5 Non-Addictive Mood-Boosting Drinks for a Euphoric Effect

Chris Scott: I almost never do too much of one of these beverages or strategies because I have all the others. I've got my sparkling mineral water containing a lot of compounds that help to increase hydration, electrolytes, namely. But also things like silica and magnesium, especially, which is really depleted for people who have drank too much. I mix that with fresh lime or lemon juice, and I'll mix, literally, probably four or five shots of organic lemon juice and then the rest is sparkling mineral water.

Matt Finch: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Chris Scott: That's a great, gentle liver detox for me. Also, it seems to help with digestion as well.

Matt Finch: So I'm used to either swallowing it like a liquid or swallowing a capsule. To change my state, to change how I feel. And a lot of people, that's why at the beginnings, of course, cigarettes aren't healthy. The AA coffee and chemical cream are theirs, probably not the healthiest coffee on the planet. But a lot of people are able to make it through the first 30, 60, or 90 days by using those kind of temporary or for a lot of people, long-term crutches because they're still drinking something that changes their state.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning into the Elevation Recovery Podcast, your hub for addiction recovery strategies. Hosted by Chris Scott and Matt Finch.

Matt Finch: Welcome and thanks for joining us on Episode 261 of Elevation Recovery. My name's Matt Finch and I'm here with Chris Scott. We have matching high-lead shirts, as we often do. You have the brand in the front, mine's in the back, the minimalism shirt. These are the most comfortable shirts that I've ever worn. I'm so glad you turned me onto these. Literally, it's the small things in life like how good it feels to get out of a cold shower, put a robe on, come smell some essential oils coming out of the diffuser. Put on a really comfortable T-shirt, have a good strong cup of yerba mate Spring Dragon tea, which we're going to talk a little bit about today.

Matt Finch: So today I thought, I've been hearing so much from people, alcohol addicted clients, people that have alcohol use disorder that are trying to quit drinking or have recently quit drinking, as well as people that are trying to quit opioids. I have a few clients like that right now, or have recently quit. People are looking for some way to boost their mood, to relax. Some type of alternative to alcohol or painkillers or benzos, to help them feel good.

Matt Finch: And you and I, Chris, we both have the ... We're pretty much always drinking something, whether it's tea or water or Gerolsteiner water or just ... We have so many different drinks and elixirs, it's like we almost always have a drink in our hands. Partly, that's the oral fixation thing. A lot healthier than alcohol. A lot healthier than poppy seed tea, which some people are addicted to. They make a whole bunch of poppy seeds, make this elixir and it's tons and tons of opioids in there. Natural opioid alkaloids. So, in this episode, this is a working title. Who knows what we'll actually go with, but Boost Euphoria with these Non-addictive Beverages.

Matt Finch: We're going to talk about, I jotted down, I think, four different beverages. I'm pretty sure you know all the ingredients that I'm going to talk about, Chris, and you've used a bunch of them and you probably use some of them regularly. Then we can talk about that they taste delicious, that it gives you something to do that's healthy, like the habit of drinking. When people are quitting drinking, for example, one of the things that's difficult is they're used to holding a glass or a beer, or a wine bottle or whatever, in their hand. They're used to drinking something. So by replacing ... Yeah, exactly. You see. So by replacing that habit with drinking something healthy, that can boost your mood and can give you euphoria, but doesn't cause addiction, doesn't cause abuse, doesn't cause physiological dependence or withdrawal upon immediate cessation, that gives people more resources to use to feel good.

Matt Finch: So just moving right to it, I'll bring this one up and then we can talk about it. I did a video on this, a podcast episode a couple weeks ago. CM3 or Chocolate M3. CM3 is cocoa, organic cacao powder, which is high in theobromine, a dopamine booster stimulant; low in caffeine, which is a dopamine booster stimulant; high in anandamide, which is a natural bliss chemical; high in bioavailable magnesium, which is really, really important for stress and relaxation. And it helps to boost opioid peptides. So dark chocolate cacao, you get endorphin, dopamine, norepinephrine, magnesium. And then this anandamide that's really, really euphoria inducing and relaxing.

