The New York Times recently had an article on the subject. It appears that absinthe is now legal in the U.S.A.
I’ve tried it, when I was studying in Europe for a summer. One moment I was sober, the next I was drunk. It sneaks up on you rather suddenly. No green fairies though, disappointingly enough.
I’ve tried a few absinthes. In my (limited experience) stay away from all Czech brands. They are terrible.
IIRC, the Czech ritual of lighting a sugar cube is performed to mask the taste of the swill you’re about to drink.
You do, however, use sugar and water. Pour about a shot’s worth of absinthe into a glass, take a slotted spoon, put a sugar cube on said spoon, pour ice cold water over sugar cube and into water. I believe the ratio is either 1 to 4 or 1 to 5.
As other posters have said, any effects you get from it is purely due to its extremely high alcohol content. Any other non-traditional alcohol effect is purely your imagination running wild because you think you’re cool drinking absinthe.
If you don’t like the taste of licorice, then absinthe is not for you (and neither is Pernod, Sambuca or any pastis or anisette).
This is a good website with reviews of absinthes from around the world.
http://www.feeverte.net/absinthe-history1.html
And this is a good article that details absinthe’s banning (think lame moral panic mixed in with wine-makers jealously over absinthe’s popularity).
http://www.feeverte.net/absinthe-history1.html
For what it’s worth, the brands I’ve tried are:
Hill’s: Truly craptacular and what you’ll probably receive if you order absinthe in Czechoslovakia.
Fruko Schulz: See above.
Mari Mayans: Tasty.
La Fee Parisian: Also tasty.
If you buy a bottle of absinthe, stay away from any with the word “Absenta” because you’ll be buying a product without wormwood. It doesn’t really matter but most people like to think they’re drinking the real deal.
I’m hoping, now that it’s legal, that I’ll find a stateside dealer to finally pick some up from. I reasearched this stuff extensively, even up to and including joining some other message board (HERESY!) to talk with regular Absinthe drinkers across the country.
I’ve smoked wormwood; me and my friends used to sprinkle it on top of weed and shisha in our hookah, back in 2004. Taken that way, it’s an interesting little psychedelic; no compelling visuals, no detachment from reality, just a tiny bit of drunk-feeling and a subtle layer on top of the visual field that resembles the “snow” on a TV channel your rabbit-ears couldn’t quite pick up–but with a fleshy, organic color and sensibility reminiscent of floaters or the trails you get when you’re dizzy.
Nice enough, but it actually kept coming back (weaker and weaker each time) every time I smoked weed again for about a week afterwards. I eventually stopped using it, because I didn’t want to have that effect every single time I got high, and I knew if I did it once I would commit myself to another week of that stuff.
No absinthe, though. A guy in my tour group in Israel found some there, and he wouldn’t share it with me because I wasn’t in his frat. :rolleyes:
FTR, there’s another homemade drink recipe called “Green Fairy” or “Green Dragon” that’s similar, but uses weed. And weed mead is, well, really nice. Very, very mellow.
I don’t mean to nitpick, but one of these days someone was going to call you on it anyway: I’m pretty sure you mean Czech.
That was actually inspired by opium. Coleridge had just smoked a fat bowl, as it were, and the poem was a stream of consciousness that was interrupted suddenly when he heard someone open a door (right after he wrote what would be the last line).
Wholeheartedly agree. It’s much more romantic or exciting to think of poor 19th-century French artist sitting around talking to the fairies because of some special ingredient than it is to think that said special ingredient comes in 72% alcohol which they drank every day. I’ve drunk plenty of absinthe in my life and I’m still waiting for Kylie and her friends to come invite me to play.
Yes, I meant Czech. Crisis averted! 
I don’t know if this is current conjecture or not, but it’s been hypothesized that the copper shavings added to cheap absinthe around the turn of the century might have had something to do with it’s reputed effects. Plus, of course, it was a cheap drink available to the weirdos and dregs of society - the artists and whores. One wonders just how self-selecting that peer group was, and what the Venn diagram of schizophrenia and other untreated mental illnesses might have looked like intersecting with that group.
And we here in the states have likewise seen a government exaggerate and discredit a relatively harmless substance because they wanted to marginalize a social group associated with its use: marijuana.
I think traditional absinthe had far greater sociopolitical effects than psychotropic ones, myself. Thujone is not a quick acting alkaloid. It takes weeks of ingestion before it reaches active levels in the body. As **Shamozzle **says, if you drank enough to get an immediate thujone effect, you’d die from the alcohol.
Had it all the time when I lived in Prague. Never noticed any effect different from any other form of ethyl alcohol, but it will get one very intoxicated. Handle with care.
Here’s a respectable place you can get it online.
http://www.absintheonline.com/
They ship to the US, too. The prices seem a bit steep, but just to the right of reasonable.
You can also get Marilyn Manson’s own Absinthe label - Mansinthe
Absinthe Marteau Verte Classique seems the way to go for a true absinthe after tradition.
Why was wormwood added? I don’t get it-it is extremely bitter and doesn’t add anything desireable (except for the thujone).
Anyway, suppose the old stories are true-if thujone is psychoactive, it seems unreasonable that you could ingest any significant amount, without being poisned by the alcohol.
Because most people who aren’t raised in the US *like *bitters. We’ve got a shocking lack of them in our diet, but most people worldwide savor it as another taste to be enjoyed, just like sweet and salty and sour.
Tried to get it when I was in Central Europe but failed. Years later I saw in a Maxim magazine a few on-line stores to get it sent to you so I ordered it. The Maxim article said that the kind I decided to buy (the most potent of the absinthe’s they tried) “was the shit and it tasted like it”. That was a perfect description. My friend and I went through all the motions for the traditional version (sugar & mint leaf if I remember right) and it was still like licking a crack whore’s asshole. After the first two we just took turns taking chilled shots of the stuff to see if it had any hallucinogenic effects. Nope. After my friend and I had nearly finished the liter bottle I just felt ill, then tired. I was disappointed.
I believe wormwood was also good for the constitution and a proper antipeptic ward.
These were digestifs, too.
Can’t be any worse than the weird Jäger swilling tradition in the U.S.
That one still confuses me… how the Hell did the Germans convince us that that shit was anygood? They even got us to mix it with a manmade, techno, energydrink from Europe that costs more than a tank of gas in equal units. :smack:
The redbull index says that Jäger is out, Absinthe is in.
Well, I liked Jägerbombs before I had to (mostly) kick caffeine.
And of course it costs more than gas. Would you drink gasoline? Anyway, I’m sure a gallon of coke would cost way more than $3.40.
It’s worth noting that people who don’t like licorice seem to be convinced that things that taste vaguely licorice-like are The Worst Thing On Earth and just cannot understand why anyone would like them for any reason. Hey, I can’t blame them, there are some things I feel that way about myself (green beans, for one), but to those of us who like licorice, that stuff ain’t all that bad. I think Jäger fits into that category.
I love Jujubes, I like Jagermesister (Had my first shot in Hessen.), eat black vines gladly.
It’s a ridiculous thing. I’d rather do a vintage ouzo.
I thought that I’d add that I have had a flaming carmelized sugar absinthe drink in the U.S. At last year’s Sundance Festival they set up a temporary absinthe bar in the Motorola “club”, so I had to have a shot. I’m not sure it was the real thing or not or even how they were allowed to do it (this being Utah and all). But, I rarely pass up an opportunity to have a drink of absinthe, and a room full of scantily clad spokesmodels closed the deal for me.
Vintage ouzo, as in vintage distillate hooch from the backroom og every other Taverna on the shores of the Pelopponese.