I Tried Bella Hadid's New Passion Project Drink: Kin Euphorics
Desperate to find something to pull myself out of an anxious spiral, I ventured through Brooklyn to turn to Kin Euphorics. If it's good enough for Bella Hadid, can't it be good enough for me?
If there is one thing that I most certainly am, it’s highly susceptible to celebrity endorsements and brand partnerships. I don’t mean in the hashtag #Ad on Instagram way, though, I mean that if a celebrity I like puts their face on a product or attaches their name to it, I’m probably going to be suckered into buying it if it aligns with my personal interests. So, when world-famous supermodel, philanthropist, and horse girl Bella Hadid announced last Wednesday that she was now the co-founder and COO of a health beverage called Kin Euphorics, the first thing I did upon seeing her three-part post spree was tip tap my hot little fingers over to their website’s store locator.
Thrillingly, there were several retail stockists that carried Kin Euphorics already in my area. I wrote down a few, and then noted the time it would take me to get to each one. This was going to be a journey, but I already had plans to be out and running errands Thursday afternoon, so why not stop at a health food store and pick up a can of this mysterious beverage to see if I could align with all of its purported health benefits. But because the world doesn’t want me to experience euphoria, the entirety of New York experienced a wave of flash flooding on Wednesday night, leaving the Metropolitan Transportation Authority recommending that all nonessential travel be put on hold the next day so repair teams could work on getting train lines back up to “working condition” (a phrase I use very, very lightly).
With the kibosh put on all of my other plans, I had to decide if it was worth it to venture out into Brooklyn on foot to procure the Bella Beverage—Bellaverage, if you will. Did I really need to sweat it out on the sidewalks for this? I weighed my desire to try Kin with my equal, if not more pressing, desire to stay home and do absolutely nothing on my day off. But as I found myself glancing back at Bella’s Instagram posts, I began to, once again, flare with jealousy over her beauty. For whatever reason, I have been a Bella Hadid obsessive for a few years now. Not let-me-make-a-fan-account levels, but I do have an entire highlight reel on my Instagram account devoted to pairing Bella Hadid videos with mixes of “Mine” by Slayyyter as my own personal meme conveying glamour in dumb, everyday tasks, and I’ve been slowly ramping up the level of the edits over the last couple of years. They’re silly little edits, but I get a real kick and comfort out of making them. As completely unattainable as Bella Hadid’s lifestyle and beauty are, there’s something about her that is not just memeable but wholly relatable too.
Maybe that’s part of why I felt drawn to pick up a package of Kin. As I march toward the sunset of my 20s (in three years, but still), I’m genuinely invested in staying mindful of my health and wellness. I take my vitamins and my probiotics, drink one GT’s Kombucha a day, try to work out regularly, and have my little apple cider vinegar mixed tincture before I go to bed every night. I also want to continue to work on experimenting with long-term alcohol dryness and eventual total sobriety. These are all things that Kin’s mission statement says that it’s good for. I was also, admittedly, very easily swayed by Bella Hadid’s sales pitch in her posts.
“This is THE drink to make you feel good. Before anything, I was a passionate consumer. It has benefited me for over a year now, with ingredients that help calm our nervous system, add serotonin to our brains, center us, ground us, and energize without the crash! Kin is a non-alcoholic product, including Gaba, a naturally-occurring nootropic chemical that promotes relaxation, Tyrosine, a mood enhancer, rhodiola rosea, which induces euphoria and helps with hormone harmony. The “euphoric” feeling of drinking, without the hangover, the guilt, or the long term effect. Kin is constantly building your brain to be the best version of itself, while making you feel great in the process.
Yes, it’s kind of giving Snake Oil Saleswoman, but now that I have a little bit of hard-earned cash to throw around, I figured why not take the leap. I stuffed my little Trader Joe’s tote bag with my hand sanitizer, water bottle, AirPods, and backup mask, and took to the sidewalks for a 36-minute walk to Minus Moonshine, a gorgeous little shop tucked away in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn that sells entirely alcohol-free beverages. As I traversed the chaotic streets, I continually debated the answer to my favorite question: why the hell do I still live in this city? And baby, at Minus Moonshine I figured it out! Little havens of kind people and nice things hidden away amidst the bedlam of city life. I walked in and immediately inquired about Kin Euphorics, which I was delighted to find that they had in stock—stupidly, I did not call beforehand to make sure, but the spirit of Yolanda Hadid (not dead, just singing) was looking out for me. I told the shop owner I came in specifically to get Kin because of Bella’s partnership with them, to which they replied, “Oh yeah! Someone called earlier asking about Kin and mentioned that. I didn’t even know who that was.” A firm reminder that I do indeed exist entirely in my own pop-cultural bubble, which was popped in only so many words. What must it be like to not have any awareness of the Hadids? My self-esteem would probably be firing on all cylinders. I’d be whole again.
I didn’t inquire about the price before bringing it up to the counter because I didn’t want to be deterred. But yes, a 4-pack of Kin Euphorics is going to cost you a pretty penny. $27 for four mini cans. But I’ll be damned if I walk for 36 minutes and don’t leave with some nootropics and adaptogens, whatever the hell those are! As I inserted my card into the chip reader, I realized that I left the house with such an intent on buying the Bellaverage that I would’ve paid almost any amount. I could’ve been told it was $60 and I would’ve left there with that 4-pack. Perhaps that says something about my relationship with both money and the exalt of celebrities, but I’d like to think I was just thirsty.
