New Brand Good Psyche Is Out To Make Your Vices More Virtuous

For those interested in indulging in vice in a more virtuous manner, there’s increasingly a wider array of options.

The latest is a new brand from Trish Mock, a wellness enthusiast and former UX design program manager at Amazon, called Good Psyche. It’s kicking off in direct-to-consumer distribution with two products—$38 Glisten Up and $78 Sidekick—containing medicinal and adaptogenic plants, herbs and fungi to promote emotional, sexual and skin wellness. Unlike booze, cigarettes and drugs that make people feel good in the moment, but often lead to them feeling worse later and addictive behaviors, the products are designed to produce elevated sensations, albeit subtler than those from the hard stuff, while improving rather than harming health. 

Hydrating facial mist Glisten Up features tremella mushroom, amla, vitamins D, C and E, and a ceramide complex to restore and protect the skin barrier. Sidekick is a mood-enhancing mouth spray featuring succulent plant kanna, which is described as empathogenic or providing an empathy boost. 

“It’s such an intriguing ingredient,” says Mock. “We’ve believed since we started developing this product almost two years ago that more and more people are going to become familiar with it and start utilizing it as an alternative to either supplement other medicine regimens that they’re on, to help support and treat their depression or anxiety, or they might use it as an alternative to drinking and party drugs when they go out. It shows a ton of promise.”

To fete Good Psyche’s launch, the brand will be hosting an event, Botanical Wonderland, Friday in Austin, Tex., where Mock lives and the conference SXSW 2024 will be wrapping up. In addition to a panel discussion entitled “Sex, Psychedelics and Empathy” with Mock and Supermush founder Alli Schaper, attendees will be able to try and purchase Good Psyche products IRL.

Good Psyche has already been sampling products, but not the two products it’s launching with. Instead, at about 24 events in and around Austin, it’s sampled the tea Sip The Mood and Blue Lotus Flower Pre-rolls. The tea incudes blue lotus, butterfly pea, licorice fruit, cinnamon, clove and damiana, an aphrodisiac Mock points out triggers lucid dreams. She suggests Good Psyche’s presence at events has been key to it building buzz and community in the Austin area. She says, “We’re definitely becoming recognized in the Austin wellness space.” 

Mock’s mother, Shannon Chanler, an acupuncturist, herbalist and owner of Fallbrook Farms in New York’s Finger Lakes region, is an unofficial consultant for Good Psyche. Chanler creates tinctures and teas under the Fallbrook Farms label on a smaller scale than Mock has planned for Good Psyche. Speaking of Chanler, Mock says, “She helped me to create the initial ingredient stacks and prototypes and told me what herbs to blend together to accomplish the value proposition that we were going for.” 

Mock has funded Good Psyche herself thus far and teamed up with Los Angeles digital brand consultancy Magic Dusk for its launch. While the brand is beginning in DTC, it expects to enter retail in the near future and has already been in conversations with Austin retailers. Among its dream retailers down the road are Erewhon, Broome Street General Store and possibly Sephora depending on how the beauty specialty retailer’s approach to wellness evolves. 

Out of the gate, Mock says she wants to ensure Good Psyche’s retail partnerships “make sense for us both financially, of course, but also in terms of time and energy and how much inventory they’re willing to take off of our hands.” 

Good Psyche’s ingredient decks packed with ingredients many people have never heard of will require retailer and consumer education. “We are not creating a product that only does one thing,” says Mock. “The way that medicinal plants and herbs work is that they are often adaptogenic, they are multipurpose, and they will go into your body and correct all sorts of imbalances simultaneously. So, we take a very immersive approach to well-being.”