It's been blamed for causing madness, rumored for to induce hallucinations and been banned for containing toxic levels of thujone (found in wormwood), but a new study of very old absinthe bottles claims the reason for absinthe's wild effects are simply that it was loaded with alcohol. Nearly 70% (140 proof). Or enough to make you think you're wandering in the dessert talking to Jim Morrison and Barry Goldwater. Here's the skinny...
"An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe - the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity - may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur's supposed mind-altering effects .The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70 percent alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof."
(via Live Science)
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I'm calling bluff on this one. Whenever I drink Bacardi 151 (which I try not to make a weekly thing), I never find myself seeing strange things or subsequently talking to them. If what I hear about absinthe is true, you do trip...but has anyone actually tried it that can lay some insight?
I drank Absinthe at a party once, and woke up naked in a strangers apartment, and then found out a couple of days later that I stripped at the party and people took pictures of me. I really hope that no one posted them on the internet somewhere. But, if they do, I hope I look great and I'm so shit faced that my face was no longer recognizable. And I'll be sure to send the link to Scaramouch.
Absinthe was considered so powerful back then and caused hallucination's because a regular beer or whatever only was what we now would call 5 - 15 proof. Beer was drank in lieu of water because it was more sterile. Infants and children (the youngest being 2, in most fictionalized literature I've read from that era) were allowed to drink it all the time and it was not uncommon for a family to sit down for a breakfast including 'short' beer which was an uncarbonated 5 or so proof beer to start their day. A shot as extraordinarily strong as Absinthe was and is still today (it's one of the only alcoholic drinks whose alcohol content hasn't fluctuated) sure as shit will make you think your meeting your maker, or Barney, or Bush (the band, with the prez singing lead), or your at a Metallica concert when you're sitting at your first graders recital.
There was a reality TV style dating show on PBS, who's name escapes me, that was set in the Victorian era where modern British women and men lived in a house together and did everything according to said era. The men were brought the short beer in the morning and had to, as the custom was, drink all day which was funny in the beginning because none of them handled their liquor well at all.
If anyone has those pictures, I'll make a special category for them.
the alcohol in the absinthe is not it hallucenigenic property, it is fermented with an additive called wormwood, which in turn invokes a chemical reaction and produces the drug "thujone" the psychoactive ingreident. Far less intense than LSD Mescaline (Peyote) and Psilocyben (magic mushrooms), its simply more or less just an altered perception with few visual and audio hallucination. Plus, the liquor that the wormwood is mixed in is about 150 proof, so the consumption ratio of the alcohol usually dwarf (especially nowadays) the contending level of thujone. Essentially, your so shitfaced by the time you trip you might as well drink 151...plus it tastes like black fuckin liquorish anyway.