Taken literally, making Kratom extract is like boiling a pot of coffee down into a single shot of espresso. You and I probably don’t have the same grinding tools the shops do, so in a way they have every right to charge us for that service. But just know that the “extract” you recieve for your precious dollar is being marked up by obscene amounts. 112 grams of extremely fine powdered leaf could be sold fairly for about 100-110 bucks. But the prices in most commercial ethno-venders are much, much higher. Probably about triple that. You could powder your own cheap leaf with a mortar and pestle, and I’m sure you would be quite content with its performance.
The other thing Kratom users need to know is that shops will tell you, “Active at just one gram!” This is also an inflation of the truth. Think of coffee, or caffeine. If you were tired and I give you a shot glass full of coffee you would probably say, “Jeez man! That’s not going to do anything! I need to wake up!” Well the fact is, that a shot glass full of coffee is active, isn’t it? That little bit of caffeine does something, right? But the fact that I can say regular coffee is active at a shot isn’t the point, is it? You wanted a full cup–maybe even two–to help you really wake up. That was your whole reason for drinking the somewhat vile bean water in the first place. This is essentially what the online ethnobotanical shops are doing when they tell you their “extracts” are “active at only one gram!” You throw down your hard-earned cash for 50 grams thinking: “Now I’m set. With 50 grams I can try Kratom 50 times. But then… knowing me I will double the dose so I can really feel it. That’s still 25 times though, so it’s completely worth it.” Wrong! The ethno companies’ tricky wording makes their extracts sound like a practical deal, but it’s really not the case. There aren’t 50 or 25, or even 10 doses in fifty grams of Kratom extract. To get the effects I’m assuming you are looking for you will need to take between 2 teaspoons and 1 whole tablespoon of very finely ground powder. (There are 3 teaspoons in one tablespoon.) Guestimating that there are between 9 and 14 grams of Kratom powder per tablespoon, that will give you between 4 and 6 doses of Kratom for your 50 grams.
Pretty slick, huh? The ethno-venders, I mean. They manipulate our wallets and perceptions with their words, and at the same time protect their own hindsides from someone overdoing it with one of their products. It’s like Big Government for the drug culture. And the sad thing is that, when disappointed, we drug people always come back for more, don’t we? They know we chase the dragon, and smartly hedge their bets on its evasive wings.