A rephrasing of this sentence may make it more easily understood: "However, once it was used and adopted by them, it was taken away. The key point to understand is that 'adopt' in this context means to learn or accept some new way of doing things. This new 'thing' may be an object (a tool), or a practice (a new way of growing crops), or any new practice. To use your original statement, you have to be referring back to something that was said or discussed. ie. It needs a lot of context to make sense. You need to have been discussing something so that the listener understands who the 'them' was, and what exactly was adopted/learnt and then taken away. This isn't a good example, but I hope it gives you a clue to what I mean. Context: A tribe adopted/learnt a new way of cultivation from outside advisors. But the weather changed and cultivation became impossible. As an 'aside' or general comment in conversation or writing with a lot of context, I could add "Only once used and adopted by them to be taken away." By itself, this statement is difficult to follow, but given the preceding conversation it makes sense. It means 'this new practice of cultivation' was learnt/adopted, but the drought and dry weather effectively took this new practice away as cultivation was now impossible. More commonly (I think), the speaker would be a little more explicit or clear and say, "However, once it was used and adopted by them, it was taken away (by the changing weather)."

yeap, makes no sense

This isn't a complete sentence. Its proper English but its not a complete sentence.

This is not something that a native speaker would write.