So, Why Was Drinking Making Me So Anxious?

Once I realized the anxiety seemed to show up after I’d been drinking, I did what any mildly panicked person with access to Google would do: I went down a rabbit hole.

It turns out, there’s actually a name for what I was experiencing: hangxiety.

Very cute name. Very much not a cute experience.

What surprised me was that alcohol can feel relaxing in the moment while setting you up to feel pretty much the opposite later.

As it wears off, that calm, carefree feeling can give way to feeling more anxious or on edge. And because alcohol can mess with the quality of your sleep, you wake up already feeling a little less equipped to deal with whatever your brain decides is an emergency that morning.

Suddenly, those mornings when I’d wake up convinced I’d said something weird at dinner made a lot more sense. It also explained why I could have a genuinely great night, get home safely, look back at absolutely nothing embarrassing in the group chat…and still wake up with a pit in my stomach.

Of course, knowing why it was happening left me with a much bigger question:

Did feeling better mean I had to give up cocktail night altogether?

I Didn’t Want to Stop Going Out. I Wanted to Stop Feeling Like This.

Once I knew what was happening, the obvious solution seemed pretty simple: stop drinking.

Except…I didn’t want to.

I like my cocktail nights. I like meeting my girlfriends after work, ordering something fancy, and staying longer than planned because the conversation got good.

What I didn’t like was trading a few fun hours for a next day spent wondering why my nervous system was suddenly mad at the world.

So I gave myself an experiment: keep the plans, keep the ritual, take the alcohol out of the equation.

The only catch? Whatever replaced it had to feel like a real cocktail. I wasn’t interested in glorified juice or sad soda water with a lime wedge floating in it. I wanted something I’d actually look forward to drinking.

When I mentioned my little experiment to one of my girlfriends, she immediately told me I had to try Little Saints. She’d recently started keeping them at home for the nights when she wanted a cocktail but didn’t necessarily want the alcohol that came with it.

And according to her, these weren’t your average NA drinks.

Little Saints was created for people who genuinely love cocktails, the flavor, the ritual, the whole experience, but want more from what’s in their glass. But what really caught my attention were the functional ingredients like Reishi and Lion’s Mane. You’re telling me I could still have a cocktail and feel like myself the next morning?

Sign me up.

This Didn’t Taste Like the Non-Alcoholic Drinks I Was Expecting

I decided to start with Little Saints’ Best Sellers Pack, which felt like the safest move for someone who had absolutely no idea which NA cocktail she was going to like.

It came with four flavors: Ginger Mule, Paloma, Old Fashioned, and Negroni Spritz.

I’ll admit, my expectations weren’t exactly sky-high. I’d tried NA drinks before that were either way too sweet or tasted suspiciously like someone poured juice into a cocktail glass and hoped I wouldn’t notice.

These actually tasted like they belonged at cocktail hour.

The Ginger Mule was bright and zingy with that little ginger kick I want from a mule, while the Old Fashioned had the deeper, more complex flavor I was missing when I wanted something to sip slowly over ice. I started playing bartender with both pretty quickly: a splash of ginger beer and lime with the Mule, a cherry with the Old Fashioned.

But what really surprised me was everything happening behind the cocktail experience.

Every flavor has zero sugar, just five calories, and organic Reishi mushroom. So instead of just taking the alcohol out, Little Saints had actually thought about what they could put in its place.

That was when my little NA experiment started feeling a whole lot less like giving something up.

Saturday Night Stayed. Sunday Changed.

The real test came that weekend. I had plans with friends, which normally meant a couple of cocktails, a later-than-planned night, and waking up the next morning wondering which version of me I was going to get.

This time, I swapped my usual drinks for Little Saints.

Honestly, the night itself didn’t feel all that different. I still had something delicious in my glass. I still sipped while we talked. I still stayed out later than I said I would.

The difference was Sunday morning.

I woke up, grabbed my phone, made coffee…and just went about my day. No lying in bed replaying conversations, no mysterious pit in my stomach, no feeling like the world was ending when, objectively, absolutely nothing was wrong.

I just felt like myself.

That was the moment this stopped feeling like a two-week experiment.

I’d spent so much time assuming that feeling better meant giving up the nights I loved. Turns out, I didn’t need to change Saturday night nearly as much as I thought.

I just needed to change what was in my glass.

Maybe I Wasn’t Done With Cocktail Hour After All

The funny thing is, I went into this experiment thinking I was testing whether I could give something up.

Instead, I found something I actually wanted to keep.

I still go out with my girlfriends, I still love a gorgeous cocktail and a bar where the lighting is just right. And if I genuinely want a drink with alcohol in it, I’ll have one.

I just don’t automatically reach for alcohol every time I want the experience of having a cocktail anymore. Little Saints gives me the ritual I was afraid of losing, while fitting a whole lot better into the way I want to feel now.

These days, that matters more to me than I thought it would. Because Saturday night is great. But getting to enjoy Sunday, too? Even better.