Matt Finch: So this drink has cacao powder. I use grass-fed milk; but it can be oat milk, it can be almond milk, preferably organic. Hemp milk, coconut milk, just regular organic milk. Some type of milk. Maca powder. Maca is like ... Peruvian ginseng is the nickname for it. Energy inducing, depression fighting, stamina and libido enhancing adaptogen.

Matt Finch: It's really good for the endocrine system. And then finally, organic matcha powder, which has high levels of L-theanine, which boost dopamine, GABA and serotonin. Has lots of polyphenols as does the chocolate. Then you just blend this all together, a CM3 shake.

Matt Finch: I recently had a new client enroll yesterday in Fit Recovery Coaching. He was pumped because he's been listening to you and I, Chris, for the past year on this podcast, and taking action on a lot of the things. One of which was getting the ingredients to this CM3 beverage. And now, he's drinking that regularly and totally loves it. So that's number one on it. Again: CM3. You've got dopamine boosters, opioid boosters, really powerful antioxidants, other bliss chemicals, magnesium. Even has a little bit of caffeine and theobromine in it. That can get people feeling way better than wine. Doesn't dehydrate you. Doesn't make you lose control. And if you drink a good serving of this, you feel euphoric, stimulated, and just really, really good and energized in a calm way.

Chris Scott: Some people might be wondering, why is it called CM3? Obviously it's the ingredients. It sounds like a brand. But where did you find CM3?

Matt Finch: No, I made it up.

Chris Scott: You made it up? [crosstalk 00:07:05].

Matt Finch: I made up all these.

Chris Scott: Because [crosstalk 00:07:08].

Matt Finch: No, one of them is yours. Sorry, one of them is yours.

Chris Scott: Well, I was going to say your CM3 sounds very similar to a product that I take. I just get it on Amazon. It's called Cocotropic. I think it's Cocotropic Wild Superfood Elixir or something like that. And it's raw cacao. It might have turmeric. I think it has maca. And it may have reishi and/or chaga mushroom. I can't recall the last time I looked at the ingredients. But I drank two tablespoons of it with boiling water last night. I had a friend try it recently. Some of my friends love it. And actually, one of your clients, I think it was, was raving about it. Saying that post-alcohol and opioid addiction, it was the best thing that they'd found. My friend didn't like it because it wasn't sweet. So you can add stevia or monk fruit or honey or whatever. But I guess you could add sugar. It kind of defeats the purpose but ...

Chris Scott: I like things that have strong flavors. I'm an umami person. But I also, I like tannins. That was one of the reasons I had a pronounced red wine phase when I worked in New York. It was because there was something about getting home and having that strong flavor. I felt like it stimulated my digestion. I had all sorts of ... I clung onto myths about what it was doing. I thought it was strengthening, fortifying my system. And it was just destroying my liver and causing inflammation. But there's nothing wrong with tannins, per se. And ... unless you have an allergy to them and some people do. But you can at tannins from chocolate. And so chocolate coffee, red wine. These are things that have tannins. And now I consume coffee and less than I used to, but coffee and dark chocolate.

Chris Scott: And I definitely get that from this particular beverage. There are all sorts of antioxidants, as you noted, in dark chocolate. And then along with the anti-inflammatory mushrooms and the energy and libido boosting maca, you just feel superhuman. And so I found that since it is adaptogenic, I can have it in the evening and it helps me wind down, but feel blissed out. But I can also have it in the morning and it helps me to feel energized and ready to take on the day.

Chris Scott: A similar thing, in terms of effect, not ingredients, would be my Dragon herbs tea. You can see this amber colored. I believe they take gynostemma leaf. Gynostemma is an adaptogen, a Chinese adaptogen. And they put a spray containing ginseng, maybe eleuthero, a bunch of different Chinese adaptogenic herbs. And they spray the gynostemma with it.

