In the late 1990s, years before powdered kratom leaves became a commodity at smoke shops throughout the Western world, Duncan Macrae went searching for Mitragyna speciosa in the jungles of Borneo. The enigmatic Scot had lived in Bali for more than a decade. In the 1980s, he discovered a new species of monitor lizard and helped create the Bali reptile park. Now his attention was diverted to a new adventure. A few lines in an obscure anthropological article had captured his imagination. He was determined to seek out a tropical evergreen tree that Thai people had long used to ameliorate the symptoms of opium withdrawal.
“There was very little on the internet back then about what the tree actually looked like,” he said. “But we found a few generic pictures and printed them out.
Macrae flew into Pontianak and started showing the pictures to locals in the hope of chasing down a lead. By word of mouth, he ended up further and further from the city, until, finally, he found what he was looking for along the banks of a foliage-choked river.
“It was unbelievable. There were hundreds and hundreds of these kratom trees,” he said.
He enlisted local help to harvest and dry samples. Then he flew back to Bali where he experimented with consuming the dried plant by various methods. Mixing the astringent leaves into a milkshake seemed to be the most palatable option.
