Last Updated on May 19, 2023
In this article I explore Cheers, a product that complements my own mindful drinking journey perfectly. After talking to their founder, working with their team, and trying the product for myself, I can say I genuinely love these guys and gals. Their mission aligns perfectly with ours and their product perfectly complements Sunnyside for the Mindful Drinker.
As one of the founders of Sunnyside, I find myself constantly checking in with my own drinking behavior, striving to lead a life of mindfulness around alcohol. Since starting Sunnyside with Nick in 2020, my drinking habits have greatly improved. I typically don’t drink during the weekdays at all (unless there’s a special occasion) and on the weekends I do my best to stick to lower-alcohol beers and pace myself.
As with most of the employees at Sunnyside, I enjoy drinking, especially in social settings and consider it part of my life that I don’t want to lose. But as I get older, consuming as little as 2 drinks can cause me to wake up feeling less than 100%. As with every one of our members, I too need to be proactive and mindful about my drinking so that I feel my best each day.
The obvious place I start is using Sunnyside on a daily basis. The weekly planning, daily tracking, and long-term habit change Sunnyside has created for me personally has been game changing. As many of our members report, the simple act of planning and tracking over a long period of time creates a whole new understanding of how much I was drinking and how much I want to be drinking to maximize my overall wellness and enjoyment.
The Mindful Drinking movement
We see the mindful drinking movement gaining momentum every week, whether through the media (celebrities keep starting non-alcoholic beverage companies), through our own partnerships (Ritual Zero Proof is now in Whole Foods!), or through trends in consumer behavior (search volume has been steadily increasing for the term ‘mindful drinking’ over the past 2 years).
In other words, we’re not alone in seeing an opportunity to help millions of people build a healthier relationship with alcohol, but we are the only digital service focused on mindfulness and moderation, not abstinence. There are blogs, online courses, podcasts, non-alcoholic beverages, and other products. And it’s growing every day.
As mindful drinking nerds ourselves, we have a ton of products to test and try and see how they fit into the mindful drinking lifestyle that Sunnyside’s foundation provides. For the past year that has mostly meant testing new non-alcoholic drinks. My favorite right now is the Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher. Part beer, part seltzer, zero calories. It’s a perfect end-of-day beer replacement.
But I’ve recently been curious about supplements that claim to help you feel better after drinking.
Enter Cheers into the conversation
After some light Googling I quickly came across Cheers, an alcohol-related health company that creates products that help you feel better the next day after you drink. They have several products that, when used together, provide a one-stop shop for supplements focused specifically on drinking and liver health.
As soon as I found it, I admired the company for its clean design, positive attitude, and huge customer base. And importantly they weren’t telling people to drink or not to drink (some products in this space seem to encourage excessive drinking), they’re simply saying it’s okay if you drink and here’s a product that can help improve that experience. It felt a lot like the thesis that Sunnyside lives by.
So I reached out to Brooks, the founder, and got this message in response about 5 minutes later:
“Hey Ian – I love your product. I used it myself for a while as I realized every time that I had too much was whenever I didn’t consciously count drinks. When you count drinks and see the count going up you think: “hmm, yea maybe I don’t need one more!” I also loved the positive attitude of it all rather than being harsh.”
So we hopped on a call and spent an hour and a half learning about each other’s companies and discussing the philosophy and approach behind them, aligning very closely on mission and approach. For example, we both feel very strongly that healthier drinking starts with education and understanding around the effects of alcohol and why it makes us feel the way that it does, or how it has properties that make you want more and more once you’ve had some.
Check out these impressive stats about the company:
And watch this video for a nice overview of Cheers from the founder Brooks Powell:
What exactly is Cheers?
For me, the “what is Cheers” question starts with their key ingredient Dihydromyricetin (DHM). When Brooks was in school he learned about DHM and was drawn to its reported inability to bind to the same brain receptors as alcohol, therefore, reducing GABAa rebound, or short-term alcohol withdrawal, as cited by this NIH publication. Their Restore product is the most popular. You pop three pills after your last drink and before bed and it’s supposed to help you feel at least 50% better the next morning, or your money back.
