In 1994, being a law student with a low budget, I began to take an interest in affordable healthy nourishments with natural active ingredients that can be absorbed fast and with an immediate effect. I started to do research and came across a few pills and fizzy tablets, which had to be swallowed or dissolved in a glass of water to help my body under different conditions. Thus, six drinks with individual effects developed within the next ten years.

By 2004, after I had switched to studying business, I created the first version of the drink. I had already realised that practically everyone complains about symptoms of a hangover. The causes varied, but the result was always a stressed organism that had to function “normally” under unfavourable circumstances.

This constant imbalance becomes apparent in familiar symptoms and results in widely spread sicknesses which can appear when the organism cannot cope anymore.

One morning I overslept and woke up with a bad hangover knowing I had to be in a meeting in one hour. Impossible! Suddenly I had the idea that all previously used substances mixed together should bring me back to life. The result was green-brown, foaming and tasted absolutely disgusting. However, it worked! 15 minutes later I had recovered and mastered my presentation.

A new flat mate moved into my apartment: Mag. Pharm. Simon Hussl from beautiful Innsbruck. With a non-stop smile on his face he started to search for studies about the existing ingredients and provided evidence of the drink’s positive effects with intensive research. He modulated the dosage and complemented the combination with further active agents until he was satisfied with the outcome - containing everything our organism needs to recover.

The bottom line is that free radicals will be defeated to “de-stress” the body. An excellent Austrian laboratory offered to help us find the ideal combination and dosage of all ingredients and a taste that reminds everybody of a fruit. The drink shouldn’t contain too many nor too little, but most importantly no unnecessary ingredients. The lab was firmly convinced of the concept and offered its work as a free service. We would have never had the funding to finance the tests and development by our own.

The development of the drink was a two-year effort. It was going to be a tough time. Thus, our motto turned out to be “cum animo dei” – “with divine spirit” and “numquam retro” – “no retreat”. The constant progress helped us to gain important advisers; family, friends, companies and investors recognised the drink’s potential and supported us. We cleared every hurdle, spared no effort and all of a sudden there was worldwide interest and fans. The extremely positive feedback highly motivated us. We were constantly negotiating with various investors, yet we stayed selective, after all we were looking for an investor who agrees with our philosophy and understands the drink.

We tested about 40 names for the drink, but none of them seemed right. Finally, we noticed that everyone who knew about the project was already calling it by its correct name: the first file of this project had been named: Der Drink.