There’s nothing like the sweet success of getting exactly what you came for. It’s only rivaled by the dreadful heartbreak of Minus Moonshine having just one of the two Kin flavors in stock. I only got the Spritz, not the Lightwave. The Kin Spritz is Kin’s replacement for morning coffee, designed to “enhance clarity, stimulate creative freedom, and drive focus so you can find your center.” The Kin Lightwave is a comedown, intended to “mellow you out, help you to transcend stress, and open a portal to peace.” I was intrigued by the Lightwave’s flavor profile, which includes notes of lavender-vanilla and sea salt, so I was disappointed that I only got to try the Spritz, especially because the shop owner of Minus Moonshine raved about the Lightwave’s ability to ease the mind. But I won’t be deterred! I’ll be doubling back for the Lightwave, and it’s probably better that I didn’t straight up drop $54 on eight cans of Kin without knowing if they’re even worth it.
I hit the pavement once more and journeyed back to my 550 sq. foot one-bedroom apartment, where I promptly grabbed a wine glass, filled it with ice, cracked open my first Kin Spritz, and poured it slowly. As I let it cool, I was a bit dismayed by the color. The packaging’s gorgeous, Instagram-infographic gradient and font aesthetics are not quite reflected in the cola-colored final product. But if I have to choke back a beverage that looks like dirty street water to get Bella Hadid’s cheekbones, so be it. As for the taste, I expected a slightly more fruit-centric sweetness and was confronted with a much more bitter, earthy palate—not a complaint, at least to me. I genuinely like the taste, which is actually a problem because the cans are so god damn small. I threw back that first Kin like it was nothing. There’s a slightly strange aftertaste that I’m not so fond of, but it was gone after I simply drank some water.
Now, the big question: does Kin do anything? Well, I think so! I’m extremely wary of placebo effects, so I was keeping watch for any and all turns of feelings or mood. I didn’t do anything particularly different last night than I would’ve normally, nothing that would’ve enhanced my mood in such a big way that it could’ve been mistaken for the euphoric effects that Kin purports it can give—unless you count watching an excellent episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, but that makes me a normal amount of happy. Halfway through RHOBH, I fully began to feel a noticeable lightness, one that I’d describe as a sort of more grounded mixture of what it feels like to be buzzed off of one drink and a tad high off of one hit of a vape. Pleasant! Was I seeing stars and rocketing through new dimensions in my mind to discover hidden nodules of bliss? Not really, but Kin Euphorics is a better name for a drink than Kin ChilledOutWhileRottingMyBrainWithRealityTV. And it lasted a while! Past Real Housewives and into Drag Race and onto Mob Wives (very stacked schedule). I genuinely was surprised. Bella Hadid had not lied to me! In fact, I’d say her description is pretty accurate.
Now, I’m not stupid, just occasionally annoying with a marketing degree. I think it’s clear that, while Kin is designed and intended to be a genuinely helpful health product, the money lies in swindling people out of cash by positioning it as a trend-heavy, luxury beverage for those who want to feel some of the positive mental effects that can come with alcohol consumption without any of the hangovers. I also know that part of the feeling I experienced after drinking Kin was a placebo due to the delight of drinking the Bella Hadid Beverage. But that’s okay too, right? I dragged myself through post-flash-flood Brooklyn to procure my four cans of Kin, thinking the entire time how I should move somewhere closer to my family to spend as much time as possible with my loved ones in the face of constant climate change uncertainty and anxiety. I watched as people vacuumed rugs, hauled out warped furniture to the curb, and stood outside their ground-level units assessing the damage. The Minus Moonshine shop owner told me they spent all morning cleaning in hopes that they’d be able to open that day. I wish desperately that I wasn’t so susceptible to the way it all makes me feel—like knives to the heart and pangs of sharp anxiety in the brain—but I am. While I was out buying Kin, I also bought a bottle of wine.
I’m just trying to make do with what little emotional bandwidth I have left. But drinking really isn’t fun or novel anymore. It does make me feel shitty, and it does dull my brain power the next day. Drinking isn’t the way to try to open myself up to the world that it was when I was 19 or 20, it’s darker now. We’re all darker now, the world is too. I genuinely am looking for ways out of these spirals I constantly find myself in. I want to be able to be connected with myself and others as much as possible, and I don’t want to do it with something that makes me feel like shit, launching me into another cycle of depression and anxiety and assuring that I’ll end up feeling as empty and broken as I started. I was stricken by something in Bella Hadid’s first post about Kin, where she detailed the way she uses it to combat her depression and anxiety. “…I searched and scoured for anything holistic that would help with my chronic exhaustion, depression, and anxiety,” she wrote. “Asking myself and the universe that maybe since I had been so lucky in other aspects of my life, that this low vibration was just where I would have to stay. Until the universe brought me to Jen and KIN!”
Something I always manage to hold onto is the hope that things will get better. I sort of have just convinced myself that they have to, even though all the universal signs are saying that they won’t. But I don’t know that I can keep my assumptions of positivity forever in the face of so much hurt. And I’m afraid that eventually, that will lead to me feeling battered down, stuck in a low vibration of anxiety that I don’t want to be trapped in. I’m not saying that Kin is my way out of that, but maybe it can help. Maybe this supermodel-hyped drink can actually be a part of my arsenal of things I use to maintain. Maybe there is some good to be found in Instagram-ready tonics and new-agey health theory spouted by one of the world’s most beautiful people. I don’t know. But for now, I’m open to trying, and I consider that openness a blessing. I haven’t lost my sense of excitement yet, and maybe I don’t have to. I guess Bella Hadid and I are still figuring it out.
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