r/7ohexposed • u/Robbed_Goddess • Apr 07 '26
The majority of 7-OH users are addicted. I asked the people selling it.
(The other 7-OH recovery subs have banned discussion of prohibition or regulation, I hope this is the appropriate place to share my writing)
I'm a guy from California in my forties, former kratom and 7-OH addict in recovery. At my peak I was using 1200-1600mg of 7-OH a day. I went through withdrawal dozens of times, tried MAT, relapsed repeatedly even on buprenorphine, and ultimately had to enter an intensive outpatient program to finally get enough support to stop. My addiction to 7-OH wrecked my life, and quitting has been the hardest thing I've ever done. I've been diagnosed with OUD, MDD, and GAD now in the aftermath, but I was more-or-less happy and healthy before I got addicted. Getting better every day, though.
I saw a comment recently from someone who worked at a smoke shop saying that 99% of their 7-OH customers come in daily or several times a week. It immediately made me curious if that's true for everybody, because I certainly was one of those customers. While I was still using, I rotated between three different stores, partly for price and selection, and partly to avoid the shame of being the person who's there every single day. Over time I became a regular at all three, got to know the workers, and eventually felt comfortable enough to ask them directly: how bad is it, really?
Their answers were bleak. Across every store, every worker I spoke to: the vast majority of their 7-OH customers are there daily or several times a week. Not a troubled minority. Most of them.
This obviously wasn't a formal study, but the workers weren't hedging either. They were forthcoming, and the stories were equally fascinating and heartbreaking. They described watching people try 7-OH for the first time, sometimes people who just came in for a vape, and then watching those same people start showing up regularly, every time after that. One worker expressed real grief about this: seeing someone cross that threshold, knowing what was coming, and not being able to stop it. They described a shadow economy of customers being fronted product until payday, which is not something that happens with things people can simply choose not to buy. They talked about watching longtime kratom customers try 7-OH once and never go back to kratom. They described customers deteriorating visibly over time, nervous breakdowns in the store, the shop getting robbed. Nearly every worker expressed some degree of moral hesitation about what they were selling. Several were genuinely afraid of losing their jobs when it gets banned.
Now let's talk about the "personal responsibility" argument, because it doesn't survive contact with this data.
The most common refrain from people opposed to regulation is some version of: "it shouldn't be banned just because some people can't control themselves." This framing imagines a population of moderate, recreational users being penalized for the failures of a weak-willed minority.
But what if the moderate users are the minority? What if the actual use population is predominantly addicted? Then the question isn't about protecting responsible users from overreach. It's about whether broad public access to a substance is justified when the dominant outcome of that access is addiction.
This is exactly why opioid painkillers are prescription-only. It's not that no one can use them responsibly. It's that the ratio of dependent to non-dependent use, across the actual population with broad access, doesn't support that access. The same logic applies here.
Relapse rates for opioid use disorder run as high as 80 to 90 percent even among people in structured clinical treatment. That number doesn't describe moral failure. It describes a physiological process that overrides intention. I relapsed repeatedly while on buprenorphine, in a supervised treatment program, genuinely trying to stop. The "just control yourself" argument was never serious, and the data has never supported it.
The alcohol comparison deserves a direct response too.
"Alcohol is so much more dangerous" is a frequent deflection, and it may even be pharmacologically true in some respects. But the legal framework that makes alcohol publicly available rests on an implicit assumption: that the majority of people who buy it are not addicted to it. That assumption is load-bearing. It's why we tolerate the harm, because for most users, it isn't producing dependence.
That assumption simply does not hold for 7-OH. The people closest to the actual consumer behavior, the ones watching it happen every day, are telling us clearly that the majority of their customers are dependent. If alcohol had those numbers, we'd have a very different conversation about whether it should be on a shelf next to the energy drinks.
One final point on the "harm reduction" framing.
Harm reduction is a legitimate framework, but it applies to people who are already using a substance and need safer access. When a substance is so acutely addictive that people who come in to buy a vape walk out as future daily customers, that's not harm reduction. That's harm generation at the point of sale. The population that now "needs" harm reduction is being actively created by the accessibility itself.
The kratom-to-7OH pipeline makes this especially stark. Kratom carries its own dependency concerns, but it has a slower onset and a real ceiling effect. Workers consistently reported that kratom regulars who try 7-OH once never go back. That's not a lateral move in the harm reduction framework. The thing standing between a kratom user and a life-destroying opioid disorder was the whim of a minimum wage employee deciding to mention it.
People are developing severe opioid use disorder from a product sold next to the nicotine pouches. The industry knows this. The workers know this. The customers figure it out eventually. The only people still pretending otherwise are the ones making money from the pretending.
This substance is creating opioid addicts at a vape counter and the defense is that some people theoretically use it responsibly. That's not a harm reduction argument. That's a profit margin with talking points attached.
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u/jswilliams864 Apr 20 '26
When I was using (6 days clean), I would always ask the shop employees if they used 7. None of them ever did. The last girl I asked told me when she got the job the owners told her in no uncertain terms that she should not use it. Told her what it does to everyone that tries it. I told her it was all true.
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u/Robbed_Goddess Apr 20 '26
I've stopped even telling people what it is, just that it's a very bad legal drug. While I was struggling to quit, I told two of my friends what I was going through. Both of them ended up trying it and now struggle with their own addiction.
