It started with a tiny blue bottle next to the cash register at a 7-Eleven.
The year was 2023. Colin was a college student in Los Angeles and “dealing with a lot of social anxiety,” he told me, when he paid $9 for a Feel Free, a drink marketed as an alcohol-free “social tonic.” The two-ounce bottle contained kratom, a natural substance that can improve focus and produce an opioid-like high when consumed in higher doses. Colin had seen Feel Free on social media and on the shelves at Erewhon, a high-end health-food grocery chain in Southern California with locations in places like Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach.
At first, Feel Free solved a lot of Colin’s problems. The sense of isolation he had felt since starting college during the pandemic evaporated. He found it much easier to study—and to party. His focus improved, and his social anxiety melted away.
Those little blue drinks felt “like some kind of wonder drug that I had just kind of stumbled upon,” said Colin, now 25. He asked to be identified by his first name because he fears that he could lose his job if his employer found out that he uses Feel Free.
Before long, Colin was drinking eight bottles of Feel Free every day, even though the drink’s manufacturer says not to exceed one bottle per day. He couldn’t stop. If he didn’t drink one right when he woke up, he got a splitting headache. He hid his Feel Free habit from his girlfriend and parents until early 2025, when he quit cold turkey and plunged into withdrawal: no sleep for three nights, restless legs syndrome, and nausea. “It was like an incredibly strong itch inside your body that you’re not able to scratch,” he said, and “the most uncomfortable feeling I’ve ever felt.”
Read more
