Kratom Withdrawal Help by State: The Numbers to Call and What Each State Published

If kratom has just become illegal where you live and you were using it every day, the pressing question is not a legal one. It is who to call. Those numbers are in the red box at the top of this page, arranged by state, with a national line for anyone whose state has not published one of its own. Below that, this page sets out what each of the five states published for people who were using kratom regularly, what the medical evidence on withdrawal actually supports, and what to have ready when someone picks up.

The disclosure belongs here rather than at the bottom. We sell botanical products. That is also why this page carries no link to anything you can buy, and no argument about whether any of these five decisions was the right one. Neither would be worth anything to you at the point you are reading this.

One more thing, plainly, and then the page moves on. Nothing here is a suggestion to buy ahead of a date or to keep a supply against a ban. If you are dependent enough that a change in the law frightens you, the thing that changes your situation is a clinician, and a larger cupboard is not a plan.

Start here, wherever you live

Connecticut's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has published the single most useful instruction on this subject, and it does not stop at the state line:

People who have been using kratom regularly may experience significant withdrawal symptoms including muscle aches, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, nausea, and intense cravings. Medical supervision during withdrawal is strongly recommended. Do not stop abruptly without consulting a healthcare provider.

Read the last sentence twice. A ban removes the supply on a fixed date, which is not the same as a clinician deciding you should come off on that date, and the two are easy to confuse when the shop you have been going to for years has emptied its shelf. Getting a provider on the phone before you decide how to stop is the whole of the advice, and it is free to do.

Massachusetts published something similar and went further into detail. The Department of Public Health and the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services wrote this on the state's kratom page before its order took effect:

The Department of Public Health (DPH) and the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS) expects disruptions in the availability of all kratom products. These products can act like potent opioids. Therefore, people who regularly use these products are likely to experience opioid tolerance and withdrawal symptoms when they stop or reduce their use, including craving, nausea, diarrhea, muscle and head aches, sniffling, sneezing, sweating, and irritability. They should seek medical care and/or substance use treatment.

The same page carries a line worth knowing whether or not you live in Massachusetts. It says that for people using kratom products who have an overdose and have reduced or stopped breathing, naloxone should be administered as though it were an opioid-related overdose. If there is a person in your house who might be the one to find you, that is a sentence to show them.

The department also makes a point that a lot of people arriving at this page will recognize. Physical dependence develops when someone takes kratom products often and consistently, and many people, in its words, take kratom products and do not realize that it could be harmful or that dependence can occur. Nobody signs up for this at the start. It is worth saying out loud that not knowing is the ordinary case rather than the careless one.

What each state published, and the number that goes with it

The five states differ enormously in what they put in front of the people who would be affected. Two wrote real clinical guidance. One wrote a paragraph. One published kratom material that never addresses coming off it. For one, nothing surfaced at all.

Massachusetts put its page up before the order took effect, and it is the most complete of the five. It describes the symptoms, points to treatment, explains the naloxone position, and gives a helpline that answers every day of the year. If you are in Massachusetts, that helpline is the shortest route to a person. For the order itself, what it covers and how enforcement is falling out town by town, we wrote up what changed on 28 August 2026, and it carries the same helpline as this page.

Connecticut did something no other state in this group did. Its page tells you that if you or someone you care about has been using kratom regularly and is now struggling, whether it is due to the recent changes in the law, physical dependence, or a desire to stop, you are not alone and help is available in Connecticut. It is the only one of the five that names its own change in the law as a reason a person might need help now, which matters because it means a reader does not have to explain themselves to be taken seriously.

North Dakota wrote one paragraph. It sits at the foot of the Governor's announcement of 3 August 2026 and says that consumers who believe they may be addicted to kratom, 7-OH or other kratom derivatives, and who are concerned about recovery or withdrawal, may call or text the crisis lifeline at 988 or the information and referral helpline at 211. It is short. It is also two working numbers, and both of them answer. That executive order was rescinded on 4 September 2026, and kratom remains banned in North Dakota.

