I understand that absinthe is some kind of liquor, with mildly hallucinogenic properties, (or not) a green tinge, (or not) made from something called wormwood. That’s all I know.
Something just occured to me: is wormwood wood, or a misnomer? Wood alcohol’s methanol, and that single carbon will strike you blind.
Is absinthe illegal in the U.S. for the protection of the people, or just from general fear of weird liquor?
(Oh, and a googling of ‘absinthe’ to make sure of the spelling informs me that the Swiss will be enjoying it legally soon.)
Firstly, the stuff now on sale in the UK, and soon to be sold in Switzerland, is made in the Czech Republic, and has nothing to do with true French Absinthe.
Basically, it became a massive problem in France, with huge numbers of addicts. So it was banned. There’s no chance of the French ban getting lifted any time soon, so the only way to try it for real is to find someone who’s making it illegally in some small French village.
Wormwood is not hallucinogenic, nor is absinthe, really. It’s high as hell in alcohol content, and I guarantee you that if your average non-alky person goes from zero to violently drunkulated in a half hour or less, he is very likely to see some strange stuff… hence the “hallucinogenic” idea.
Absinthe was banned in the US quite some time ago, back when legislators seemed to think banning ALL alcohol was a peachy idea. Admittedly, absinthe was banned in 1916, whereas prohibition didn’t happen until quite some time afterwards, but you get the idea.
Absinthe was specifically banned not only for being liquor, but because wormwood is mildly toxic. Admittedly, a great many other herbs are mildly toxic, including a great many used in the manufacture of medicines and herbal remedies, but St. John’s Wort can cure stuff. The only thing you can cure with absinthe is sobriety.
… and all this is why absinthe never got legalized after Prohibition was repealed, from what I understand.
I suspect it also had something to do with the idea that we can all agree that an honest working man can enjoy a beer without becoming a raving wife abuser, and a Congressman can enjoy a gin and tonic without becoming a wino…
…but only degenerates and *subversives * drink absinthe. Well, you know, poets and artists and Goth chicks and stuff, but to some people, there ain’t much difference… and I’ve heard tell it was a “gateway drug,” you know… leads to stuff like mary wanna, and Scotch, and ghod knows what else…
Too much absinthe = bye bye liver. It’s not the alcohol as much as it is the wormwood. The substitutes being produced omit the wormwood, how they add the distinctive bitterness that the missing ingredient supplied, I do not know. There’s only about 10 ingredients, all perfectly legal and procurable.
The stuff made in various places in Spain (Mari Mayans is a brand distilled and bottled on Ibiza) is the real stuff and is available for import as a collector’s item only. That means you can get it, but no fair drinking it.
Anecdotal here, but I’ve had the stuff that they’re selling in the UK that GorillaMan mentions. Looks like you can get it in the [URL=]US [link deleted] as well. We’ve drunk it neat and also mixed it with champagne, as per instructions, and experienced a very different sort of drunk which was similar, in some ways, to hash.
Of course, I really should perform a control test where I put vodka in my champagne, but that’s not going to happen.
There’s a FAQ at that site, and I see that it has, “the maximum permitted ‘wormwood’.” Of course, that’s probably a lot less than in the old days - it’s stocked in Waitrose over here, and it’s unlikely that they’d open themselves to lawsuits. Looking at the FAQ they compare the effect to that derived from THC (but then, they would).
Relevant FAQ point for US people:
Note that the shipping seems a little steep to me.
As he also noted, the jury seems to still be out on whether absinthe contains enough thujone to have any appreciable effect. Given that the stuff is typically 60% alcohol, the thujone concentration has to be pretty high to be able to ingest an effective dose without being dead drunk as well. Currently, the EU limits thujone in absinthe to 10 mg/l, and German law limits it to 30 mg/l. These levels are believed to be pretty safe. Some people believe that 19th century absinthe contained much higher levels - levels of 260 mg/l have been quoted, though that may be suspect according to this:
[link deleted]
Note that they extrapolate a conservative “no effect level” of 8.75 mg / day for a 70 kg human from rat studies. For current EU guidelines, that’s most of a liter of over 100 proof liquor.
I have deleted three links from the posts above by yabob, Bromley, and gluteus maximus. The companies linked to purport to ship thujone-containing products to the U.S. which is illegal.
I think the factual question has been answered about as well as it can be, so I’ll close this thread.