Erm…true absinthe tastes much like gobear described it, and, as with smoking, drinking, etc., the ritual is as much part of the experience as the substance. Be that as it may, the effect (IMHO) is like drinking and smoking marijuana at the same time. <shrug>
In the US, distilling alcohol for your own use (and subject to a limit of a certain amount per year) is legal. Hell, it would have to be, or the Pennsylvanians would start shooting again. 
It is hallucinogenic. Or at least it WAS. There are several products on the market which are called absinthe, but do not contain any wormwood at all. The only legally manufactured absinthe I’ve ever had was from the Czech Republic. Even that absinthe has much, much less wormwood in it than the original, unregulated absinthes of the early 1900s, that I’d be highly skeptical that you would start hallucinating from it. It WILL get you pissed pretty quickly, as it’s fairly strong (something like 120 or 140 proof). But that’s all that I’ve noticed.
Myself and a few buddies of mine went on a trip to the Czech republic last year (Great place, by the way, I’d recommend it to anyone who hasn’t been), and of course felt duty bound to try it.
No hallucinations, but a hell of a lot of wobbliness was the usual result. The stuff is strong, and the flavour is unlike anything i’d ever had before. It was a pretty good way to kickstart a night out though…
The Absinthe snobs that I associate with usually put down Czech and other Eastern European Absinthes as truly horrid.
There has been an explosion of Absinthe brands to hit the markets in Spain, France, Switzerland and the rest of Europe in the last handful of years. Most of them have thujone alhtough not as much as had been in the Absinthes of the 1880-1920’s.
As for taste, well, I’ll be finding out soon enough.
My thread was closed, apparently, because a mod thought that I was trying to weasel information on where to buy this stuff.
And because a mod thought of it as a “dangerous” thing. Ignorance, and hopefully corrected now. But the fact remains, the thread is closed.
I just did a quick search and found the following:
Loads of threads asking how to procure, grow, best enjoy marijuana - closed.
Loads of threads on how to obtain free cable - closed.
A few threads on seeking revenge against people who piss you off in the car park - closed.
Call the mods Nazis by all means, but don’t call them inconsistent.
No. It was closed because the phrasing of the OP was such that the offering of information along those lines seemed likely.
I don’t know whether Cajun Man considers absinthe dangerous or not. I do know posession of it is illegal in the United States, and since the OP wasn’t a debate on the illegality, but a quest for information about market prices, the thread was closed.
I honestly don’t see why that decision is controversial.
You can buy wormwood extracts, root material, and the like. I read several first-hand reports from those who tried to “trip” by spiking alcohol (usually vodka) with large amounts of the stuff. The general result? Very disappointing. They got drunk, complained of the horrible taste, and so forth, but nothing resembling an experience you’d get from one of the more established psychedelics.
I often hear that posession of “absinthe” is illegal in the US, but I’d like to see a cite for this. None of the ingrediants, themselves, are illegal. Absinthe minus the wormwood is readily available, and wormwood itself is readily available. I don’t believe anything called “absinthe” could be scheduled by the DEA, as its not a specific chemical structure. My guess is that, if anything, it’s illegal to sell classical absinthe as a food product, but this would be an FDA restriction. I don’t believe posession would be illegal; you can eat anything you want, but you can’t market certain food products, for public safety reasons.
I have two bottles, one cost £6 in the town that grows the Budvar hops and it’s lush with sugar or orange juice and nastylethal on it’s own. The other is in my drawer at work and it’s foul and acrid for emergencies only.
They both say Absinthe on the bottle, the nicer one comes in a squareish bottle. Get that one.
Who says £6 is overpriced for a litre of 70% proof spirits?
For your information:
Regarding legality - I can’t vouch for this info, not having checked it all myself, but everything I have checked…checks.
From the Absinthe FAQ:
I have not included a link, because I am uncertain if linking to this particular site is a violation of Board. A Google Search will turn up the place, however…
And I’m sorry about the formatting above. It did not do that in Preview, at all.
Also, Absinthe makers are active in Switzerland, France, and now the UK.
Home brewing is dangerous when one of your flavors is a poison. But overall, after talking with several people, it seems the effect is similar, at best, to a mild marijuana high.
So the only beef I’ve got is that a thread got killed for what it “might” have done.
If that’s the case, any thread about guns, and abortion, and nationalism should be closed post-haste! Oftenm those threads lead to personal insults and attacks, which we all know is banned by board rules.
Well, Tristan, it really boils down to two things that you don’t seem willing to accept and walk away from.
Judgement calls and personal preferences.
I’m not saying you don’t know these, on the contrary.
But the SDMB is not a haven of unrestricted speech, and every single Admin and Mod has the right to not allow talking about whatever they want. If Arnold doesn’t want to talk about spiders, then the SDMB will ban discussions on spiders. If UncleBeer doesn’t want to discuss Buffy, then by God there will be no discussion of Buffy. And if I don’t want to discuss anything on my own Board, then it won’t be discussed. It doesn’t have to be rational, it doesn’t have to adhere to precedent, and it can be arbitrary.
I know you know this, but you’re not acting like you do.
I mean…here is the truth. Nothing you say here will change their opinion on discussion of it, so…there’s no point in talking about it anymore.
Well, of course it’s a judgment call, but we try not to let personal preferences influence us. Cajun Man and I don’t care whether you drink absinthe or not. The MPSIMS thread was one step away from asking “Where can I buy some absinthe . . . cheap?” So it was closed. The GD thread asking “Should absinthe be legal?” is still open, as it should be.
There are topics that I would rather not see discussed on this board. (I thought about listing a few, but thought better of it.) However, I would not close a thread just because it is a topic I don’t like.
Yes, of course. When I spoke of “preference” I meant that you have the option to do that, should you choose, and that no one should really gripe about it because it’s your house.
I certainly let my personal preference drive what I allow, so I’m somewhat arbitrary and irrational I guess. But I’ve only had 3 complaints out of 313 people…that’s a good figure, right? 
I have no comment to make apart from … tell you later