In detox centers and online support communities, it’s called “the little blue devil.” But its real name is less insidious: “Feel Free” is a drink sold in tiny blue bottles in gas stations, liquor stores and smoke shops to people 21 years or older. Peddled as a health elixir, it promises to enhance focus and energy. A label on the bottle describes it as a “plant-based herbal supplement” and Feel Free’s Instagram conjures a holistic, nutritional lifestyle. Phrases like “natural,” “Mother Nature” and “clean energy” are frequently employed alongside videos of people drinking Feel Free while rock climbing, meditating, working out or doing yoga.
Launched in 2021, just as the “sober curious” movement was growing increasingly popular, Feel Free has met a rising interest in alcohol alternatives, especially among young people. Today, 41 percent of Americans are trying to drink less alcohol, up from 34 percent in 2023. In its first few years of business, the product has proved a runaway success: Less than two years after its launch, Feel Free’s parent company, Botanic Tonics, was bringing in $32 million per year in revenue. While the company originally launched as an alcohol alternative, it has recently rebranded as a substance that elevates the mood: “People use it during the day like they would use a 5-Hour Energy or a Red Bull,” says Botanic Tonics CEO Cameron Korehbandi.
But the brand’s breezy marketing belies the harrowing addiction that many people say they experience within days of drinking their first Feel Free. Many said they have spent hundreds of dollars a week buying Feel Free products or resorted to stealing Feel Free in order to sate their addiction. Some have found the product so addictive that they’ve gone to detox centers and rehab to kick the habit. One man I spoke to, Chasin Roberts, a 34-year-old living in Los Angeles, told me that in the course of a year, he lost everything due to his Feel Free addiction: his job, his apartment and joint custody of his son.
“Feel Free had a hold on me that I had never before experienced,” says Roberts. “I couldn’t live without it. One turned into three, three turned into five, five turned into 10. I would drink as many as I could, spending whatever money I had.” A year after trying his first bottle of Feel Free, he said he maxed out four credit cards and sold most of his belongings to support the habit. At the height of his Feel Free use, he said he was drinking as many as 20 bottles per day, spending roughly $700 per week. Toward the end of his spiral, he lived out of his car next to a 7-Eleven in West L.A., where he bought bottles of Feel Free with cash made from delivering food on DoorDash.
“An online support community on Reddit called ‘r/Quittingfeelfree’ has ballooned from 200 members in 2023 to more than 2,000 members roughly a year later. ”
Feel Free is made from the root of the South Pacific plant kava and the leaves of the Southeast Asian tree kratom. Kava has a calming, euphoric effect while kratom, which has a complicated legal history in the United States, is a mild stimulant that has been known to have addictive qualities. In 2018, the FDA classified kratom as an opioid and warned against using it; the agency continues to assess kratom. Both substances are especially popular among those in recovery from addiction to opioids or alcohol.
Botanic Tonics’ own founder, JW Ross, began toying with the idea of selling a kratom and kava-based beverage after using the substances himself while living in Southeast Asia. For years, Ross had an alcohol addiction, and he’d used both to recover. A savvy businessman who has worked in leadership positions at multiple companies, he saw an opportunity in selling a kava-based beverage in convenience stores.
Today, despite an uptick and the rising popularity of kava bars, which typically serve drinks infused with kava and kratom, Feel Free is one of the most accessible kratom-based beverages on the market. The company says it differs from competitor products because it’s derived from whole-leaf kratom, rather than kratom extract. According to Korehbandi, among kratom competitors, Feel Free has “one of the more moderate levels because it directly [comes] from the amount of plant that we put into the product.”
Many Feel Free users, however, say the product is one of the most potent kratom products they’ve ever used. In 2023, a class action lawsuit was filed against Feel Free’s parent company, Botanic Tonics, alleging that the product failed to list kratom as a key ingredient on its label. (The company has since changed its labeling, and includes kratom as a listed ingredient. The lawsuit is ongoing.) An online support community on Reddit called “r/Quittingfeelfree” has ballooned from 200 members in 2023 to more than 2,000 members roughly a year later.
Often, those who try Feel Free have at least some familiarity with kava and kratom. Drew Tabbert, a technology advisor who lives in San Diego, bought kratom extract for years and experienced low-key withdrawal symptoms like nausea and anxiety when he gave it up. “It would screw my brain but it was consequence-free,” he says. When he tried his first bottle of Feel Free in 2021, he experienced immediate euphoria. “I loved it,” he says. “I had another one in my pocket. So I took the second one, and then I immediately puked it out.”
