By Brooke Kato,Editor

Copyright dailymail

McKenzie Wisdom was paranoid. Sleep was impossible and there was a dull ache in her liver and kidneys. One minute she was shivering, the next she was dripping with sweat.

‘Every task, even getting up to take a shower, felt like moving a mountain,’ Wisdom, 29, told the Daily Mail.

It is one year since Wisdom suffered the agonies of withdrawal as she kicked what she claims was a substance as addictive as any opioid. By then she had a habit that dominated three years of her life, cost her tens of thousands of dollars and ultimately saw her check herself into rehab.

And it all began with a sip from a little blue bottle purchased in a high-end health food store in Los Angeles.

Marketed as a ‘plant-based productivity booster,’ when Feel Free tonic hit the wellness market in 2020, it was billed as a safe alternative to alcohol, caffeine and pharmaceuticals.

The main active ingredient in Feel Free is kratom – an herbal whole leaf extract derived from leaves of an evergreen tree called Mitragyna speciosa, native to Southeast Asia.

Research conducted by Columbia University and published in Scientific American found that the herb’s active compounds bind to the brain’s opioid receptors producing pain relief and, at higher doses, a feeling of euphoria.

According to one expert with whom the Daily Mail spoke, the fact that Feel Free is sold over-the-counter has led many to falsely assume that it is harmless supplement.

Board certified internist and longevity medicine specialist Dr Amanda Kahn said: ‘I don’t think consumers are necessarily informed of the risks involved, or they don’t discuss it with their healthcare provider because they don’t think they need to.’

‘It can turn into a massive problem,’ warned Kahn.

Wisdom first purchased Feel Free tonic from a trendy health food hotspot, in Los Angeles in 2021.

She was sober curious, with just one week left in a 90-day alcohol-free stint, when she heard about the drink on one of her favorite wellness podcasts.

Wisdom, who is the founder of luxury wellness retreat company The Wise and Well Collective, was attracted to the product marketed as a ‘natural alcohol alternative’ and ‘social lubricant.’

She said: ‘At the time, I was working a full-time marketing job and I had also just started a business in the wellness space, so that piece of it was also very appealing.’

She started drinking half of the two-ounce blue bottle – which the label says is one serving – for socializing or to help her focus on her business when working at night.

Feel Free, she said, made her feel, ‘happy, light, like my most confident self.’

She explained: ‘It was subtle enough where I wasn’t like, “Oh my god, I’m high.”‘

But as time went on, that euphoric feeling didn’t last nearly as long. Chasing her original buzz, Wisdom downed more tonic every day in a pattern of behavior that, she claims, led to a dependence on the product.

She said: ‘I started noticing – and I didn’t really realize what was happening at the time – I was having these comedowns. I would just not feel great after and then I would lose all productivity.’

At the height of her addiction, Wisdom was drinking six or seven bottles a day, and sometimes as many as nine (18 times the recommended serving limit), which would cause her to vomit.

She was hemorrhaging $2,500 a month to buy Feel Free which was available everywhere from the shelves of celebrity favorite, Erewhon grocery store to health food stores, boutiques and even her local yoga studios.

‘It was very much in the wellness space,’ Wisdom said. ‘I think that just continued to make me think it was okay. That’s what helped me justify the addiction for so long.’

And yet, if she went without, she would experience symptoms she likened to withdrawal: depression, anxiety, hot and cold flashes, restless legs, insomnia and that ache in her kidneys and around her liver.

Finally, when she could take no more, Wisdom sought help – checking herself into the holistic rehabilitation center, The Sanctuary at Sedona, in Arizona.

She says she spent five weeks and an eye-watering $45,000 working with practitioners there to kick her habit once and for all.

Kahn told the Daily Mail that she has seen multiple patients with kratom addictions, including those who have never abused illicit drugs before but have, ‘inadvertently become addicted’ to the herbal extract.

The New York-based provider said: ‘It’s very troubling as a primary care physician to see that patients and the general population could get access to something that has opioid receptor binding and opioid-like effects so easily.

