Is Kratom Addictive? The Honest Answer From a Company That Sells It

Yes, it can be. That is the short answer, and it comes from a company that sells kratom, so you can stop wondering whether the rest of this page walks it back. Not everyone who uses kratom becomes dependent on it. But regular daily use can produce tolerance, stopping after a long run can produce a withdrawal syndrome, and in every survey that has asked, some share of the people answering met criteria for a use disorder. The institutions that have looked at this disagree about how often and how severe. They do not disagree about whether.

What follows is the evidence, quoted rather than paraphrased, with the sample size next to every number, because this is a subject where figures travel without their denominators and arrive meaning something they never meant. Where the science is thin we say thin.

Three institutions, three phrasings, one answer

The bluntest statement comes from law enforcement. The DEA's one page drug fact sheet on kratom, dated April 2020, says consumption of the leaves "can lead to psychotic symptoms, and psychological and physiological dependence", and then, further down, in five words: "Kratom consumption can lead to addiction." It does not hedge. It also does not mention withdrawal, overdose or any death count, which is worth knowing, because it is regularly cited for all three.

The clinic's version comes from Mayo Clinic, in a consumer page dated June 2024 and titled, without much ambiguity, "Kratom: Unsafe and ineffective". Mayo puts the question in the setting people most often arrive from: "Some people take kratom to ease the symptoms of quitting opioids, called withdrawal. Kratom may be easier to get than prescription medicines. But it carries its own risk of addiction."

The research institute is the most careful of the three, and its caution gets quoted in both directions. The National Institute on Drug Abuse page on kratom, dated March 2026, says this:

Preliminary data from anonymous surveys of people who use kratom suggest a minority of people report experiencing kratom-related withdrawal symptoms and a smaller minority report experiencing substance use disorder symptoms related to kratom use.

And, a few lines earlier: "Studies suggest people may experience mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms when they stop regular kratom use, but more research is needed to understand to what extent people develop substance use disorder symptoms related to kratom."

These three are not contradicting each other. The DEA says it can happen. Mayo says it can happen to the people who came to kratom for help with something else. NIDA says it happens to a minority, that the minority has not been measured well, and that measuring it is the institute's job. One sentence all three would sign: kratom can produce dependence, and how often is still being counted.

What "addictive" means, because three different things get folded into it

Tolerance is needing more to get the effect you used to get. Dependence is your body having adapted, so that stopping produces withdrawal. A use disorder is the clinical term for continued, compulsive use despite negative consequences, and it is what people usually mean by addiction. You can have the first two without the third; plenty of prescribed medicines produce tolerance and withdrawal in people who are in no sense addicted to them.

NIDA explains the diagnostic side in one paragraph that governs every survey number on this page. The manual clinicians use, the DSM-5, "does not include a specific diagnosis related to kratom use. However, some researchers studying kratom have modified criteria to study kratom use patterns and symptoms that resemble other substance use disorders." Read that twice. There is no official kratom diagnosis, so each research team adapts the standard checklist, and two teams can adapt it differently and get different numbers from similar people. That is why the two big surveys below give two different headline figures, and why neither should be repeated without its method attached.

The two big surveys, side by side

The two headline numbers, 13 percent and 25.5 percent, are three years and a different checklist apart, and it would be easy to build a story out of the gap. Resist it; both are online surveys of people who chose to answer. The Hopkins release says plainly that "self-reporting surveys aren't always entirely reliable", and the Hill paper's abstract describes its own method as nonprobability sampling. Neither tells you what share of all kratom users are dependent, because nobody knows who all the kratom users are.

What the two are good for is the shape of the thing, and on the shape they agree. In both, most people who met criteria met them mildly. In the 2024 paper the two most common routes in were tolerance and withdrawal, at 81.3 and 68.0 percent. Note the denominator, the one that gets dropped in transit: those are shares of the 525 people who met criteria, not of the 2,061 who answered. "Eighty one percent of kratom users develop tolerance" is a sentence you will see somewhere this year, and it is wrong.

The Hopkins release also carries the two sentences that, between them, are the whole argument about this plant. Its lead author, Albert Garcia-Romeu, said the findings "suggest that kratom doesn't belong in the category of a Schedule I drug, because there seems to be relatively low rate of abuse potential". The same release says unregulated products "run the risk of unsafe additives and dosing problems, which could be like getting a shot of grain alcohol when you were trying to order a beer." Both are true at once. The plant, on this evidence, sits at the low end of the scale; the product in your hand is whatever somebody put in it.

What kratom does at the receptor, in NIDA's words

The reason the DEA and Mayo say what they say is receptor pharmacology, and the reason NIDA is more careful is the same pharmacology read more closely. NIDA writes that "Some experts are concerned about kratom's addictive potential because the main kratom compounds ... partially activate the same receptors (specific molecular structures on the surface of nerve cells) in the brain on which drugs with known addictive properties act. However, researchers have observed that the way kratom compounds activate these receptors may reduce the potential for addiction relative to opioids." The paragraph ends the way most NIDA paragraphs on kratom end: "Further research is needed".

