The mushrooms, the doses in the trials, and the health effect that is real.
Short answer: the clearest health effect of a non-alcoholic spirit is the alcohol it replaces. The added mushrooms and herbs are a different story — the trials that found anything gave several grams a day for weeks, and a serving of a spirit holds a small fraction of that. Nobody has tested the drinks themselves.
Little Saints makes zero-proof spirits and canned cocktails. In its own words (littlesaints.com, read 2026-10-24): St. Ember is “Enhanced with organic Lion’s Mane for clarity and elevated presence”; St. Juniper adds “Lion’s Mane for clarity and Damiana for heart-opening presence” and is “crafted to soften your edges and lift your spirits”; the canned cocktails use reishi “for a grounded calm”. A retailer lists St. Ember at 100 mg of lion’s mane extract per serving. The company also says its spirits are “backed by neuroscientists”; we found no published study of the drinks.
The lion’s mane trial with the clearest result gave older adults 3 grams of mushroom powder every day for 16 weeks — and the benefit faded within a month of stopping. The reishi trial gave 5.4 grams of extract a day for 8 weeks. Extracts are more concentrated than powder, so a milligram figure isn’t directly comparable, but one serving of a drink, now and then, is not what any trial tested.
If a non-alcoholic spirit takes the place of a drink you would otherwise have had, that is a genuine gain: the World Health Organization’s position is that no level of alcohol is safe for health, and that alcohol causes at least seven kinds of cancer (WHO, 2023). That benefit comes from what isn’t in the glass, whatever is added to it.
Related: every claim on the body map.
Functional non-alcoholic spirits · evidence checked 2026-10-24
Grades are calculated from the studies listed, by fixed rules.
No study of these drinks or of any lion’s mane drink. The trials that found anything gave grams a day for weeks; a retailer lists St. Ember at 100 mg per serving.
One small double-blind trial (30 people, 3 g a day for 16 weeks) — and the benefit faded within 4 weeks of stopping. A second trial improved on one test of three.
A double-blind trial of one 3 g extract dose found no overall effect on cognition or mood. Ten grams a day for four weeks did nothing either. One task got faster an hour after a 1.8 g dose.
Small, short studies with hints and nulls; nothing designed and powered to answer it.
Damiana has only been tested inside multi-ingredient products for sexual function, so no result can be put down to damiana. We found no trial of it for mood.
One double-blind trial in patients diagnosed with neurasthenia, at 5.4 g of extract a day for 8 weeks. Not tested in healthy people, or in a drink.