SOLDIERX.COM Nobody Can Stop Information Insemination

Hey all - I'm a new member to the forum. I'm currently taking info sec. classes at college, and always looking to expand my knowledge base. I've recently migrated from Windows to Linux, and have been loving the change, but I've been having problems with my IRC.

I haven't used IRC in years before this, and I always just used chatzilla, but now I'm trying out some other clients, and one I really like is Irssi. However, I do a lot of work on my Kali install, which I usually log in to as root. I know running Irssi as root is a big risk, but I don't know if it's possible for me to run it as a lower user. Can someone give me some pointers on this? Or recomment a different client that might be more suitable?