I’m here at My neighborhood bar to feel … something. What that feeling is supposed to be, I don’t quite know. Gender, maybe. Maybe tipsy. But just, I am told, the best parts of Tipsy: relaxation, party, a light yen for human connection. The chance to forget the relentless fright to be alive for one moment.

I don’t drink alcohol. In its place I have science. What I got specifically is a room temperature shot of a somewhat cloudy non-alcoholic drink called Sentia, which has arrived new to our banks.

Sentia Spirits is a “0% Abv Alcohol-Free Botanical Drink” that nevertheless promises a little ooh-la-la-la-a feeling that its manufacturers hope it is pleasant enough that you will not feel the need for it with a lot Riskanter shot to backup from whiskey.

Photo: Matthew Korfhage

Sentia’s non -alcoholic drinks do not contain a specific drug. But a dose with a single-ounce offers a little feeling like the first moment you know you had a drink: It’s a promise of drunkenness that never comes completely. I feel a little fuzziness in my frontal lobe, a tingling premonition.

“It’s really not a buzz,” said one of several bartenders who also agreed to taste the three scents of Sentia – Gaba Gold, Gaba Red and Gaba Black – in the spirit of scientific inquiry. “It’s a lightness. This is the good part of being high without the stupid. “

Another bartender, who was asked to describe the sensation, makes some not -common hand gestures, and then figures that he will find words for it later.

In the language of Star pullSentia is Synthehol – a psycho -active drink that has theoretically less consequences than alcohol and of course no kater.

So how don’t -alcoholic drinks get you questionable? And is it pleasant? We have some thoughts, after trying the three scents of Sentia using some of the best bartenders of South Philly.

A scientific pedigree

Let’s be clear: Products similar to Sentia are often the sketchy lead of bong shops and ear windows in the gas station, or that the corridor in a natural food store that always smells like Potter’s Clay.

But Sentia comes with a pedigree. The drink was developed by a fairly reliable British neuropsychopharmacologist named David Nutt, a chairman at Imperial College London who enjoyed a Saturday glass of wine but had long been advocating for solutions to the health shed of alcohol abuse – which was the CDC’s health shed – which is -Closures about 178,000 deaths in causing the United States did not collapse the car annually.

Nutt – who was personally discharged by Britain’s Interior Minister as a government advisor for testifying that alcohol generally did more harm than Cannabis or LSD – trying to stop people from seeking social lubricants. The company he set up, Gaba Labs, is trying to introduce potential substitutes instead, including a molecule called “Alcarelle” that is currently being tested.