6 Alternatives To Opiates For Pain Management

Opiate medication can be fantastic for pain relief. That’s why opiates are used for pain relief across the world so successfully. Unfortunately, they do have negative side effects, which is why the best alternative opiates for pain management could be a better choice.

I’m not suggesting you completely swap from opioid medication if it’s been prescribed by a doctor. But you can minimize your use of prescription meds by using some of the best alternatives to opiates to help manage your pain.

So what we’re going to do here quickly is tell you everything you need to know. What the best legal alternative opiates are, how to use them, and which alternatives are good for the most chronic pain.

Why Opiates Are So Good For Pain Management

Opioid medications are good for pain management because they are full agonists of the opioid receptors in the body.

There are five opioid receptors, and although opiates interact with them differently, the key similarity is that they help to regulate signals from the three main opioid receptors that deal with analgesia (Delta, kappa, mu).

The opioid receptors are inhibitory transmitters that are crucial for sending pain signals around the body. If you can regulate and downgrade these messages, then you stop the body sending pain signals so intensely, which has the effect of making you feel less pain.

Opioid receptors have been found in the brain, spinal cord, muscle tissue, and throughout the digestive system. So as you can see, downgrading the messages they send can help with pain across the body.

At low doses, some opiates only stimulate all three pain management receptors at a low frequency, or some even only become partial or full agonists of one or more receptors. The higher the dose generally though, the more that most opiates become full agonists of all three pain management opioid receptors.

Why The Best Alternatives To Opiates Could Be A Better Option

Now although some people ditch their prescribed opioid medications, I’m not suggesting you just do that then switch straight to one of the best legal alternatives to opiates instead. There’s nothing wrong with trying different things instead of the medication for a few days, for short periods, to see if you can find something that you can substitute in more readily. Just be sensible.

The reason why the best alternatives to opioid medications could be better is that they can have a lower risk of addiction.

The main reason for that is that they don’t tend to be such aggressive agonists of all the opioid receptors dealing with analgesia. So they are less addictive in nature, even though they still have potentially the same effects, especially at higher doses.

However, that doesn’t mean that they can’t become addictive, especially emotionally, and also because they can make you feel really good. Even with the alternatives, you have to be sensible in dosing, and when you use them.

So if you do feel you are becoming dependent on opioid medication, or it’s simply not touching your pain and you don’t want to raise the dose, then the best alternatives to opioids that are completely natural and safe to use could be the answer.

What Are The Legal Alternatives To Opiates That Are Easily Obtained And Used?

There are quite a few substances out there that contain alkaloids that interact with the opioid receptors in the body to minimize pain.

The most common legal alternatives to opiates are:

• Kratom
• Akuamma
• blue Lotus
• Kava
• Mitragyna Hirsuta
• Kanna

These are all-natural alternatives to prescription opioids, and all of been in use around the world in traditional medicine for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

They all interact with the opioid receptors, and all of them can make you feel calmer, minimize pain, and increase happiness and positivity.

However, some are far more effective than others at doing this. Also, some are safer to use for the long term and have fewer side effects than others if used sensibly.

All of these natural alternatives to opiates (when we are talking about opiates, we mean prescription meds and things like opium and heroin) are mostly legal to buy, especially in the USA.

In countries like the UK, Australia, and some parts of Southeast Asia and Europe, legality is different though, so it always pays to check and you may have to import them if you want to try them regardless of legality in your location.

But if you are in the USA, or in one of many countries around the world where there are no problems, then the above list are genuine legal alternatives to opiates.

What Are The Best Alternatives To Opiates For Chronic Pain?

Although I’ve listed several alternatives to opiates that contain alkaloids that interact with the opioid receptors to some degree, I want to focus on what I think is probably one of the best alternatives opiates for pain management overall, and that’s kratom.

Kratom contains a large amount of a potent alkaloid that interacts with the opioid receptors called Mitragynine.

Kratom can be quite complex to understand. So I’ll try and break it down simply for you here:

1. Kratom comes in three vein colors: green, white, red. White is more energizing, red is more analgesic, and green is in the middle. If you are looking for legal alternatives to opiates, then red, and potentially green at slightly higher doses are ideal.
2. There are tons of different strains. However, although there can be subtle differences if you get a really high-quality kratom, the vein color is far more important. Red Bali is going to be very similar to Red Borneo most of the time for example.
3. Dosage is critical with kratom because the effects change. They don’t just get more intense, they change. At lower doses, kratom is stimulating with not a lot of pain relief. As the dose increases, so the calmness and pain relief increase, more so with red and green than white kratom.

But overall, kratom is incredibly good at dealing with chronic pain, and it’s definitely one of the best alternatives to opiates you can buy legally in the USA and a lot of other countries at the moment.

Quality is crucial. Good quality kratom from a reputable vendor is key to getting the best experience overall, including the sense of wellbeing and happiness alongside pain relief.

Dosage is also critical. Let’s say you’re using red kratom as it’s got the highest amount of alkaloids that will suppress pain. A low dose is around 2 -4g, while a good full-spectrum dose is about 5-6g. At that level, good kratom, you will feel significantly calm and experience almost the complete absence of pain. Above that sort of level you heading into a high dose where you will feel pretty out of it, but it can be good for the evenings if you struggle with bad pain.

How To Get Started With Alternatives To Prescription Opioid Medication

Let’s talk about getting started with kratom first as one of the best alternatives to opiates for chronic pain.

If you are suffering from chronic pain, then around 5 g of kratom should start to have an effect. If you’re not fully anesthetized at a dose of around 7 g, then you haven’t got good kratom. The effects come on in around 30 minutes, peak at 90 minutes, and then tail off over about 4-6 hours So one good dose will see you through most of the working day, or the evening.

However, I wouldn’t advise you to dose a single high dose during the working day as it can really chill you out so much that you lose focus. For me, I use kratom capsules and will dose 3-4 g in the morning, top up with a couple of grams in the afternoon, and then a couple of grams an evening if I find I’m really suffering.

You have to make sure you have more days of the week free from kratom than using it though. I use kratom to back-up my prescription meds when I want a break from them, or the pain is just really bad. But you could substitute pain meds for kratom once you are experienced and understand the risks and rewards.

Another great alternative is Akuamma. It’s similar to kratom, but it’s not as potent. A good dose will give you some calmness and pain relief, but it won’t be as overwhelming as kratom.

I’d also recommend Mitragyna Hirsuta as well. Kratom has the Latin name of Mitragyna Speciosa, so you will then obviously make the link between the two.

Mitragyna Hirsuta has many of the same types of the alkaloid is kratom, but they aren’t exactly the same, and they are not as frequent or potent. So it’s great to use it to experiment before you take kratom. It could be enough for your needs if you only want to moderate pain relief and calmness.

So for me, any of these are the best alternatives to opiates if you want to try something herbal, and it’s completely legal in the USA and many other countries to use them.

If you really want to go for the best legal alternative to opiates then I would just go straight for kratom. You can carefully control the effect you want through picking the right vein color and then tailoring the dose.