Despite this bout of nausea—a side effect which many Feel Free users report experiencing—Tabbert soon found himself craving the supplement. Eventually, he says he began using it regularly at work while making sales calls, enjoying how animated, sociable and organized it made him feel. But within weeks, he discovered that this pleasant lift was followed by gnawing feelings of anxiety and depression, symptoms which could only be alleviated by more Feel Free. Soon, he was taking between four and eight bottles a day, often driving for nearly an hour multiple times a week to the closest convenience store where they were sold. “There really is no comparison between kratom and Feel Free,” he said. “One is backyard basketball. The other is the NBA.”
When Tabbert tried to quit cold turkey, he says he experienced withdrawal symptoms like excruciating pain and “the feeling of freezing ice in my veins,” which he likened to heroin withdrawal. “I felt like there was a vice around my heart,” he says. “I nearly called 911.” Today, he is in recovery and regularly takes Suboxone, a prescription medication used to treat opioid addiction.
“[Freddie] Obregón, who estimates that he spent more than $15,000 on Feel Free in a little over a year, says that the substance turned him into someone he didn’t recognize: He began shoplifting Feel Free and stole cash from his family in order to buy more.”
Plenty of highly addictive substances are sold legally, from alcohol to nicotine. But when it comes to Feel Free, a novelty substance in the U.S. that’s marketed as a healthy, risk-free alternative to alcohol, there’s a clear distinction. Many people report being swept in by Feel Free’s wellness-inspired marketing. “It gives you something to lie to yourself about,” says Tabbert.
Roberts, the 34-year-old Angeleno, recently checked out of a nine-day detox program in Hollywood for what he described as a Feel Free addiction. Currently, he resides in a sober-living community. He recently relapsed, a predicament common to Feel Free users who can always find the substance within easy reach. Roberts likens Feel Free to the highly addictive narcotic oxycodone. “Feel Free hits the same receptors but it’s legal,” he says. “I don’t need a drug dealer. I just go into the store and buy them.”
Aside from temporary euphoria, Feel Free users report other, more troubling side effects when used long term: Many say they lose weight and interest in eating. Others say they experience back pain, loss of sexual arousal and interest in spending time with their loved ones. Freddie Obregón, a 38-year-old teacher who lives near Corpus Christi, Texas, says that his skin took on a waxy pallor and his knuckles and lips regularly cracked and bled. Obregón, who estimates that he spent more than $15,000 on Feel Free in a little over a year, says that the substance turned him into someone he didn’t recognize: He began shoplifting Feel Free and stole cash from his family in order to buy more. “Sometimes it would make me so nauseous I would vomit, and then I would catch the vomit in a cup and drink it,” he says. He describes feeling gripped by an addiction that threatened to swallow him whole.
When I asked Botanic Tonics CEO Korehbandi what the company’s founder, JW Ross, thinks about people who say they are addicted to his product, Korehbandi told me that it “pains [JW] when he hears those stories.” He continued: “I can’t speak for JW, but I can speak on what he’s said before, and JW, being a recovering alcoholic, never intended to create a product that people would become addicted to… He’s very aware of what that feeling is: that feeling of loss of hope or no escape. He’s been down that road.” In response to the growing complaints that Feel Free is addictive, the company says it has funded clinical trials, raised Feel Free’s age regulation from 18 to 21 and added more detailed label information regarding ingredients and recommended consumption.
When I described the debilitating side effects that the Feel Free users I spoke to had told me about, Korehbandi told me that he couldn’t “speak for everyone’s individual situation when I don’t know everything that people are consuming along with Feel Free… [T]here is a loud voice that does have problems with kratom and other substances… We listen to those people because we’re obviously trying to learn from the experiences people are having.”
Even so, the company has no plans to remove its products from store shelves. The lawsuit, meanwhile, is still pending. But for many Feel Free users, the damage feels already done. In October 2023, Obregón went through rehab for his Feel Free use. He relapsed in March. “I’m working on it,” he says. “As human beings, we’re always trying to avoid pain and discomfort. But I’ve been struggling with this for so long. I just feel like, when is it gonna end?”