There is one more thing worth knowing if you are in North Dakota, and it is the only observation of its kind that exists anywhere. Roughly nine days after the ban took effect, KXNET in Bismarck reported that the ban had not led to a spike or increase in people seeking treatment for kratom use, though staffers at Heartview believed that could change if the drug were permanently banned. Nine days is a short window and one provider is a small sample, so do not read more into it than it holds. What it does tell a person in North Dakota is that the door is open and there is not a queue.

Tennessee has published. Its mental health department keeps an emerging substances page with a kratom section covering the ban, adverse effects and overdose response. Its health department issued a February 2026 surveillance brief with recommendations for people who use kratom and a resources list. Both carry treatment referral numbers. What neither does is address withdrawal management, and neither was written in response to the ban. The REDLINE, call or text 1-800-889-9789, predates it and is not kratom specific. It is still a number that a person answers.

Louisiana is the empty row. Its prohibition took effect on 1 August 2025 and the only state announcement we could locate came from the Department of Revenue, which is the tax agency, and which set out the penalties. There is one point in it that a Louisiana reader needs: the law reaches possession, not only sale. That is a materially different position from a reader in a state where only sale is prohibited, and it is a reason to talk to someone sooner rather than later. For treatment, the national routes in the next section are what we can point you to.

If your state has nothing for you

This is the section that made the page worth building. A reader in Massachusetts or Connecticut has a state page written for their exact situation. A reader in Tennessee has state material about kratom but nothing about coming off it, and a reader in Louisiana, as far as we could establish, has neither. Either way you still need a number, so here are the ones that work anywhere.

One practical note about the call, because it is the part that stops people. You do not need a diagnosis, a plan, or a tidy account of how you got here before you dial. How much you have been taking, in grams or in servings, and for how long, is enough to start with.

What the evidence actually says about kratom withdrawal

You are about to be told a great many things by a great many people, so it helps to know where the line falls between what is settled here and what is still thin. It falls in an unexpected place.

Settled, and stated in those terms by two state health departments: physical dependence and an opioid-like withdrawal syndrome in regular users are real. Massachusetts says so on its page, Connecticut says so on its own. If you have been taking kratom daily for a long stretch and stopping feels like the flu with the volume turned up, that is a documented thing rather than a personal failing.

The federal research institute is more careful than either state, and you should hear that from us rather than from somebody using it against you later. NIDA writes that studies suggest people "may experience mild to moderate withdrawal symptoms when they stop regular kratom use, but more research is needed". That does not soften what the two states told their own residents to expect, and it changes nothing about what to do next. It does mean that anyone quoting the federal institute at you as proof the question is closed has not read the page.

Thin, and it should be written as thin: there is no agreed severity scale, no agreed timeline and no standardized protocol. The main systematic review, published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs in 2019, is built substantially on case reports. That is the honest state of the literature, and it is why two clinicians can give you different answers about what to expect in week two.

On medication, the position needs stating carefully. Massachusetts writes that medications used to treat opioid use disorder, buprenorphine among them, have been found to be effective for treating kratom use disorder, and the citation the state links under that sentence is Broyan and colleagues in 2022, a case series of 28 patients. Smith, Epstein and Weiss, writing in Current Psychiatry Reports in 2024, put the same point the other way round: most clinicians select buprenorphine although there are no controlled studies showing that buprenorphine is safe or efficacious in this patient population. NIDA states that there are currently no approved medical therapies for these conditions.

Hold all of that together and you get the accurate picture. Clinicians do reach for buprenorphine, one state health department says it has been found effective, the kratom specific evidence is a 28 patient case series and some scattered case reports, and there are no controlled trials in kratom at all. The strong evidence base for buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone is in opioid use disorder, and their use here is an extrapolation clinicians are making because there is nothing better to reach for. Emerging, not established. That is not a reason to refuse a treatment your prescriber offers, but it is the honest label to put on it, and a person deciding about their own body is entitled to know which of the two they are being handed.

A caution on that NIDA link, since we have just given it to you. The page is dated March 2026 and still describes kratom compounds as not scheduled federally, which events have overtaken. Use it for the treatment evidence and for its own hedges, and check legal status somewhere current.