Chris Scott: And you can see, it's almost like a syrup, that emanates from the teabag. It's mostly gynostemma, which has a naturally sweet taste. So for people who prefer sweetness, they might prefer the Spring Dragon, Dragon Herbs Tea is what it's called. Which is, actually, the last time I checked, cheaper from the website, the Dragon Herbs website than from Amazon. By the way, I don't have, and I don't think you do, either, I don't have any financial affiliation with any of the things that we've just talked about.

Matt Finch: Me neither.

Chris Scott: This is just ... I would love to have some kind of partnership with Dragon Herbs. I love their stuff. But I think they only work with registered herbalist and I'm not an herbalist. But I just can't stop talking about their tea. The Cocotropic is one of my favorites as well. And I'll let you get back to the other things on your flashcard there.

Matt Finch: Well, you're making me use my brain really good because you brought up the Spring Dragon Longevity tea, which is number four out of five. I guess I wrote down five of these. So what I'm drinking right now is a version of what you're drinking. Spring Dragon Longevity tea. One tea bag. Which ... maybe you know this, Chris. I think I forgot. I'm 95% sure that the one tea bag of this Spring Dragon tea is the equivalent of five regular tea bags, because they're those soaked herbs. Gynostemma is the leaves and the other, I think, maybe four adaptogen herbs, are all extracts. These soaked high power extracts. Maybe it's three tea bags. It might be it is equivalent to the strength of three teas. So one tea bag of this stuff is a really potent adaptogen boost. And like you said, it's sweet.

Matt Finch: It tastes delicious. It's double direction, so it can help you get going in the morning and it can help you wind down at night. Not a lot of natural compounds are dual direction like that. This is. And I put yerba mate, unsmoked, organic yerba mate, which is an alkaline. It's a type of tea leaf. Yerba mate is alkaline. So whereas coffee is acidic, even black tea is acidic, not as acidic as coffee. Yerba mate is totally alkaline. So it makes the body more alkaline versus acidic alkalinities; generally, really good. It also has theobromine in it. About 40 milligrams of caffeine for [inaudible 00:12:09] tea, tea bags. So it's less than black tea, but more than green tea. And I think more than oolong tea. Really high in antioxidants. And this is more of a body energy. Whereas for me, I feel like people are different how they respond. Where caffeine gives me more of like a mental energy, yerba mate feels like good mental energy, but really good mood, really mood boosting.

Matt Finch: And it's like an energy, more of an energy for my body, at least in my experience. Then I put some grass fed raw milk in here and I nitro infuse it, too. So this is actually, I call this nitro-infused dragon mate. So it's milk, Yerba mate tea. So it's like a latte. Then the spring dragon tea. Oh, and I also put matcha in there sometimes. I didn't today. So then it's got: yerba mate, matcha, Spring Dragon Longevity tea, and milk. And then with a little bit of nitro in there, you can't really taste it.

Matt Finch: I stir it really good on otherwise the matcha powder sinks to the bottom. This stuff is delicious. Super mood boosting, super stimulating, but also relaxing at the same time. And it's so high in polyphenols and other antioxidants and so high in adaptogens. It's like, I'll never as long as I know about all these beverages that I've heard from you, that I've made up, that I've learned about and tried and mixed ... There's no need to be snorting Percocet or smoking heroin or drinking wine, or drinking screwdrivers with Grey Goose vodka, orange juice.

Matt Finch: I used to have for breakfast, screwdrivers with half Grey Goose, half orange juice, and I'd have a bunch of saltine crackers. That's how I would get over my hangover the next morning when I was on drinking benders. I did that often. It's like, oh, I don't want to deal with this hangover. I'm not dealing with this. Grey Goose, or whatever vodka I had, that was just my preferred ... Orange juice, saltine crackers to raise the blood sugar, get the alcohol in. Now I start the day with coffee. Then a few hours later, switch over to nitro-infused dragon mate.

Chris Scott: How long did that Grey Goose high blood sugar concoction save you from your hangover? About 20 minutes or two hours at best, depending on how much vodka you had in there?

Matt Finch: No, the whole day. Because I would just keep drinking-

Chris Scott: Or you kept doing what?