Elsewhere on the same page NIDA says the compounds activate mu-opioid receptors "but the resulting effects only partially compare to those of opioids like heroin or oxycodone", and that "In general, neither kratom leaves nor mitragynine appear to lead to respiratory depression (trouble breathing) that is characteristic of a life-threatening opioid overdose." It adds in the same paragraph that a minor kratom compound can cause respiratory depression in laboratory models, reversed by naloxone, and that the body converts mitragynine into it slowly enough to limit the effect on breathing. Leaving that out would make the paragraph sound more reassuring than the page it came from.

So the one line version is: the same receptors, partially, with effects that only partly resemble opioids. That "partially" is the entire scientific argument about whether kratom belongs in the same category as the drugs it is compared to, and it is why the medicines clinicians reach for are opioid medicines, which we come to below.

Who is more likely to run into trouble

The 2024 survey did something useful beyond the headline figure. After adjusting for age, gender, daily frequency of use and history, people "with a concurrent diagnosis of another substance use disorder had 2.83 times higher odds of meeting KUD criteria (95% CI, 2.19-3.67) compared with those without one." The characteristics associated with a use disorder "were related to being male, young, consuming kratom frequently, and having psychiatric and substance use disorder comorbidities." None of those is a verdict on anyone, and all are worth knowing about yourself.

Smith and colleagues, writing in Frontiers in Pharmacology in March 2022, surveyed 129 adults with regular kratom use histories and asked what predicted unwanted effects when kratom was not used for a day or more. More weeks of regular use predicted worse effects (p = 0.02). The amount consumed per week "closely approached, but did not fully achieve, significance" (p = 0.07). Their conclusion is worded with the care those numbers deserve: "persons who use kratom at higher doses regularly may expect greater odds of feeling unwanted or adverse effects when use is paused." The same paper calls kratom withdrawal "typically mild to moderate, and severe among a minority".

Then there is the product itself, which is where a seller has something to add. Mayo puts it this way: "Some studies have found that some kratom sellers add more of the active ingredient than kratom naturally has. And because kratom products lack clear labels, it's not possible to know how much kratom people who use it take." The one defense against that is the certificate of analysis, the laboratory report that states how much mitragynine is in a serving. Ours are on our lab results page. If your product came from somewhere that cannot show you the same document, you do not know your daily exposure, and neither would a clinician you asked about it.

What withdrawal is like, and how the evidence rates it

Mayo describes it from a specific setting: "In a study testing kratom as a treatment for symptoms of quitting opioids, called withdrawal, people who took kratom for more than six months reported withdrawal symptoms like those from opioid use. And people who use kratom may begin craving it." Note the setting, because it travels badly: that finding is about people using kratom for opioid withdrawal for more than six months, not a description of every user.

The main systematic review of kratom withdrawal, published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs in 2019 by Stanciu and colleagues, states in its abstract that "Chronic use can lead to dependence, tolerance, and withdrawal on cessation, and clinicians are seeing an increasing number of presentations involving the latter." It rests substantially on case reports and the authors' own cases, which is the honest state of the literature: no agreed severity scale, no agreed timeline, no standard protocol.

Two state health departments have described the syndrome for their own residents ahead of bans, and their words are quoted in full on our withdrawal help by state page. The most useful instruction there came from Connecticut, and it does not stop at the state line: do not stop abruptly without consulting a healthcare provider. We are not going to publish a tapering schedule, here or anywhere, because how a particular person should come off is a clinical decision about that person. The decision exists, it is free to ask, and the number to ask is in the red box at the top of this page.

Deaths, and the number that usually arrives without its denominator

Death is not a measure of addiction. This section exists because the two get run together in both directions: "kratom kills" and "kratom is harmless" are each built by dropping a denominator. The figures below carry theirs.

The most cited figures come from a CDC report published in April 2019. It looked at 27,338 overdose deaths reported by 27 states for the eighteen months from July 2016 to December 2017, and found that "152 (0.56%) of these decedents tested positive for kratom on postmortem toxicology". Kratom "was determined to be a cause of death" by a medical examiner or coroner "for 91 (59.9%) of the 152 kratom-positive decedents, including seven for whom kratom was the only substance to test positive on postmortem toxicology, although the presence of additional substances cannot be ruled out". Fentanyl or an analog "was listed as a cause of death for 65.1% of kratom-positive decedents".

Three things about that report get lost. It is 27 states, not the country, and only eleven of them reported the whole period. It is eighteen months, not two years. And the seven is a toxicology count with the CDC's own caveat attached, not a finding that seven people died of kratom and nothing else. The report's own summary: kratom "was most often detected in combination with multiple other substances".

