolerance
3. Kratom itself can be habit forming, just like opiates (so don’t use it every day!)

Growing Kratom

Unfortunately, growing kratom will be more hassle that it’s worth. Mitragyna Speciosa prefers the warm, swampy conditions of Southeast Asia, which makes growing it outside impossible in most areas of the world. Even a green house won’t be enough. If you’re going to grow it, you need to be serious about it. You’ll need an area of your house set aside for climate control, lamps, etc. Here’s the final blow: the kratom you grow yourself will likely be of inferior quality compared to that grown natively. Sorry to disappoint.

If you still want to go ahead, you’ll need to find a rooted clone, as you won’t find any seeds commercially available, or if you do, they might be fake, and cuttings tend to be vulnerable to infection.

Kratom Products

There are a number of kratom products available for purchase. I’m always on the lookout for more because I think this plant is truly amazing, so if you find something you think I should be stocking, let me know! Anyway, here’s a quick rundown of what we’ve got so far:

Kratom Leaf This is just bog-standard, dried, crushed kratom leaf. This is also available in a prerolled joint to enjoy in conjunction with other kratom products.

Thai Dragonfly Liquid Kratom Extract Each bottle of liquid kratom extract contains 20 ml. I’m not sure what strength this extract is, but it suggests a dose of 5 to 10 ml will be sufficient.

Kratom 15x Extract This extract is 15x stronger the plain leaf. Each pack contains 2g of powered extract. Unfortunately, this is a little expensive compared to the rest of the kratom products available, because it comes in fancy packaging and I have to import it.

Freeze Dried Kratom 20x Extract This brittle, resinous extract is 20x stronger than plain leaf.

Kratom Gold 35x Extract Capsules Each pack contains 3 capsules of 500mg 35x extract. A convenient way to consume your kratom!

Krypton Kratom 50x Extract This is without a doubt my lab rat’s favourite kratom product. Being 50x stronger than plain leaf, 0.5g is plenty for an entire evening. Comes in a 3g and 1g pack.

I’m very excited! We’ve just bought quite a few new things to pad out our Legal Highs and Entheogen categories, which happen to be our favourite. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be trickling new products on here and there, including more kratom, herbal teas and other delicious extracts, as well as popular smoking mixtures in the same league as Spice Diamond. It’s going to take forever to write all the descriptions and produce a nice set of images for each. We’re going to try and put more on there about traditional usage, and maybe some pharmacology too. I just wish I was working on it full time!

Pyramidal neurones in the Cerebral Cortex

As it happens, I’m pretty busy with my second module of the semester: neuropharmacology. In a few weeks, I’ll have to do another presentation in the same vein as my one on salvia. I’m thinking I’ll talk about either kratom, ayahuasca or psychoactive mushrooms. Kratom has some very interesting properties, acting as an opioid, ayahuasca highlights the importance of drug-drug interactions, containing DMT and an MAO inhibitor, while psychoactive mushrooms are just really interesting. The last option also allows me to bring in some whole Amanita muscaria caps (another exciting new product!) in to pass around – everyone would love that, right? As if that wasn’t reason enough, it’s active constituent, muscimol, is also of use pharmacologically. During some preliminary research, I found this great paper on hallucinogens and dissociative agents naturally growing in the United States I thought I’d share with you. Not hard going at all, and totally worth a read.

I’ve also got to pick a 10 week research project to do after Christmas. One of the options, and no doubt the one with the most competition, is on cannabinoids, eating behaviour and GABA signalling. Another one that stands out is the effects of ketamine on the visual cortex. Looks like a busy few weeks ahead.

It’s been a long couple of weeks. Not only did new images need making for all of my sh0p’s categories, but several important deadlines are looming just around the corner.

As the title says, I finally finished recategorising all our products. Take a look! I dare say my photoshop skillz are improving daily. I’ve basically reorganised the entheogens and legal highs into their own separate categories, so people who want to legally batter themselves don’t try smoking some dream herb and wonder why they’re not stoned off their arse. Also DIY shamans tend not to like the association between their sacred plants and other, more suspect “herbs” like Spice. And rightly so, hence the reshuffle. The next big step will be to expand both sections considerably.

For the legal highs section, we should be getting some new big brand smoking mixtures and maybe some more pills. We’re hoping to expand the entheogens section the most though. We’ve got loads of new herbs coming, as well as some extracts of a couple we stock already. Very exciting, but a lot of work! Writing descriptions and taking multiple pictures of everything is probably a more daunting task than rearranging the categories in the first place.

I’m still not ready to properly advertise on E-Dot. I want to make sure everything’s top notch before I post about Coffeesh0p there.

I’ve also finally rearranged the legal pills by effect rather than by brand. Initially, when I only stocked two or three brands, it made sense, but now we have so many! Someone who’s never encountered legal pills before may be put off by having to chose by brand, and would instead prefer to buy a product based on it’s advertised effect. Hopefully now, we can expand these effect categories indefinitely.

What better way to celebrate all my hard work than a pack of Trip E, a pack of Spice Diamond and a massive free fireworks display!

On a more technical note, the easiest way I found to move all the products around on the site is to first calculate what the product’s URL should be based on it’s product ID (also in the URL). If the script isn’t at the calculated URL, it then forwards you to it using a 301 (permanent) redirect. Hopefully then the search engines will consider the new URLs as the original products and not new ones, so they’ll retain their rankings. As well as the search engine benefits, anyone that clicks an old link from another site to get to yours will be redirected to the URL behind the scenes. This way certainly seems more simple than filling your htaccess file full of redirects!

In other news, I’m thinking of running a competition here on this blog very soon. I have some things to give away…