We’re excited to see that there is work underway to develop alternatives to alcohol. A lot of the research is focused on cannabis, which is especially exciting because it is entirely plant-based. This just gives us more confidence that cannabis, when it’s not changed overmuch by people, might have health benefits, including calming anxiety and treating pain.
But we would be remiss if we didn’t cover synthetic alternatives to alcohol in development as well. The most prominent is called alcosynth.
The good stuff we’ve heard is:
It results in no hangover. This is a big win for everyone! Hangovers are one of the reasons we decided to quit drinking in the first place.
The goal of the developers is to make it impossible to get drunk. They believe they can control the level of interference the drug has with your brain, such that you can get tipsy but not out of control. This is also huge, if it works. The goal we recommend with real alcohol today is to keep your BAC below 0.55, because that’s the level where you can have some fun without getting into dangerous levels of impairment.
The bad news is, no one knows the following yet:
Will it be addictive? This is a really hard one to tell until it’s been out on the market a while.
Will it have side effects (other than hangovers)? Since it’s fiddling with GABA levels in the brain, it’s hard to imagine it won’t make you nervous the next day as your brain attempts to fight back against interference.
We also know it doesn’t taste very good on its own, although to be honest, most tequila doesn’t either.
We will be following the development with a lot of excitement, because this has potential to help people who are trying to cut back or quit drinking (by ramping down using the alternative).
If you’ve decided to cut back or quit drinking and you don’t want to wait until alcosynth is commercially available, give us a try! Drinker’s Helper is an app for people who want to cut back or quit drinking, and it helps via exercises, support groups, tracking and insights. Get your free trial today!