‘It’s a gateway to other, stronger opioids because you’re accidentally addicted to something that you didn’t know had opioid-like effects.’

In March 2023 a class action lawsuit was filed against Feel Free manufacturers Botanic Tonics LLC and Hydra623 Holdings LLC in which claimants alleged that Feel Free was falsely advertised as a safe, sober and healthy alternative to alcohol.

The parties reached an $8.75 million settlement, earlier this year with a final approval hearing scheduled for October. Neither defendant admitted wrongdoing but they agreed to add a disclosure to the drink’s packaging that reads: ‘This product contains leaf kratom which can become habit-forming and cause serious adverse health effects. Consider avoiding this product if you have any history of substance abuse.’

In a statement to Daily Mail, Botanic Tonics stressed that those with addiction issues should abstain from Feel Free entirely: ‘The minority of consumers who abuse Feel Free by consuming doses higher than specified on the label almost always are people with a history of prior substance abuse. We warn against use by those individuals on the label. Our product is designed to be consumed by healthy adults, not by those who suffer from substance abuse disorder.’

Additionally, Botanic Tonics said that Feel Free does not contain high potency kratom concentrates, extracts, or synthetics of any kind, which have drawn particular concern by the Federal Drug Administration.

On July 29, the FDA announced that it is moving to regulate synthetic and concentrated kratom (also known as 7-OH) products under the Controlled Substances Act.

Meanwhile tales of consumers grappling with their dependence on the whole leaf kratom tonic and seeking answers abound online, with thousands visiting the sub-Reddit ‘quittingfeelfree,’ where users ask for help with detoxing and share sobriety milestones.

For 22-year-old Jasmine Adeoye, finding that forum was a wake-up call and a salvation.

In 2022, Adeoye had recently quit alcohol when she discovered Feel Free and, like Wisdom, found the prospect of a natural alternative to drinking appealing.

Despite feeling sick after she first tried the tonic, she was convinced by its rave reviews to give it another shot, purchasing one of the small blue bottles from an upscale wellness store in Austin, Texas.

‘That’s when I experienced the euphoria,’ she told the Daily Mail.

With half a bottle, she was more talkative, felt more creative and found otherwise mundane topics incredibly interesting. But what started as an apparently innocent social crutch spiraled out of control.

Looking back, account manager Adeoye said: ‘There was always a little voice in the back of my head that was like, “be careful,” but I told myself that it wasn’t anything to worry about because it was a wellness tonic.

‘Like, who gets addicted to something like that?’

By the fall of 2023, she was consuming three bottles daily. By the following January, she was drinking anywhere from nine to a dozen.

Her days, she said, consisted of multiple trips to her local gas station – first thing in the morning, then going back throughout the day every few hours for more.

‘My whole life revolved around it,’ Adeoye said.

She spent an estimated $3,000 a month on Feel Free, draining her savings, maxing out her credit cards and taking out a loan just to afford it.

In total, she racked up about $15,000 in debt. Physically too, her habit took a toll as she struggled with fatigue, lethargy and hair loss.

She told anyone who noticed the change in her appearance that it was because of her high-stress job. It was only when her mother came for a surprise visit in March 2024 that Adeoye was forced to confront the truth.

That weekend, embarrassed by the volume of empty bottles in her trash and full ones in her fridge, she came clean and asked for help.

Now Adeoye has launched a petition to urge the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to completely ban Feel Free beverages.

As of this year, at least eight states have banned kratom and 18 others have enacted regulatory measures such as age restrictions for their purchase.

Now, it is mostly sold in convenience stores, smoke shops and gas stations, as well as in bulk online and each bottle of Feel Free bears a warning.

But those deterrents came too late for Wisdom and Adeoye.

Adeoye reflected: ‘This drink had such a hold on me. It’s something that, until you experience it, you don’t really know what the grips of addiction can be like.’

For her part, Wisdom, now living in Chicago, cautioned: ‘It happened very sneakily.

‘You don’t really realize what’s happening until all of a sudden, you’re deep in the hole.