All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
When a sleek little tin of Alice Mushroom chocolates showed up on my desk, I was immediately skeptical. Mushrooms have been having a moment for a while now. They’ve long been used as a plant-based alternative to meat, of course, but these days we’re also decorating our homes with lamps shaped like them, embroidering them on sweaters, and wearing them as charms on necklaces. I’m all for goblincore fashion (that’s this week’s version of cottagecore), but edible mushrooms in chocolate form made me think of the luxury psilocybin chocolates favored by life-hacking tech bros who like to throw around the word microdose.
In fact, the fungi in Alice Chocolates belong in a category called functional mushrooms, which tout a variety of (often unsubstantiated) health and wellness benefits. Depending on the variety of mushrooms they contain, some products claim to function as stimulants, sleep aids, and, um, as aphrodisiacs. Functional mushrooms have always seemed like snake oil to me, but I like to challenge my own assumptions. I wanted to know if these chocolates would make any meaningful impact to our daily work and sleep routines, even if their claims can’t be officially substantiated. So I enlisted the help of BA’s editorial operations manager, Kate Kassin, and our associate director of commerce, Emily Johnson, to help me find out whether Alice Mushroom chocolates would really change our lives.
The brand, cofounded by Charlotte Cruze and Lindsay Goodstein, makes three different kinds of chocolates infused with reishi, cordyceps, and lion’s mane, as well as a host of other adaptogens and nootropics. The signature duo box combines Brainstorm chocolates, which are meant to encourage deep focus and energy with the Nightcap option, promising a restful, uninterrupted night of sleep. This year Alice Mushrooms also launched a Happy Ending product, which is designed to enhance “pleasure and arousal.” Because this is not a NSFW review, we focused our testing primarily on Brainstorm and Nightcap—though we all thoroughly enjoyed the spicy cinnamon flavor of the Happy Ending chocolates.
All of the chocolates use organic, fair-trade dark chocolate as the base and are sweetened with organic sugar. The ingredients lists are short and easy to understand, and we were immediately drawn to the fact that there were no artificial sweeteners or ingredients like monk fruit or stevia, which are common in a lot of supplements and can cause headaches and stomach discomfort in some people (including two of the testers). When taken as a single dose, each square of Alice Mushrooms chocolate promises an instant effect—like deep focus—but is also supposed to support overall cognitive function and wellness when taken regularly over time.
We tested these products over the course of several weeks. We took Brainstorms together and did typing speed tests and had Slack recaps of our post-Nightcap dreams. None of us went into this thinking we’d become functional mushroom evangelists, but since the end of our testing, we’ve actually repurchased some Alice products because they’re just that good. Read on to follow us down the rabbit hole of our curious journey with Alice Mushroom chocolates.
Brainstorm
Brainstorm is formulated with lion’s mane and cordyceps mushrooms, but also contains guarana, which you might recognize from popular energy drinks, and phosphatidylserine, a naturally occuring phospholipid in the human brain that is known to enhance cognitive function. A single square contains a little less caffeine than a single cup of coffee.
“Let me be honest—I either expected to be bouncing off the walls with energy or to feel absolutely nothing. Instead I settled into a feeling of deep focus—the kind of dialed-in where you suddenly feel compelled to take a typing test,” says Kate Kassin. She and I tried the Brainstorm chocolates for the first time together, and we both scored 100+ words per minute with no errors. Yes, we are normally fast typers, but this was something else. About an hour into our first experiment, I sent Kate a Slack with an impressive list of what I’d just accomplished. She wrote back with similar enthusiasm, saying she’d just zipped through two article drafts and checked a bunch of nagging administrative tasks off her to-do list.
“I’m someone who has cultivated a wildly high caffeine tolerance—to the point where I really can’t feel its effects in a meaningful way anymore,” said Emily Johnson, describing a feeling I find entirely too relatable. “After taking the Brainstorm, though,” she says, “I felt keyed-in and hyper-focused on my job, really energetic. I even felt like my mood was a bit elevated.”
We all loved the nutty flavor of the Brainstorm chocolates, and there were times when I had to remind myself that it probably wasn’t the best idea to eat two squares at a time. “All three varieties have this amazing creamy texture: soft and sort of fudge-like—they melt in your mouth so nicely, and genuinely feel luxurious to eat,” says Emily.
Nightcap
Getting work done is great, but we were all most curious to see how the Nightcap chocolates for deep sleep would perform—because let’s be honest, there are few things we wouldn’t do for a guaranteed good night’s sleep. Nightcap is formulated with a combination of reishi mushrooms, magnesium, chamomile, zinc, and L-theanine, all of which are said to reduce stress and promote relaxation. (L-theanine is an amino acid that’s present in some mushrooms as well as in green and black tea.)
“Listen, I’m fully willing to admit that there could be some placebo effect involved here, but I noticed a distinct tired feeling—my eyes felt heavy, and I felt really relaxed—about 45 minutes after taking the Nightcap chocolate,” Emily says. All three of us reported similar experiences.
I started testing Nightcap during a bout of deadline-stress-induced insomnia, where instead of sleeping so I could wake up and write the next morning, I’d lie awake in bed worrying about writing, which would lead to me not actually getting anything done the next day. But the first time I took a square of Nightcap before bed, I slept like someone who didn’t know the meaning of the word stress. And the same thing happened the night after that. After a week of alternating Nightcap with Brainstorm, I had made serious progress on the project that had been previously keeping me up at night.
But Kate’s testimony might be the most convincing of all: “I’m in a book club where we read exclusively thrillers—which, no, is not my typical genre of choice and often makes my heart beat a little faster before bed. Our last read was one I was probably better off indulging in during the daylight, but I also just learned to pair the book with a square of the Nightcap chocolate. Finishing your book in time for the group discussion and sleeping despite its nerve-racking plot? Two thumbs up from me.”
The Verdict
Look, we’re not saying that Alice Mushroom Chocolates are magic, but we’re also not saying that they aren’t. While these won’t make you have psychedelic visions, all three of us felt positive effects—both in the short term and over time. If you’re curious about functional mushrooms and want to experiment with something that tastes good and seems to actually do something, we definitely recommend picking up one of the Duo packs and going down the rabbit hole yourself.