Fears over growing toll of ‘health supplement’

Krystal Talavera thought she was drinking a healthy supplement to her morning coffee.

But the supplement she was taking, kratom, killed the registered nurse, a mother of four, from respiratory failure brought on by opioid-like effects.

Her death is the latest involving the herbal substance, which is widely sold at gas stations and online despite the FDA warning it can cause liver damage, seizures and even death, and the CDC linking it to more than 100 deaths in just 18 months.

Now relatives of people who have died after taking the drug say they want more government regulation—and for people to be aware how dangerous a widely-marketed herbal product can be.

Talavera’s eldest son Devin Filippelli sued the makers of the supplement found beside her body at the family home in Palm Beach County she shared with her partner and four children.

Talavera, 39, was a nurse who had just been promoted at the hospice care company where she worked.

But in June 2021, the day after celebrating Filippeli winning a place at Florida State University, her partner found her collapse beside a cup of hot coffee and an open bag of “Space Dust,” one of the names under which kratom is marketed.

Paramedics could not revive her and she was declared dead at Bethesda Hospital East, Boynton Beach, Fl. An autopsy said she had suffered acute “mitragynine” intoxication, caused by the active ingredient of kratom, leading her to suffer respiratory failure.

Filippelli, 21, and his family won an $11 million judgment in a wrongful death federal lawsuit last week against Kratom Distro and distributor Grow LLC, saying the supplements his mom purchased produced “opioid-like effects” which the company should have known about.

The companies denied breaking laws by not notifying people of the potential dangers of their products, but withdrew their attorneys from the case, leading to a default judgement.

“It’s like buying a drug. You don’t know what you’re getting,” Devin Filippelli, 21, told The Post.

 “If I had a message, I’d say don’t take it at all. Every time you take it you’re playing Russian roulette with your life. Is that worth it?” Filippelli told The Post.

Filippelli said his mother started using kratom believing it to be a healthy. Kratom Distro, the website she purchased the supplement “Space Dust” promotes products on its website as having an “uplifting and energetic” effect.

“There’s no labels on this stuff. No one knows what’s in it. They’re concentrating it. That’s the problem,” Filippelli said, noting the substance his mother consumed had no instructions regarding serving-size or ingredients.  

The night before his mother’s death,  Filippelli and his mother were celebrating his high school graduation. She was thrilled he’d be attending the University of Florida.

“I woke up the next morning and had a text from her saying ‘good morning my graduate.’ I responded and I never got a text back,” he said. 

Kratom, made from the leaf of the kratom tree, a species common across Southeast Asia, is at the center of dozens of wrongful death lawsuits.

The most recent estimate, from 2021, is that 1.7 million Americans aged 12 and older used kratom that year.

A CDC study in 2019 found that its use had caused 107 deaths in 32 states between July 2016 and December 2017.

While some report kratom can help relieve pains, depression and anxiety and reduce symptoms of opioid withdrawal, at higher doses, the herbal substance can mimic an opioid.

However there are few rules around kratom, and none apply nationwide. Six states—Alabama; Arkansas; Indiana; Rhode Island; Vermont and Wisconsin—outlaw its possession and sale and some cities or counties ban retailers from stocking it.

Doctors urge buyers to beware as its active ingredient, mitragynine, can be highly addicting, and has shown up in toxicology reports of some individuals who have died after ingesting the substance. 

“It acts on the same part of the brain as morphine does, as fentanyl does. It’s completely unregulated. At a minimum, I think we should end the free for all,” Dr. Tucker Woods, chair of the emergency department and medical director of Lenox Health Greenwich Village told The Post.

“Right now when you buy kratom you don’t know what you’re getting because it’s not regulated. If you’re buying kratom when you look at these packages they don’t tell you the recommended dose you just have to guess how much you’re supposed to take. It’s a free for all.” 

Woods, who has treated patients with kratom addictions, recalled a patient who went from taking 7 kratom pills a day to 80 capsules within minutes of waking up. 

“People will develop a tolerance with kratom that goes up 10-fold. It’s an emerging threat out there gaining popularity for its euphoric effects. They’ll say it’s a herbal product capable of giving you a legal high… there’s zero regulation right now.” 

Melissa Vidrine, a licensed clinical social worker from Lafayette Parish, Louisiana says the kratom product she believes killed her 26-year-old son, Daniel Vidrine in February, 2021, is still on sale at the local gas station—at eye level at the register under the label Whole Herbs, which mimics the Whole Foods logo. 

Her son Daniel, an Air Force veteran, was 26 when he died from acute mitragynine toxicity, also known as a kratom overdose. 

Vidrine said her son found out about kratom when he was looking for a remedy for anxiety and insomnia. 

“He said it helped him with his depression and anxiety. He said it helped him with sleep, but there was no evidence that it really did because it made his behavior more erratic,” she said.

He suffered side effects including sweating, a red rash that broke out all over his back and trouble sleeping.

“He said ‘they wouldn’t be selling it if it wasn’t okay.’ I told him, ‘Daniel, not everything they sell is good for you,’” Vidrine said, noting that her son had no history of drug use and was not drinking alcohol at the time of his death.

He would buy a 500-capsule bottle every few days at the gas station near his home. He died in the early morning hours after Vidrine say him last.

“We got a phone call at 2:30 a.m. It appeared he had a seizure and ultimately died,” she told The Post, noting that his son’s wife filed a lawsuit against the company in 2022. The company has never responded to the suit. Attempts to reach it for comment by The Post were unsuccessful.

“The kratom sold in the United States is not the same kratom leaf plucked from a plant and used as a tea in South East Asia. [It] may be contaminated, degraded, and may not be safe for human consumption,” she said urging users to consult with a doctor as, she says, it can cause dependency.

Linda Mautner, a nurse from Delray Beach, Fl., told The Post she blames Kratom for her 20-year-old son Ian’s suicide in 2014. 

Mautner said her son first started consuming kratom at Purple Lotus Kava Bar in Delray Beach serving chilled tea drinks where kratom is on the menu and marketed on its social media page as a “miracle leaf.”

But soon, Ian started buying the powder from various establishments and making it at home, Mautner told The Post.

“I would find packets of the powder. He would get the powder, mix it at home and I’d find traces of it. At first we didn’t know what it was,” she told The Post of her son’s kratom use that began two years before his death in 2014.

“At one point in the beginning, he’d come home talking 100 miles an hour another time he’d be lethargic.”

He had kratom and antidepressants in his system at the time of his death, according to a toxicology report. 

 “I wish I had known what this was, period,” she told The Post of making it her mission to raise awareness of the dangerous herb.