Matt Finch: Yeah, I didn't want to. And that's the thing. As a highly sensitive person and as a very highly ... hypoglycemic person back then, I was really, really sensitive, really hypoglycemic. And so, when I had hangovers ... Say I wasn't drinking for a while, maybe three months, let's say, then I go relapse or slip and have a huge night of partying and drinking. The next morning, I feel ... my nervous system is so shaky, hypoglycemia is so bad. My highly active central nervous system is so activated that my friends could just deal with the hangover. You know? They'd smoke some weed and get some Jack In The Box, breakfast sandwiches and some greasy stuff or pizza. I wasn't hanging with that. A lot of the times I would just drink to nurse to hangover. And thus, that's why I would go on binges. Instead of just one night, usually it would be at least three or four nights. Sometimes weeks, sometimes months. But I would just keep drinking. It's like, I couldn't really stop too often.

Chris Scott: Well, it's extremely common for ex-drinkers to have an oral fixation that remains. And I have, I'm double fisting right now. I have the Gerolsteiner, which is a sparkling water I really like. I also like one called Socosani, which is a little bit newer and much different. There are sommeliers for waters and sparkling waters, which I didn't realize. People that spend their lives studying the differences between these things. So for anyone who's concerned about leaving their wine aficionado days behind, there's lots of other things you can be an aficionado of, or a connoisseur of. I think I wrote an article about that back in the day, and I didn't even have water. It didn't occur to me back then that sparkling water could be something that people could be passionate about.

Chris Scott: But I had ... Mushrooms. There are people that dedicate their lives to all the variations of mushrooms. Mushrooms are amazing things. I think maybe there's a documentary on Netflix. There's a book. Paul Stamets is the guy that's ... he's a mycologist. I think that's what it's called, a mushroom expert. It might be Fabulous Fungi or something like that.

Matt Finch: Fantastic Fungi?

Chris Scott: Yeah. I think that's it. And it's a beautiful book. I actually gave it to my mom for Christmas. It's a picture book with mushrooms. But I realized ... Let's say I retired tomorrow, which won't happen. But if I did, I could spend years just studying mushrooms. There's so much richness and flavor and color to life once you stop participating in that myopic bruise obsession. And that's not to put down people who have spent their lives studying wine.

Chris Scott: I think there's certainly a fascination there. But that' the tip of the iceberg. That's one little thing among millions of subjects that you can conjure similar inspiration about and all of the other things, or maybe not all of them, but a lot of the other things don't cause you to just destroy your liver and your brain and so on and so on. So I've actually helped some people who were sommeliers and they wanted to moderate because they didn't want to totally quit. Some of them have ended up, I think, it's like two or three at this point, which there aren't that many sommeliers out there, but you can imagine how, if you have a genetic propensity for alcohol dependence, biochemically, which can be as simple as just a propensity for hyperglycemia, as we know. 90-plus, potentially up to 98, 99% of people with alcohol use disorder have a predisposition towards hyperglycemia. They found that in studies.

Chris Scott: So imagine you're a sommelier and you're drinking wine all the time. And then you have this blood sugar rollercoaster and then you drink a little more and a little more, and then it becomes a full-fledged problem. And some of these people have decided to keep doing what they're doing, but they always spit out the wine because they're there to taste it, not to have it. Then of course, the fire and brimstone AA types would be like, well, you're still putting drops of it in your mouth ... and whatever. To each their own. You know? Either that works or it doesn't.

Matt Finch: Don't police my recovery.

Chris Scott: Yeah. If it doesn't work, then you have feedback. Transfer your passion to mushrooms or to non-alcoholic kombuchas or to ... I don't know. Just many, many, many things. I need to dig up that article because I had a number of things. Even ... not all the things are saintly. You can become a cigar aficionado if you want. That's kind of cool. You can become a ... I have an uncle. He's a really cool guy who had a history with addiction. He is now ... obviously, I'm not going to mention any names, but he's now involved in medical marijuana and he knows all sorts of things about marijuana. And that's another thing where you walk into a cannabis shop in California and it's like, whoa. The first time I ever walked into one, I think I ended up buying ... I didn't even know they made CBD from cannabis. I should have known. I thought it was just a hemp thing. But there were like 6,000 things in the walls. It looked like a ... I felt like a kid in a candy shop, even though marijuana's never been my thing.

