US chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky suffered cardiac issues after taking kratom and meth, according to a detailed medical examiner’s report that ruled the 29-year-old’s death an accident.
Friends found Naroditsky on his living room couch with bags of kratom powder and over-the-counter cough medicine strewn around his Charlotte, North Carolina, home on Oct. 19, 2025.
They had performed the wellness check after becoming concerned when Naroditsky missed a scheduled flight to Colorado.
Two days earlier, the same friends had come over due to their alarm about his “concerning altered mental status,” during a chess livestream, the medical examiner’s report said.
There, they had “confiscated” around 40 pills believed to be Adderall before leaving the house, according to the report.
Naroditsky, a chess prodigy, had been under significant “stress” due to “cheating allegations leveled against him by a prominent international chess figure over the previous year,” the report added.
The last person to see him alive was a DoorDash delivery driver who brought food to his address at around 3 p.m. the day before.
The partially-eaten food was still on his dining room table when emergency responders arrived.
His death was put down to probable cardiac arrhythmia due to probable cardiac involvement of systemic sarcoidosis, according to the medical examiner’s report.
The presence of methamphetamine and kratom in his system both contributed to his accidental death, the report stated.
Kratom is a supplement sold as an energy booster, pain reliever, and mood lifter.
The FDA warns it can cause trouble breathing, high blood pressure, liver damage, depression, hallucinations and, in a small number of cases, death.
Additional reporting by David Propper