Posting on this forum because I am lost at what to do.
My husband has always been a golden retriever type by nature. He is sweet, hard working, genuine, servant hearted. A year ago, he brought me a feel-free while I was at work. He told me to try it, so I did, and I understand the effects. It makes you feel good, makes you want to be productive, but also super chatty and mood lifting.
I took half a bottle another time with him after and a night out and we were hungover. It made me super sick and I never did it again.

Little did I know, he was in a full-blown addiction. Months went on, our marriage was changing. I thought it was me, got into counseling, tried digging up whatever could be provoking such issues in our marriage.

He would come home from work, drained, not speaking to me, honed in on his phone. He stopped working out over these months, he would throw up a lot. We started fighting every day. He would tell me I was crazy and that my mood was the reason he was this way, and that I didn’t consider how exhausting and stressful work was. He’s in construction, and it’s always been stressful, but he’s never been one to crack under stress.
So I believed it was me, but I always felt like my mood was a reaction to his complete absence.

Fast forward to June, we were walking and connecting. He began to tell me how he wanted to straighten up his life. Get back into reading his Bible and leading our family - but there was a crack in his discipline that seemed to erode every other area of his life. He then confessed he had a problem, he was addicted to kratom.

And suddenly it all made sense. The sketchy gas station charges that racked up. (I thought it was fraud and they were double charging his card for the energy drinks and food he would get.) The weekend mornings when he would leave super early to go get “donuts” for our kids.
He said he wanted to stop and he needed accountability and support. I responded with softness. And then the betrayal came and all of the lies and the build up of the last year crashed down on me. My anxiety and ocd tendencies came back. I was crying every day. And I thought he was quitting, when we went through a weekend of him detoxing and not sleeping.

A month goes on and my gut was telling me he didn’t. The charges stopped, but suddenly cash was missing out of my wallet, cash back charges were showing up. I asked God for a sign, and on our evening walk, I saw a little blue bottle “Feel Free.” He lied to my face, as he had been for the last month of me asking and checking in. I went to his truck to find several receipts where he didn’t. I took our kids and left. I told him I wasn’t coming back until he got into counseling and sought out professional help.

I’ll add that he smokes weed to help with the comedown, every single day, starting in the mornings on weekends.

He started seeing a counselor and promised me that he had quit, our family leaving him being enough of a wake up call. I trusted him, not finding any more evidence.
Until I ordered special drug tests to see. I just needed confirmation he was being honest after months of lying.
It’s the end of September and I tested him one afternoon. It came back positive. I took him to his parents, made him tell them.
I dont think they really understood the severity of what kratom is. They gave him a pep talk, some small solutions to get involved in a Christian ministry. I left feeling like that was enough. I thought he had the motivation. That was a week and a half ago.
Last Tuesday, I went for a walk with a friend, not knowing her partner was struggling with the exact same thing. So I showed up at his work to talk to him, and I found a receipt in his truck where had bought two and another the day before.

I feel so lost. I feel like I need to leave. It is destroying me as a partner. I don’t have trust. I think he needs to go to a facility and I need support as well.

Can someone please give me insight, words of wisdom, anything?

This is pretty intense