Chris Scott: I've always been a little bit ... to this day, I won't touch edibles that people have given me because I'm terrified. I don't want to go on some weird trip. I like being grounded to reality. However, I find it extremely fascinating. All of the variations and hybridizations between the plants involved there. So if you see life as an open-ended adventure with all sorts of interesting subjects that you can delve into, then you can transfer your oral fixation to something else. You can transfer your area of expertise or obsession to something else. And just as ex-drinkers tend to have oral fixations, they also, maybe a little bit less often, but also sometimes tend to have compulsive or obsessive personalities. I have both of these things. So I don't like to half-ass things. When I delve into a subject, I try to figure out everything.

Chris Scott: I want to know everything. I sleep, I dream about it. The same thing with MMA when I started doing mixed martial arts and I made that part of my routine. And really a part of my routine that supplanted my drinking days. It used to be, well, what am I doing today? All right. I'll have wine on the couch because I don't have to go to work or whatever. Now it's like, what am I doing today? I'm hitting the heavy bag. I'm going into the MMA gym, if I can. I'm going to see if my buddies are there. So it's something that I obsess about in a healthy way, because it's not a destructive thing. And I also tend to dream about it. When I go to sleep, a lot of my dreams are nonsensical and absurd. However, sometimes I end up having a dream where I'm rolling. I'm doing jujitsu and I'm perfectly-

Matt Finch: Not on ectasy rolling?

Chris Scott: No. No I'm not. I've not done that. I'm less experienced than you. But yeah, you got to watch that over there.

Matt Finch: I'm going.

Chris Scott: I will be executing things that I learned down to the detail in class, like a week ago, that my conscious mind had actually forgotten. So it's funny how your whole ... They say, "Perspective is everything." That's kind of a cliche, but it's so true. What you think about, what you dream about, what you crave, what you want to delve into, what you automatically turn to with your subconscious autopilot, you can shift all of those things. And it starts just with that initial changing of your attention and refocusing, rechannelling onto something else. So it may seem minor to create substitutions for alcoholic drinks, but you're actually doing something that is a template for shifting your entire life.

Matt Finch: Yeah. And when it comes to not just drinking beverages, but also when I look back at my multi-decade span of life, where I was either using drugs or more often abusing drugs, or more often using drugs and drinking and addicted to at least one thing ... I was drinking alcohol. All these phases, right? So there was drinking alcohol. There was swallowing prescription pills: Percocets, Vicodins Norcos, Oxycontins, Adderalls, benzodiazepines, Xanax, Valium, and other pills as well. Morphine. Let's see, there was some weird ... Ketamine. Or not Ketamine, what's that one called, Seroquel? Seroquel. So I took a lot of pills and I would swallow those, right? So it's drinking a liquid in my mouth or swallowing pills down my mouth and throat, the same, oral. There were sublinguals. There were things that I had snort. Snorting heroin, snorting pills, snorting cocaine. Then there was smoking. Smoking, heroin, smoking pills, smoking cocaine. So many different things.

Matt Finch: So it was all with my mouth and hands, right. Mouth and hands, whether I was snorting ... and in my nose, too. So this whole area: nose, mouth, hands. And so almost two decades, I think, of all that stuff at these different phases. So I'm used to putting stuff in my mouth and either swallowing it like a liquid or swallowing a capsule to change my state, to change how I feel. And a lot of people, that's why at the beginnings, of course, cigarettes aren't healthy. The AA coffee and chemical cream are theirs. Probably not the healthiest coffee in the planet. But a lot of people are able to make it through the first 30, 60 or 90 days by using those temporary or for a lot of people, long=term crutches because they're still drinking something that changes their state. AA coffee. And they're still puffing on cigarettes to change their state. Cigarettes. Nicotine is both stimulating and relaxing. And so when they're ... and then it helps you to breathe better, too, as far as [00:24:56 cigarette puffing simulation].

