Review: Sentia Spirits Nonalcoholic Drinks

I’m here at my neighborhood bar to feel … something. What that feeling is supposed to be, I don’t quite know. Buzzed, perhaps. Maybe tipsy. But only, I’m told, the best parts of being tipsy: relaxation, conviviality, a light yen for human connection. The chance to forget, for one moment, the unrelenting terror of being alive.

I’m not drinking alcohol. In its place, I have science. Specifically, what I’ve got is a room-temperature shot of a somewhat cloudy nonalcoholic drink called Sentia, which has newly arrived on US shores.

Sentia Spirits is a “0% ABV Alcohol Free Botanical Drink” that nonetheless promises a bit of ooh-la-la—a feeling its makers hope is pleasant enough that you won’t feel the need to back it up with a much riskier shot of whiskey.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Sentia's nonalcoholic drinks don't contain any particular drug, quite. But a single-ounce dose does offer a feeling a little like that first moment you know you’ve had a drink: It is a promise of drunkenness that never quite comes. I feel a bit of fuzziness in my frontal lobe, a tingling premonition.

“It’s not a buzz, really,” says one of multiple bartenders who also agreed to taste Sentia’s three flavors—GABA Gold, GABA Red, and GABA Black—in the spirit of scientific inquiry. “It’s a lightness. It’s the good part of being high without the dumb.”

Another bartender, asked to describe the sensation, makes a couple noncommittal hand gestures, then figures he’ll find words for it later.

In the language of Star Trek, Sentia is synthehol—a psychoactive drink that theoretically offers fewer consequences than alcohol and, of course, no hangover.

So how do nonalcoholic drinks get you tipsy? And is it pleasant? We’ve got a few thoughts, after trying Sentia’s three flavors with the help of a few of South Philly’s finest bartenders.

A Scientific Pedigree

Let’s be clear: Products similar to Sentia are often the sketchy purview of bong shops and gas station front windows, or that aisle in a natural foods store that always smells like potter’s clay.

But Sentia comes with a pedigree. The drink was developed by a quite reputable British neuropsychopharmacologist named David Nutt, a chair at Imperial College London who enjoys a Saturday glass of wine but has long advocated for solutions to the health scourge of alcohol abuse —which the CDC estimates causes about 178,000 deaths in the United States annually, not counting the car crashes.

Nutt—who was personally sacked as a government adviser by Britain’s home secretary for presenting evidence that alcohol caused more harm overall than cannabis or LSD—isn’t trying to stop people from seeking social lubricants. The company he cofounded, GABA Labs, is instead trying to introduce possible substitutes, including a molecule called “alcarelle” that’s currently being tested.

Sentia is not a new molecule or even technically a drug. It's a somewhat cloudy suspension of barks and flower extracts and herbs—magnolia, ashwagandha, licorice—that are already allowed by the FDA and European agencies. It's regulated as a food additive.

As a young generation shies away from alcohol, Sentia joins a busy market of NA contenders. Alongside NA drinks that mimic existing alcoholic drinks, a busy crowd of companies and café owners are turning to substances from kava to kratom to CBD, not to mention a supermodel-backed functional mushroom drink called Kin Euphorics.

GABA GABA Hey

Sentia's brainstorm is a brain chemical called GABA.

Each individual root or bark contained in a Sentia drink is small in both dose and effect. But the idea is that when they're combined all together in a proprietary blend, they're enough to significantly promote the activity of a neurotransmitter called GABA. And GABA activity, Nutt explains, is what's responsible for that initial pleasant feeling you get after a drink or two.

GABA is a neuroinhibitor present in pretty much all life on Earth, and it essentially tells neurons to slow their roll a bit. It's in fermented foods such as kimchi, and in oolong tea, though it's unclear that ingesting it directly does much. But substances that promote the activity of GABA that's already in your brain—a category that also includes barbiturates and benzos alongside alcohol— tend to quite literally calm your nerves.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

“When you drink alcohol, the first impact that alcohol has on your brain is to relax you, and it does that through enhancing the effect of GABA, the natural neurotransmitter,” Nutt said in a January phone interview. “So alcohol is promoting GABA, and that’s why most people drink. We're using alcohol in small amounts to relax us socially.”

The problem, Nutt says, comes after a couple more drinks. The dopamine hit makes you talk loud and do dumb stuff. Endorphins can cause addiction. After enough drinks, alcohol's effects on glutamate might even kill you. Stick with GABA, Nutt figures.

Each of Sentia’s flavors—Gold, Red, and Black—contains its own mix of a dozen or more ingredients designed to encourage GABA activity, a laundry list that includes familiar home remedies from ginseng to gingko. Some, such as magnolia, are well documented as homeopathic balms for anxiety. Others, Nutt says, support the other ingredients. The function of each ingredient is, for now, proprietary. And though each bark or root or flower in Sentia is long established, any long-term effects of such coordinated GABA stimulation are left to the imagination.

