About ten years ago, when I changed my relationship with alcohol, I noticed something. Friday at 5pm was always the hardest part of the week. Not because I wanted a drink, but because I wanted the week to be over. Alcohol was just the signal that it was.

I've been thinking about that distinction ever since.

Most of the conversation in the no and low space has centred on mimicry. How close can you get? Dealcoholisation technology has genuinely come a long way, and for beer especially, the results speak for themselves. Brands like Heaps Normal and Athletic Brewing have built products that don't feel like a consolation prize. Getting close to the real thing is a legitimate strategy, and it's finding a real audience.

Spirits and wine are harder. Ethanol does a lot of work on flavour, mouthfeel, and effect, and replicating that without it is a more complex problem than it first looks. The gap is closing, but the more interesting challenge is slightly different: delivering the feel of a drink, the ease, the shift, without the downsides. That's a different brief, and it's where things get genuinely exciting.

The psychological release alcohol delivers has very little to do with the alcohol itself. Pouring a drink at the end of the day is a signal to your nervous system: you've done enough, you can stop now. That signal works regardless of what's in the glass.

I've watched people genuinely relax over a sparkling water once the context was right. I've had customers tell me my drinks made them feel something, knowing exactly what was in them. Ritual and expectation carry more weight than most people realise, and the functional ingredient wave is only going to amplify that. L-theanine, adaptogens, psychobiotics, when these are dosed properly, they're not decorative. They do something perceptible. The ritual plus the function is a combination the category is only starting to figure out how to use.

People have asked me more than once if there's alcohol in my products. Some of what I make is anchored to an alcoholic counterpart. Some of it isn't anywhere near one. The ones that tend to land hardest aren't always the closest approximations.

Australia has an advantage that the category hasn't fully caught up to yet. Native botanicals, Kakadu plum, Davidson plum, lemon myrtle, finger lime, are genuinely extraordinary ingredients. Functional, flavourful, and carrying stories that no European equivalent can match. When First Nations-led producers and the drinks industry get properly aligned on this, the results are going to reframe what an Australian drinks brand can look like.

The broader market is growing, and the leading edge is already visible. HIGHR, my own brand, uses L-theanine and botanicals to deliver something perceptible, a real shift in how you feel, without leaning on any alcohol comparison. Overseas, HIYO and Kin Euphorics are building in a similar direction with adaptogen and hemp-derived formulations, and both have found audiences that weren't looking for an alcohol substitute at all. They were just looking for something that worked.

The opportunity for founders, buyers, and venue operators isn't in the safe middle. Products with a real functional benefit, properly dosed. Ingredients with provenance. Occasions that don't need to reference alcohol to make sense: the end-of-day wind-down, the focused afternoon, the social moment that doesn't need a hangover attached to it.

We're not fully there yet, but the direction is clear. The category that wins the next decade probably won't do it by getting closest to alcohol. It'll do it by making that comparison feel beside the point.

That's what I'm building toward.