Matt Finch: So even if they did that motion without a cigarette, just went like this, it's helping them focus on their breathing. So yeah, this is great strategy. For people that feel like low self-esteem or low self worth, when they're going into settings with alcohol, in early recovery, early sobriety ... [crosstalk 00:25:18] "Would you stop that Papaya, oh my gosh." Oftentimes, they feel like they want to have a drink in their hand so it looks like they're drinking at least. Oftentimes, people ask, "Hey, you're not drinking. Why not?" This, these non-addictive, these mood boosting, where is it? These euphoria boosting, non-addictive beverages. What I did probably the first two years after I quit drugs and alcohol, when I went to barbecues, when I went to parties, when I went to birthday parties, when I went to Thanksgiving, these types of things where I knew people would be drinking, back then, I still didn't feel super comfortable if I was just drinking a water.

Matt Finch: That's when I started to really explore all these types of beverages. And so then I would bring the ingredients to make one of these awesome beverages. Back then they were different ones. And I'd bring enough to share with people. And I'd get a blender, the blender, wherever I was, and I'd make a huge thing. And I'd dose people. I'd be like, "Hey, you want some? You want to try this?" People would love it. They'd start feeling good. "Oh wow. You drink this instead of alcohol. Oh wow." So then all of a sudden, you're not the odd person out. But you're the smart, intelligent, creative person that figured out a way to feel good at a party or an event without getting dehydrated and without getting the risk of getting a DUI if you drive home. Or crashing or getting arrested or waking up hungover the next morning.

Matt Finch: The more creative people can get with these drinks and like Cocotropic, there's a lot of different ones. DRAM Apothecary CBD beverages. There's even companies that sell pre-made mood boosting, relaxing, sometimes stimulating and relaxing, or just stimulating drinks where you don't have to drink alcohol. You don't have to relapse back onto painkillers or kratom extract or whatever it is. If you have some things like these to help ... because these work really, really well. Obviously, if you and I are still doing these things after all these years, they work well. And if we didn't have these, we wouldn't relapse back into addiction. But they just make alcohol-free, drug-free lifestyle. They make it so much better. Because it's like, these are health inducing too. These don't just boost mood. They radically boost health as well. So it's like a health boosting mood booster.

Chris Scott: I'm glad you mentioned DRAM Apothecary. That's been a go-to for me for a while. That's just CBD, sparkling water. They have a couple different flavors and it's all natural. I think there's no sugar in that one. Another favorite of mine is the Golda CBD Citrus Hops. I believe they have that one. They also have some seasonal ones. That's a non-hard kombucha, but it has CBD in it. So it also has no sugar. So there's no sugar, there's no alcohol. I know a lot of people have been asking me, "What about the kombucha with alcohol?" Now, there's a lot of those. So you've got to a check to see what you want to get. But the Golda is sold as a local thing around here. I'm in Savannah. It's made in Atlanta and they produce a variety of different things.

Chris Scott: I think they do things that aren't even kombuchas. But their kombucha is delicious. No sugar, no alcohol, unless they a version that I'm not aware of. But the citrus hops flavor is great. Hops is also really helpful for relaxing. So I think there's like 20 milligrams of CBD and also hops. I try to be careful with hops because if you're a man and you take a lot of hops, you can potentially get estrogenic effects from that. There's speculation that, or maybe it's established fact that, that's why the monasteries started producing hops in their ... putting hops in their beer where it basically decreased the libido for people. So that's an interesting thing.

Chris Scott: I'm not sure what it means for women who already have more estrogen than men anyway, if there are any deleterious effects. All I know is that when I started drinking the Golda CBD Citrus Hops, I got a nice CBD and relaxing buzz from it. I would sip it with coffee because I would get some stimulation from the coffee and then that would take all the jitters away and I would just be totally euphoric. And I was getting more work done than before. This was during a phase maybe a few years ago where I had a lot of work to get done. And I found myself drinking five of those kombuchas a day, which is also really expensive, because they're not cheap. We have a coupon at Fit Recovery for it. But it's still not cheap. And I started feeling a little bit puffy. In this area and in this area. When I notice ... If I eat a lot of pasta for several days, I get puffy in here. If I have a bunch of hops, apparently, way too much hops, I get a little bit puffy.

