A Life and Family Forever Changed

Hi everyone!

First I want to express my heartfelt, sincere condolences to anyone here who has lost a loved one due to this highly dangerous and destructive substance. I am so so sorry for your loss. I pray for your peace and strength.

My name is Dee. I feel as if I shouldn't be here, I wish I had found all these different groups 7 or 8 months ago.

In a way, even though I haven't lost someone...I did. If that makes sense, right now honestly not much makes sense to me. My therapist just the other day said I was grieving someone who did not die.

Here is our story.

My husband found this substance in 2018 when he did a search for a natural pain reliever, years prior he had issues with opioids for herniated discs and did not want to go down that road again. Since 2018 my family was put through hell. Mentally and physically. He went from being the most loving soul to someone we did not know. He was taking pill form, then found the extract. found thousands of these bottles hidden everywhere in our house, our yard. That was a whole other level of insanity. When he realized what the extract was doing to him he decided to try the powder form, promising to never do the extract again.

Fast forward to last year he finally decided it was time to stop. After years of arguing I was just too exhausted to put up a fight anymore and knew that it probably wasn't going to happen. He wanted to ween himself off. Well, he would be good for a bit but as soon as his body started withdrawing he would take more, and more, and more. During this process I found empty bottles of 7 in his dresser and under it. So at some point he was taking both the powder and this new extract.

Watching him at our kitchen counter last summer making his "drink" was horrifying. I would sit and wonder how he could take so much. At times he would be making this drink all day long. 30ml (medicine cups), two of these filled in a bottle of water. I looked this up recently and that is about 12-18 grams each medicine cup. So about 24-36 grams a BOTTLE. In doing the research that is considered a potentially high, hazardous amount of K. His body was So used to this crap, that he was taking dangerously lethal doses.

On September 19 2025, my husband, after consuming 2 of these drinks, coming home from volunteering at a food distribution...my oldest daughter witnessed him seizing. By the time I got outside he was on the ground convulsing. EMS came and administered 4 doses of Narcan. They told me later it did nothing. His heart stopped, they put a device on him to get his heart pumping until they got to the ER, where they

resuscitated him twice. He was life flighted to a trauma hospital.

Because of the cardiac arrest, the drs told me he had anoxic brain injury. He had to learn to walk, swallow, and speak again. We were in the hospital for a month and then 11 days in an acute rehabilitation center. He came home on October 25. He is doing good now, but he is not the same man I fell in love with and married.

He is not the same father.

We found out that being seven months out, his neurologist has explained his brain injury is now considered hypoxic ischemic brain injury. Meaning there will be no further or very little improvement to his condition. He has severe cognitive impairment, he has severe memory issues. There are times when we can not understand what he is saying and I play it off like it's my hearing. His neurologist says he will never be able to work again.

This man who used to enjoy getting out and playing with his kids, a day out of the house, is non-existent.

He can not drive, which he did for a living. They made him surrender his license.

I can not tell you how much I hate this stuff. My family is going through something we never thought we would, in a million years. Hate is a strong word, but I have no other way to express my feelings. It took my hushand awav Mv soul mate The father of my kids

husband away. My soul mate. The father of my kids.

I don't have my best friend to talk to anymore, to help me parent. I'm heartbroken. My kids are heartbroken, they want their daddy back.

No one in my life understands. Never have I needed anti-depressants, and here I am having to take something. Because I just don't understand, I'm mad at my husband, I'm mad at myself

I hope I haven't been a trigger for anyone and I'm so very sorry if I have caused any sort of feelings. Please forgive me.

I hope our story can help someone.

I hope our story will help in getting this crap, this toxic, lethal substance off the market. I do not want another family or person to experience what my family is going though and has gone through.

I am not just my husband's voice, but my children's.

This can NOT happen to anyone else.

Thank you for reading.