NIDA's framing is the one to carry with you: "Compared to deaths from other drugs, a very small number of deaths have been linked to kratom products and nearly all cases involved other drugs or contaminants." It adds that "fatal overdose from kratom use alone is extremely rare", citing a separate 2019 analysis of poison center data that found eleven deaths associated with kratom exposure between 2011 and 2017, two of them with kratom alone. Those are two different datasets, and they get merged into one claim constantly. What both say is that the risk in the data sits in mixing.

The part our interest argues against

We would sell more if the first sentence of this page said no. Some sellers' pages do say no, or say it the roundabout way, that kratom is "habit forming" the way coffee is, or that dependence is something entirely different from addiction. The DEA has said "can lead to addiction" on a government document since April 2020, and nobody selling this plant holds a document that outranks it. A seller who tells you otherwise is telling you what their sales page needs to be true.

So here is what we do instead, stated so you can check it. We publish the certificate of analysis for what we sell, so the mitragynine per serving is a number and not a guess. We do not describe any product as non-addictive. This page carries no product link. And when a state bans kratom, we publish the state's own helpline and withdrawal guidance rather than an argument about the ban, because to someone reading that page the argument is worth nothing.

The other admission cuts against everyone: the evidence is thinner than both sides pretend. NIDA says these symptoms "have not been extensively studied" and that "robust clinical trials are still needed". A trade body quoting the Hopkins 13 percent as proof of safety and a rehab center quoting the Hill 25.5 percent as proof of an epidemic are doing the same thing from opposite ends: treating a convenience sample as a census.

If you think it might be you

The checklist researchers adapt for kratom asks, among other things, about tolerance, about withdrawal, and about using more or for longer than you meant to. Those three you can observe in yourself without anyone's help. Needing more than you did six months ago for the same effect. Feeling unwell on a day you skip. Buying a bigger bag than you intended, more than once.

If two of those describe you, the next step is a conversation with a clinician, and it goes better with three facts written down: how much you take in a day, how long you have been at roughly that amount, and what form it comes in, because leaf powder and a concentrated extract are not the same input. On treatment, the position is the one stated at the top. NIDA: no approved medical therapy. Mayo: people "may need treatments given for opioid addiction, such as buprenorphine (Brixadi, Sublocade, others) and buprenorphine-naloxone (Suboxone, Zubsolv)." Clinicians do prescribe those. There are no controlled trials of them in kratom specifically. Emerging, not established, and a prescriber's call.

And if you came here because you have been using kratom to get through opioid withdrawal, that is the one fact to tell a clinician first. Kratom "carries its own risk of addiction", in Mayo's words, and it is not a treatment for the thing you were using it for. The medicines that are have decades of evidence behind them.

Questions people ask alongside this one

How addictive is kratom compared with opioids?

Less, on the evidence so far, and not zero. NIDA says kratom's main compounds partially activate the same receptors as drugs with known addictive properties, that the way they do so may reduce the potential for addiction relative to opioids, and that further research is needed. A Johns Hopkins survey of 2,798 users found what its lead author called a relatively low rate of abuse potential; a 2024 survey of 2,061 current consumers found 25.5 percent met adapted criteria for kratom use disorder, most of them mild or moderate.

Can you get addicted to kratom from occasional use?

The published risk factors point at frequent daily use and long runs of regular use. Hill and colleagues associated kratom use disorder with consuming kratom frequently, and Smith and colleagues found that more weeks of regular use predicted worse effects when use was paused. No study has published a frequency below which the risk is zero, so occasional is a description, not a guarantee.

What are the early signs of kratom dependence?

In the 2024 survey, the two criteria people met most often were tolerance, at 81.3 percent of those who qualified, and withdrawal, at 68.0 percent. In plain terms: needing more to get the effect you used to get, and feeling unwell on a day you skip. Mayo Clinic adds craving. If you can recognize two of those three in yourself, that is the point to talk to a clinician.

Is kratom withdrawal dangerous?

NIDA describes it as mild to moderate for most people and says more research is needed. The Frontiers in Pharmacology survey found it typically mild to moderate and severe among a minority. Massachusetts and Connecticut both describe an opioid like syndrome in regular users and tell people to seek medical care, and Connecticut says not to stop abruptly without consulting a provider. After heavy use over a long time, stopping is not something to plan alone.

Every figure on this page is tied to a named document with its date, and documents change. If you find a number here that its source no longer supports, tell us and the page gets corrected with the next review date on it.

Disclaimer: this page summarizes publicly available material as of 21 September 2026 and links to primary sources so you can check them. It is general information, not medical advice, and it is no substitute for a clinician. Survey figures quoted here come from self-selected online samples and are not population estimates. Statements about botanical products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and no product is intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.