A recommended pour of 25 milliliters, a bit less than an ounce, is enough to feel an effect. The recommended maximum in a day is just 100 milliliters. This maximum, says Nutt, doesn't come from any particular known negative effects. Rather, it's a dose that won't go over recommended amounts for any individual botanical contained in the drink. Out of similar caution, the company also recommends you don't drive immediately after consumption.

Catching the Feels

So does Sentia actually work? Yes, it works in that it makes you feel different.

There’s a story a friend of mine likes to tell about British pop star Robbie Williams. After going sober from a life of reckless abandon, Williams famously kept up his social calendar but swapped his drink of choice to espresso or Red Bull. Lots and lots of Red Bull. This, to my friend, was the height of common sense.

“You’re still going out and ordering a drink,” my friend would say, somewhat triumphally. “And then you still feel different at the end of the night." My friend's big idea was that “different” is the main way people want to feel on a Friday night. The substance in question only matters somewhat.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

That said, each slightly different Sentia bottle has much more in common with low-impact drinks like kava, or some of the more interesting teas, than it does a shot of whiskey.

The GABA Black flavor, anecdotally, seems to have a bit of a stimulant effect: that slightly hollow sensation familiar from drinks that contain guarana and taurine (which GABA Black does not contain). I can't call it unpleasant or pleasant, but it's something. It's also the most astringent of the Sentia flavors—a licorice-and-herbal concoction a bit like a Jaeger-style aperitif if drunk straight, and cola-like if mixed with soda. As a lover of amaros and gentian-tinged spirits like Suze, it's my favorite of the three. Only one bartender, and zero patrons, agreed with me, but I stand by it.

The Gold and Red both taste and feel sweeter and softer. Each offers a very slight fuzziness, like a cheesecloth or a light blanket over one's thoughts. Though far from sedative, one could describe the sensation as relaxation or a sort of blank receptivity. One could describe it less charitably as a loss of sharpness.

The lemon-balmy GABA Gold is the least bold or wacky of the GABA flavors, the most familiar, and maybe even the most boring: the sort of earthy lemon drink a well-meaning neighbor might steep for you when you're sniffly. Which is to say, it's probably the one the most people might incorporate into a home routine. In fact, I just added it to a breakfast tea while writing this. It's nice. It tastes like Sunday morning.

The GABA Red is the mildest and fruitiest of the Sentia bunch, but its floral undertones led to the wackiest array of reactions. Some said it was a little like a sweet vermouth, or something aiming at sweet vermouth. One taster caught mostly berries, and said it'd be nice with soda. One bartender rejected it outright, declaring it “prune-juice potpourri.” Another said it smelled like a mulberry Christmas candle, but tasted closer to a mulled holiday drink. To my mind, it would lend itself best to Sangria-style fruit juice cocktails.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

A Subtle Something

On brain EEGs that GABA Labs commissioned from Alex Shaw at the University of Exeter, Sentia shows increased alpha waves and decreased gamma brain waves after about 15 minutes—a state most often associated with meditation—without the obvious sedative effects seen on similar EEGs of alcohol. Research also showed that Sentia's effect fades after half an hour or so, Nutt says, which comports with my own experience and that of nearly all others who tasted with me.

That said, one bartender at my local said he felt effects hours later—a claim met somewhat quizzically by his coworkers.

Whatever its duration, the effect of Sentia is slight: It's possible I've gotten a more intense high from chocolate, which does indeed hit the cannabinoid receptors. That said, Sentia, at 20 to 25 calories a dose, has significantly fewer calories than most treats made with chocolate.

Photograph: Matthew Korfhage

Anyone actually looking to feel drunk or messed up will be disappointed, as evidenced by a number of oddly aggressive Amazon reviews from people who wanted to feel drunk or messed up. The drink is far more subtle, a bit of a flitty head high. It's barely even an apple-to-orange comparison with alcohol: It's more like swapping a meatball for a grape.

“It's an alternative for people who want to relax, socialize, become vivid, chill out, chat someone up without the risk of dependence and addiction,” Nutt told us.

“Vivid” is a stronger word than I'd use, but “relaxing” might still apply. I certainly didn't feel any particular risk of dependence, after trying three flavors whose character was largely determined by their active ingredients. Which is to say, the drink can taste a bit like the medicine that alcohol was once purported to be. Like alcohol, it also mixes well with juice or tonic water.

In the end, as an alcohol substitute, drinking Sentia seems a bit like smoking clove cigarettes to stop from smoking nicotine. It's a phenomenon I've witnessed, but not one I'm likely to emulate. Personally, I'd be far more likely to take up a truly esoteric tea habit.

But if someone wanted to invite someone over to Sentia and chill, I guess I could still see it.