Chris Scott: So there's always pros and cons and various things. And now I almost never do too much of one of these beverages or strategies because I have all the others. I've got my sparkling mineral water, mineral containing a lot of nutrients or sorry, mineral water containing a lot of compounds that help to increase hydration; electrolytes, namely. But also things like silica and magnesium, especially, which is really depleted for people who have drunk too much. I mix that with fresh lime or lemon juice, which I can get from my parents' backyard basically. Unfortunately, the harvest of that just ran out. So I have to get some organic lemon juice next time I go to the store. And I'll mix literally, probably four or five shots of organic lemon juice and then the rest is sparkling mineral water.

Chris Scott: That's a great gentle liver detox for me. It also seems to help with digestion as well. So I've got that. I've got usually some DRAMs in the fridge; usually some Golda kombucha, CBD kombucha in the fridge; and then a few others that I wanted to mention. This is similar to the CM3 or the Cocotropic that I mentioned before, that you mentioned. It's called: Sun Potion's Anandamide. And that contains many similar things. I think it also has some cayenne pepper in it. So it's got a little bit of a kick, but it's not overwhelming. That could also be because I love spicy food. So often people ... or their mouths go on fire and I'm like, "This has spice in it? I didn't know." But anyway, I think that's a good one. And in case anyone's wondering whether this is all just psychological distraction or whether there's actually any functional benefits here.

Chris Scott: I can tell you that when I'm in a hurry, I will actually, instead enjoying these, as I prefer to do, calm down my nervous system, sip them slowly, sit down at the end of the day or be at my standing desk in the morning, sipping these. But let's say I have to go somewhere. I will ... It's not uncommon for me to take a tablespoon of gelatinized maca powder, dump it in my mouth and swish it down with water; take a table spoon of the Cocotropic, dump it in my mouth, swish it down with water; a teaspoon or two of the Anandamide, and take a sparkling water to go. I feel better after doing it.

Matt Finch: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Scott: Could it be a placebo effect? Sure. But we know what those are. So if there is a layer ... Let's say I get, I don't know how you would measure this, but let's say I get a 35% boost in wellbeing. If 10% is placebo, that's fine.

Matt Finch: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris Scott: But that would mean it's still 25% that's not. And we know what these compounds do. It's very well established, that raw cocoa is helpful for a lot of people. Which is funny because I remember reading some Tony Robbins relatively recently and this was written maybe the 90s probably. And he was talking about how people need to quit chocolate because it was so bad. But he didn't mean raw cocoa. He meant Hershey's chocolate, which is a totally different thing because it's been contaminated with all these high fructose corn syrup and whatnot. But yeah, we know what these compounds do. There's increasingly more research, even on the herbs, which when we started doing this, and actually when I started Fit Recovery, you'd been doing opiate addiction support for a while before that, there wasn't much research, at least that I could find on herbs. And it seems like there's been a lot more. And especially the mushrooms have been in the spotlight as well.

Matt Finch: Yeah. I love the ... The product I use, it's not like Cocotropic. It doesn't have the chocolate or other things added, the cocoa. But its HealthForce is the brand and the product is MycoForce and it's got just the most epic, organic powdered reishi, maca, or not maca, chaga mushroom, cordyceps, lion's mane, probably 10 different ones. And it tastes delicious. I put a tablespoon of that in my smoothies in the morning. But Chris, you brought up, I just have a little bit more to talk about. You brought up some of the ingredients of these next two. You brought up the Sun Potion brand, Anandamide. Well number five, we'll just skip ahead. Love and Longevity lemonade. I just made up the name before this episode. 100% organic lemon juice, which you can buy at health food stores or you could actually fresh squeeze.

