It isn't clear to me where a psychosomatic reaction of this kind would even come from, since broadly speaking these have triggers, and none of the kind you'd normally expect to see are here. It is an easy conclusion to draw though, if, as in this case, the reaction isn't familiar to us.
That said, there's all sorts of physical reactions to products which have no clear explanation, but are entirely real. I used an iPhone 5 for a couple of years which had the kind of tactile sense mentioned before as if it carried a low level charge or earthing problem, and it happened every time I touched it, whether it was on battery or powered, whether on or powered off, or even when I let the battery expire. It was weird, had no apparent cause, there were no voltages on the casing or RF fields around it, no static charge. The 4s I had before it and the 6s I got afterwards were both quite normal. Nobody else could sense anything.
Yet it was totally real. And since I do still have it, I just tried, and there's the same feel to it even when totally dead before charging.
I do tend to think that taste sensations around new items are often the result of off-gassing, with a few being more sensitive to trace chemicals than others, but while the anodizing process in the M3 MBA models is new, the colourants are bonded into the aluminum by the process, so there shouldn't be anything in free air. However, it's possible there is.
It's also possible that the issue comes not from the laptop itself but the packaging materials it is boxed up and sealed inside. The tear-off covering is an odd substance for example, and could leave chemicals on the laptop surface from the time packaged up in the range of environments it will have gone through.
All in all, there's plenty of potential causes of these symptoms, even if they're not commonly experienced.
