On the shelf of your local gas station, somewhere between the lottery tickets and the gummy worms,

there sits a little cobalt blue bottle, advertising mood lift, energy, focus.

The potion looks like something out of Alice in Wonderland, but you'll only need to travel as far as your closest 7-11 in order to find it.

For the low price of 795, it promises to make you feel free. Across the country,

however, thousands of Americans are struggling to free from its grip. Feel free tonics are created from a

mixture of leaf cratum and kava. They taste like pineapple juice, and they're marketed as plant-based

herbal supplements. Their main ingredient, cratum, is found in the leaves of a Southeast Asian tree.

Users report that it acts like a stimulant in low doses and a sedative at higher ones.

Some people trace its arrival in the U.S. to soldiers returning home from the Vietnam War,

but Kratum really gained traction in the mid-2000s as a remedy for opioid withdrawal.

Kava, meanwhile, is harvested from the root of a South Pacific pepper shrub, and it's often used to treat anxiety.

Combine these two tropical herbs and you've got an all-natural, stress-free cocktail.

Or perhaps a nightmare.

There's a Reddit group called R-slash-quitting-feeling-free, and it has thousands of members. Take a little scroll through it, and you'll read dozens and dozens of posts

like this one. These drinks are insane, and not only leave you financially ruined, but also

physically and mentally, I am fucked, reads one recent post. The user says they started out drinking

one tonic a week, then two a day, until eventually

they were finishing entire cases, that's 12 bottles worth, daily. Now, it should be noted that

feel free recommends that people only drink one bottle a day, but clearly that is not what's

happening here. After purchasing what they told themselves would be their final two tonics.

The Reddit user says they experienced an incident that can only be described as rock bottom. Sitting in their car, they say they lost all bodily function, vomiting, defecating, and urinating on themselves

as their vision blurred. People called the paramedics, and when they came, I tried to get out of my car

...