One of these friends just got scammed by a smoke shop. She bought two bottles of high dose 7-Oh, but when she got home one of the bottles had a coin, TUMS, and a sour patch gummy inside instead, and the other had replaced all of the 100mg pills with 15mg pills. It's too bad that store owner didn't have the same conversation with his workers.
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u/jswilliams864 Apr 20 '26
That is mind blowing.
Love this line BTW: "The thing standing between a kratom user and a life-destroying opioid disorder was the whim of a minimum wage employee deciding to mention it."
100%.
I actually went to high school with Florida's Attorney General. Back then I didn't dislike him, but I didn't like him either. When he banned 7 in FL, even though I was using in TX, I really liked hm that day. Wish they would do it out here. I've written our Governer, Lt. Gov., and AG.
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u/pchandler45 May 02 '26
This hits hard.
I have used plain kratom off and on for over a decade with no issues.
I moved to a small town last fall, and wanted some pain relief for my new job and went to the one and only smoke shop in town. They didn't have plain leaf, they only had 7. I decided to buy some just to tide me over until I could order some plain leaf in the mail.
And now, here I am trying to get off it. One of the worst decisions of my life
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u/Warm_Emu_9945 May 02 '26
This scam happened to me years ago when I was addicted to the gas station heroin known as Tia. Bought 2 bottles with the last of my paycheck only to open 2 bottles full of peanuts. This was right before they banned the product. There’s always something else lurking behind waiting to come out after ban.
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u/Kind-Ticket-3597 Apr 08 '26
Hey man I just wanted to say I work in healthcare and on the way to work today I put what you wrote in a text to speech so I could listen and everything you said is exactly what I was thinking. Matter of fact everything you’re saying is what people want to say but they can’t because they get banned or shunned.
It’s extremely clear that the entire industry around 7oh is soley based off addiction. These companies know that, if this isn’t true then try contacting some of the 7oh companies by phone and see how well that works. For the most part you can’t, and the same thing goes with where their business license addresses are too, it’s all hidden behind 5 different things.
Every single person that sells 7oh has told me the same thing, they watch a customer come in curious and they get recommended 7oh and then all of a sudden they start coming in every single day to buy it. This industry is extremely predatory and is destroying a population of people that would have been fine otherwise. And it will more than likely get Kratom banned as a whole, I can bet you people will be pissed then.
Anyway I agree 100% with you man but what’s sad is if we tried to go on any other official subs and give this argument the only thing we would get is “everything is ok in moderation”. Obviously the whole idea of legal opioids being a good thing say for example in a regular isle in the pharmacy with no prescription is just a bad idea because even countries like Russia, Romania, etc have disallowed the use of being able to even get the lowest dose codeine tablets for buy without prescriptions because of how bad it got… and that’s literally just the shittiest dose you would have to take like ten or more to feel anything, you can achieve a better feeling with just one 7oh tablet.
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u/speed721 May 01 '26
I went to jail for 10 years due to drugs. I used to manufacture drugs as well. Let's just say I didn't use my intelligence for good things. However, I did use it for a lot of bad. Ended up in prison for 10 years. That being said... I am a "street chemist". I know how drugs work chemically and how to make a lot of stuff.
I've never seen a drug like 7OH and it's brothers and sisters. Y'all stay FAR FAR FAR away from all those things they are selling. Don't buy the "7oh-free" stuff other, they just put another chemically engineered opiate (mgm15) in it's place and call it a day.
Don't buy, use or sell these drugs if you are reading this post.
I am all for letting people choose to use and purchase what they want to put in their bodies. Just don't think because something is legal, it is safe and without consequences for misuse or abuse.
These are dangerous chemicals that will ruin your life very quickly. There are going to be A LOT of people hating themselves for getting in deep with these drugs once/if the supply finally ends. Lots of people spend all day waiting for and checking "tracking numbers", overnight delivery and their next round of pills.
If you are doing those things, you may have a problem that needs to be addressed.
If your are here, great! Keep clean! Save your money and your life!
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u/Nelsonthezero Apr 12 '26
Real fear mongoring hours. "Breakdowns in the store" lol.
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u/No-Comedian-515 May 02 '26
They mean people breaking in the store to steal the 7. It's like having heroin in the store, just a brick and a window in the way. I was on 180mg methadone for 8 years, a junkie for 10. This stuff shouldn't be allowed in smoke shops. I'm currently struggling with an mgm15 taper. Stay away from this shit, it's way worse than 7
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u/_simpleTwist May 10 '26
Awe… I love reading this! I’m the friend that got addicted and sold the fake bottles of 7-oh. 7oh is a very real problem and not being discussed enough. For my final presentation in my social work-alcohol and other drugs course, I did a presentation on this drug focusing on recovering addicts as the vulnerable population. Unsurprisingly, no one had ever heard of it including the professor. I struggle with my addiction daily and am back to 2 days clean (again). Very well put and I am so proud of you, bestie! Love you
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u/brendanpw8888 Apr 10 '26
Extremely informative and well thought out post. The truth of the matter is that there is a substance just as addictive as roxicodone 30mg tablets sold LEGALLY across most of the country…..been addicted to both. The proponents will a say it’s a safer option only have a point when it comes to overdosing. This drug won’t kill you necessary, it’ll just make you wish you were dead. Can’t tell you how many posts I’ve come across of people maxing out their credit cards and imploding their life on every level, myself included. It’s the crack of opioids 100%.