One number is going to be quoted at you and it is usually quoted wrong. Hill and colleagues, in the Journal of Addiction Medicine in 2024, surveyed 2,061 current kratom consumers online, and 25.5 per cent of them met criteria adapted from the DSM-5 for kratom use disorder, most often through tolerance, at 81.3 per cent, and withdrawal, at 68.0 per cent. That is an anonymous online convenience sample of current consumers. It is not a population prevalence estimate and it cannot be turned into one, so anybody telling you that one in four kratom users are addicted has gone past what the paper says. What it is genuinely useful for is this: among people who did meet the criteria, tolerance and withdrawal were far and away the two most common routes in, so if those are the two things you have noticed in yourself, you are in ordinary company.

And to state the obvious, because omitting it would be worse than saying it twice. Kratom is not a treatment for opioid use disorder, and it is not a treatment for opioid or kratom withdrawal. If you have been using it as one, that is exactly the thing to tell a clinician, and it is the sort of disclosure they deal with routinely rather than the sort they judge.

What to have ready before you call

A clinician can only work with what you tell them, and the first appointment goes better with five things written down. How much you take in a day, by weight if you know it or by servings if you do not. How long you have been at roughly that amount. What form it comes in, since leaf powder and concentrated extracts are not the same input. Anything else you take, prescribed or not, including alcohol. And whether you have tried to stop before, what happened, and how far you got.

That last one is the question people flinch from and it is the most useful of the five. A previous attempt that went badly tells a prescriber more about your case than anything else on the list.

If you are asked what was in the product, the label and the batch test are what a clinician wants, not the brand name. Any seller worth dealing with publishes certificates of analysis for what it puts out, and ours are at our lab results page; if what you have at home came from somewhere that cannot show you the same, that is worth mentioning to whoever you see.

Questions people are asking

I stopped and I feel terrible. Is this withdrawal?

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health describes what regular users are likely to experience when they stop or reduce use: craving, nausea, diarrhea, muscle and head aches, sniffling, sneezing, sweating, and irritability. It tells people to seek medical care or substance use treatment. Only a clinician who has spoken to you can say what is happening in your particular case, so call one, or call the helpline for your state.

Should I stop all at once?

Connecticut's Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services writes that medical supervision during withdrawal is strongly recommended and that you should not stop abruptly without consulting a healthcare provider. That instruction was written by clinicians and it does not stop at the Connecticut state line. Ask a provider before you decide how to come off.

Is there a medicine for kratom withdrawal?

There is no approved one. NIDA states that there are currently no approved medical therapies for these conditions. Massachusetts writes that medications used to treat opioid use disorder, buprenorphine among them, have been found effective for kratom use disorder, and the citation under that sentence is a case series of 28 patients. Clinicians do reach for buprenorphine, and there are no controlled trials of it in kratom specifically. Its strong evidence base, alongside methadone and naltrexone, is in opioid use disorder. This is a question for a prescriber.

My state has not published anything. Who do I call?

The federal treatment locator at findtreatment.gov does not depend on which state you are in. 988 is the crisis lifeline anywhere in the United States, by call or text. 211 is the information and referral helpline. Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222 answers questions about a product you are holding. In Tennessee the REDLINE is 1-800-889-9789, by call or text.

If you have a page we missed

The empty row in the table is the weakest part of this page and we would like to lose it. If you know of a Louisiana state page written for consumers who were using kratom, or if a helpline listed here has changed, tell us and the page gets updated with the next review date on it. A resource page that is wrong about a phone number is worse than no page, so corrections are genuinely welcome here rather than politely welcomed.

And if you have read this far because it is you rather than someone you know, do the small thing. Pick the number for your state out of the box at the top, or dial 988 if your state is not listed, and say how much and for how long. That is the whole first step. Everything after it is a conversation with somebody qualified to have it.

Disclaimer: this page summarizes publicly available material as of 7 September 2026 and links to primary sources so you can check them. Where it says nothing was found for a state, that means a search did not surface anything, not that nothing exists. It is general information, not medical or legal advice, and it is no substitute for a clinician or for counsel in your jurisdiction. 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.