They shared the following with me when I asked about the science behind Cheers:
So, does Cheers work?
About 6 weeks ago I received my order of Cheers in the mail, in their delightfully colorful bottles and friendly packaging. To be honest, I was skeptical. I hadn’t read any of the science, and I’ve been taking multivitamins for years when drinking, thinking they must help with hangovers, but never really had anything make a difference. I think I was right to be skeptical. A pill that I take after drinking and scientifically helps me feel better in the morning? Seems like a tall order.
For the past several weeks I’ve been taking 3 Cheers Restore capsules after my last drink and before bed. And every day I take one Cheers Protect capsule. From what I can tell, Protect is similar to Restore but contains more L-Cysteine intended to boost glutathione levels and promote ongoing liver health.
Honestly, this stuff really works! I’m not here to promote Cheers. I’m saying that since taking Cheers I’ve started to wake up feeling noticeably better after drinking alcohol. I have more physical energy, less brain fog, and my sleep seems to have improved. Furthermore, I can function at work much better. This is probably the most important thing for me. Sometimes after just a couple drinks, my brain just has a hard time focusing the next day, and Cheers seems to help improve my ability to operate near my highest level.
To further support this, my Whoop data, which tells me how good my sleep and recovery was each morning, seems to indicate that I am in fact getting better rest after drinking alcohol. I haven’t studied it scientifically, but the Whoop is very good at reminding you if you got poor sleep due to alcohol. It takes into account factors such as heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and respiratory rate. The Whoop has been another big part of my mindful drinking journey, but that’s a whole different blog post.
As part of a healthy drinking regimen, taking Cheers after the last drink is proving to be highly effective for me.
In addition, their website is loaded with reviews like this:
“10000000% works. No question about it. Take 3 before bed after a night of boozing and it makes such a huge difference in how you feel the next morning. My husband and I bring them on vacations too. Makes me feel much better the next morning. I’ve also turned a few other friends onto your products.”
Cheers + Sunnyside = A winning combo
We’re extremely proud of the progress we’ve made at Sunnyside, where we’re now helping tens of thousands of adults in the US and Canada cut back on their drinking and build healthier habits that last a lifetime. Every day we get people writing in telling us that they finally broke through their long-formed habits and have started to feel amazing after cutting back a bit. For us it’s not about quitting, but rather seeking and finding balance. We get reviews like this every day:
“I have been on the Sunnyside program for 7+ months now. I have cut my alcohol intake by over half consistently over this time from about 12 drinks a week to 4. At 70 yrs old this has made a tremendous difference in my energy, mood,and clarity. I sleep better and feel better. The program is easy to use, flexible, very supportive and affordable. Highly recommend.”
We’re also aware that many of our members don’t rely solely on Sunnyside to hit their healthier drinking goals. Some use meditation apps to help decrease stress and anxiety, others use non-alcoholic beverages to satisfy the ritual at the end of the day in a way that works better for them, and others combine Sunnyside with diet or fitness apps to stack up the motivation and results.
Cheers is a perfect complement to Sunnyside since it helps you feel better the day after drinking by reducing “hangxiety”, improving sleep, and making alcohol consumption more enjoyable. They never encourage you to drink, but rather encourage you to be healthy when you do. Similarly at Sunnyside, we never encourage you to drink, but we do promote planning and tracking as fundamental habits that should be incorporated into a mindful, healthy drinking routine.
Sunnyside is the planning, tracking, and coaching tool you use to build healthier habits. Cheers is the product you use when you drink to improve liver health and next day wellness. Together they offer a powerful combination for the mindful drinker.
Cheers is offering a discount to our readers. Just use the code SUNNYSIDE20 for 20% off your entire order. And as always, we don’t make money from Cheers. This is a product we truly love and support.
