When I saw the pastel pink can of Recess sitting on the counter of a cafe in Southampton’s Parrish Art Museum, tucked between the blood orange Sanpellegrino, lime LaCroix, and a plain old plastic bottle of water, I was surprised: It was the first time I’d seen the brand outside of New York City’s fancier bodegas and grocery stores. It had apparently followed the crowds out to the Hamptons for the summer. “Does anybody buy this?” I asked the cashier. I was jonesing for an old-fashioned espresso myself, not the promised relaxation of a sparkling water infused with hemp extract and adaptogens, or stress-mitigating plants used in herbal medicine.
“They do, and I drink one every day,” she told me. “I don’t know if it works, and I wouldn’t actually pay $6 for it, but it’s free.”
Each can of Recess — available in the flavors blackberry chai, peach ginger, and pomegranate hibiscus — bears a label reading “calm cool collected.” It claims to be, essentially, chill in a can, and it is far from alone in sending the message that drinking this one weird beverage is a surefire way to calm the fuck down.
Entire display cases are now devoted to beverages created in the wake of the so-called anxiety economy that has blossomed in recent years. Typically dressed in soothing pastels that set them apart from the bold primary colors of a Coca-Cola or Red Bull, they are exemplars of millennial-focused branding, with an Instagram-friendly aesthetic that targets overworked young women seeking out brief moments of “self-care” as an alternative to traditional medicine. Beverages of this ilk, like Recess, Cha Cha Matcha, Dona, and Kin Euphorics, get their purported powers in part from ingredients often tied to herbal medicine, and bank upon a cultural moment when people are more likely to look for emotional health in a bodega refrigerator than to take the time (or funds) to seek professional help.
I’ll have to thank you for the success today