Matt Finch: I buy the stuff at the health food stores in glass bottle. Add that to water, crushed ice. And then that Sun Potion brand also has a pine pollen powder. It's a high altitude, in China, single estate, pine pollen powder. Pine pollen has testosterone in it. It literally has micro levels of testosterone in it. Pine pollen is also a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory and has protein and B vitamins in it. And it's a super longevity booster and libido love enhancement booster. And according to Chinese medicine, anything that stimulates libido is good for depression and also good for energy. Because think about it: How many times have you been high libido, but then been depressed and tired? They usually don't go hand in hand.

Matt Finch: And then so, maca powder and yohimbe powder. Liquid ... Sorry. Liquid yohimbe, maca powder, pine pollen powder, organic lemon juice, water, crushed ice stirred up or shaken. This tastes delicious. And it really gets you feeling epic. It could even be a pre-workout with all the stuff in it. Or say it's a hot day in the summer and you got so much shit to do. You got to clean the whole house. Big, old, huge glass of this Love and Longevity lemonade. Or maybe leave the pine pollen out or something because that stuff's a really good aphrodisiac. You could also call it pine pollen lemonade.

Matt Finch: You also brought up the Gerolsteiner and other types of sparkling mineral water things. Number two, this is called Sunrise on the Rocks. My dad named this, but I added some stuff to it. One packet, a one ounce packet of Kayani Sunrise. Chris, as you know, you've had this before. It is, the main ingredient is wild Alaskan blueberry extract. So it's liquid, wild Alaskan blueberry extract. Super high in anthocyanins. Way higher than regular, even organic blueberries, which is a water soluble antioxidant phytochemical.

Matt Finch: So then it's got about 20 other adaptogen fruits in herbs. It even has kale powder and spinach powder. These are all liquid extract juices too. So the way my dad makes this is Kayani Sunrise with berry flavored sparkling water in a wine glass with some ice cubes. Kayani Sunrise on the rocks. But I have boosted it up to be more like drinking wine. 100 to 400 milligrams of liquid L-theanine, which is really relaxing. Boosts GABA, dopamine, serotonin and helps to calm the brain down into Alpha waves. So it can be, if you take 400 milligrams of this or for some people, it only takes one or 200 milligrams, you can get really chilled out and relaxed, a noticeable almost drug-like effect for sure. This is probably in the top five anxiety remedies that are natural on the world. And then CBD oil, maybe 20 or 30 milligrams of liquid-infused CBD oil.

Matt Finch: So you got this delicious wild Alaskan blueberry flavored, adaptogenic antioxidant drink, all water-soluble stuff. Kayani Sunrise flavor so it's berry flavored. Berry flavored or Gerolsteiner spring, naturally carbonated water, some ice, liquid L-theanine and CBD oil. That right there is ... makes you feel so amazing. Tastes way better than wine. And you get noticeably relaxed. This is something that doesn't have any real stimulants in there. There's some slightly stimulating adaptogens in the Kayani Sunrise. It has ginseng is one of them. But it's more like this just clearheaded energy. But then with the CBD oil and L-theanine, you could even add kava extract powder, some 70 or 80% kava. Kavalactone compound, kava extract powder in this. Oh, then you're talking, be careful getting behind the wheel of a car.

Matt Finch: And then, finally the last one, I called it Chris Scott's Calming Chamomile, which is what I learned from you. Back in the day, you used to do four to six tea bags of organic chamomile steeped for 10 to 15 minutes, with a lid on, as your evening routine drink. And that boosts so much GABA. It's got really high, natural electrolytes in the chamomile. And it's a nervine and it's got antioxidants. It's great for your skin and your stomach. It's great for your heart. So people probably don't have as much time as you and I do. We literally started blogs and have written hundreds and hundreds of articles and done so many videos and podcasts and all these. So I understand that most people, busy people, they don't have time to go do all this research on their own. But hey, that's one of the reasons we have this podcast so we can help to give you guys shortcuts. Tell you about some of the things that we love to drink, et cetera, that are nonaddictive, euphoria enhancing, non-habit forming, and that have great mental and physical health benefits.