WHY? –
March 24, 2024 – Matthew Torres, 39, “suffered a violent seizure with convulsions and foaming at the mouth,” according to a lawsuit filed by his family.
His girlfriend performed CPR on Torres until first responders arrived and continued the lifesaving attempts, but he was declared dead. The Clackamas County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Torres’ cause of death as “toxic effects of mitragynine,” according to the complaint, which calls this a “kratom overdose.”
Kratom is a tree, also called mitragyna speciosa, that grows naturally in Southeast Asia. Mitragynine is one of its main psychoactive components, a December 2021 World Health Organization report says. People often consume it by chewing leaves or ingesting the leaves in powdered form.
