What exactly is absynthe? How does it affect the body? How dangerous is it?
It is a green coloured, foul tasting alcohol. It’s illegal in the States and most of Europe I think, but I know that it is legal in the Czech Republic (where I once had it). It has a hugely high concentration of alcohol, and it also contains wormwood, I think, which is supposed to make you hallucinate. I merely got very drunk from it (as did everyone I was with)…no hallucinations. However, it had some fun etiquette which involved lighting a spoonful of sugar on fire and stirring it in before you drink it. I’ve heard that it was a favourite drink in high society (esp. Paris) back in the day before it was banned. There are some stories about Van Gough drinking it before he cut off his ear. Probably not credible.
I’ve heard it makes the heart grow fonder.
Absinthe is a liquor that tastes strongly of aniseed. It’s the addition of Wormwood that’s supposed to make it hallucinatory. The stuff that’s available (and it’s very limited these days) apparently does not have nearly the same mood-altering powers as it once had. Having said that, I drank a large portion of a bottle one New Years and definitely had a different buzz to merely being drunk. It was very heady, slightly ‘trippy’, but nothing very intense. Pleasant, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to try it again. I’ve also had Absinthe and Champagne cocktails, which are called ‘Hemingways’, as apparently this was his favourite after dinner tipple. Not sure if this is credible, either.
If you’re curious, Pernod (a brand name) is a liqueur that’s legal today that is essentially absinthe without the wormwood. It’s not quite as bitter and doesn’t require sugar, though some add it. Green Fairy and Absente are also. The only reason to drink them is their historical context.
Return of the Green Faerie from Modern Drunkard Magazine.
The article gives a history of the popularity of the liquor, especially with artists and writers. Describing his own experience the author says that it provided “drunken clarity,” that the wormwood and alchohol balance each other in a strange way that allows one to “ride” his drunkenness instead of the confused “drowning” of a usual drunk.
The bit about Hemingway might be true. He does mention absinthe in his short story “Hills Like White Elephants.”
It is illegal to sell in the U.S., but I don’t think it is illegal to posess it, or bring a bottle in from a vacation from Europe. A buddy of mine got some by mail order.
Very foul tasting. I took a small shot. He and a couple others drank a little more and they felt sick.
It may make the heart grow fonder, but it definately make the liver grow frailer.
Wormwood contains thujone - look it up.
They sell bottles of stuff called absinthe in Germany (even at Wal-Mart!). I don’t really know if this is different from the absinthe sold in the Czech Republic. It may not have wormwood, but it still tastes pretty foul unless you mix it well with other things. I agree with Potter that it gives a “spacier” feeling than your average alcoholic drink.
The Master speaks: Was the legendary liqueur absinthe hallucinogenic?
it’ds perfectly legal here in britain, and it doesn’t sell. Why not? Because it’s bloody horrible. That’s why.
Some absinthe is legal in Britain, but not the really hard stuff.
Nope MC all of it is legal. We never bothered to ban it as it was never popular here in the first place. We were all too busy getting off our tits on Gin.
And it is proper gopping. No matter what you mix it with.
Absinthe was the subject of an informative thread on this board in March.
The liquore was banned worldwide in the early 2oth Century, with the exception of Spain. Its newfound legality in Europe appears to be conencted with European Union trade reforms.
In the late 19th Century absinthe abuse was a particularly widespread problem in Europe, over and above the general concern at the time with alcoholism. When drunk, as custom demanded, with melterd sugar, absinthe is essentially a liquid candy, one with a potent alcoholic content. It lacks the “burn” asociated with most strong drinks, so people could consume it without fully appreciating what they were taking in. Compounding the problem was the fact that absinthe also contains wormwood, giving people two drugs for the price of one.
There was a particularly lurid murder case in Switzerland in the first decade of the 20th Century in which the killer blamed his absinthe addiction for his crime. This helped galvanize efforts, already ongoing, to have the liquore banned there. Other nations quickly imitated Switzerland in a kind of domino effect.
As I observed in the last thread, it would be interesting to see a study of why this effort to ban a drug was so successful when similar efforts before and after have failed so miserably.
The problem is, almost all the absinthe sold is weak compared to what was available 100+ years ago. Hills Absinthe (the commercial crap that’s being sold in England, Canada, etc) only contains about 2mg of thujone. Some of the rarer varieties have 10mg. The original stuff could have 60mg or more of thujone. And an even higher concentration of alcohol.
So when folks try it now days, they’re not getting the effect Oscar Wilde got.
No, I remebr only about three or so years ago it became legal to sell and I don’t think you can get the largest ABV stuff over here as it’s alcohol contents is illegally high.
This is odd. I’m looking at some pictures torn from a magazine of some bottles of Hill’s and one bottle says it has 2mg, and the other says 9mg. The bottles have different shapes and labels.
Oh, well. Neither is close to the 60mg I saw on another brand.
I thought it was all legal here, there were just limitations on how much you could drink in public. Someone once told me that four shots of the stuff was the legal limit, and clubs/bars certainly wont give you any more than that.
What should I know though? I’m still 16, and shouldn’t be buying alcohol, which of course I…never do 
Some friends and I once bought a bottle in London, and I drank several glasses of the stuff. No hallucinations. Terrible hangover the next day, but I think that was due to drinking the quantities that I did. Wasn’t that different from any other hangover I’ve had from other liquors.
I remember that during the night of “the absinthe party,” as we have come to call it, I got into a dispute over the proper way to mix it with water and sugar (I can’t imagine drinking straight shots of the stuff, although it sounds like that’s become a standard practice in London). My friends insisted on doing the flame technique, and I tried it that way. However, I favor the nineteenth-century technique, just because of my nostalgia for the fin de siecle. That technique involves resting a sugar cube on a perforated absinthe spoon laid across a glass of absinthe; water is poured over the sugar cube, which dissolves and drips with the water down into the absinthe below. That’s how people like Manet, Picasso, Oscar Wilde,and of course, Van Gogh* drank it.
If the spoon technique was good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.
A lot of people attribute Van Gogh’s “ear-severing” to his absinthe-drinking, but I’m not sure exactly why. He drank a lot of things, even the turpentine that he mixed his oils with, so it’s hard to see how anyone could isolate absinthe as the cause for that particular act.