May 21st, 2008 -- by Aphrodite
Seeing The Naked Green Fairy
I’ve read alot about absinthe and its mind-altering effects, but since I’m not much of a drinker I haven’t been too keen to try it. This artistic rendering of its effects may change my mind:
Image from New Scientist’s Short Sharp Science blog.
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Ooh, that’s pretty!
If you enjoy drinking alcohol, and don’t mind/enjoy the flavor of licorice, then you shouldn’t fear trying absynthe. The effects are mild and mellow. You have more to worry about from the alcohol in the drink than you do from the herbs. I’ve had reticent friends comment that they didn’t understand what the big deal was about AFTER trying it.
If you want the fairy without the alcohol, the magic fairy ingredient is wormwood. Lookout though, she will eat big holes in your brain.
Absinthe is nice and all, but I find the aparatus and artwork surrounding it far lovelier than the buzz itself.
Testing has pretty throughly shown that the supposed psychoactive ingredient – thujone – isn’t all that psychoactive and wasn’t ever in sufficient concentration in absinthe to account for it’s legendary intoxication.
In fact, the main intoxicant was always it’s high alcohol content.
However, I still adore the image above. It’s hard to resit a green-skinned woman, isn’t it, even if she’s incorporeal!
Further complicating the Absinthe myth, it’s impossible to tell how much wormwood (thujone) may have been in the asinthe of old. Modern absinthes mostly claim to have removed various toxic components found in wormwood, giving rise to some serious questions about whether you’re drinking the right stuff.
The volatile oil in wormwood (Artemisia Absinthium) would have to be consumed in such immense quantities in order to produce any ill effect that it really isn’t likely to happen.
The way most of the myths arose about the horrific effects of absinthe is that when the drink was extremely popular in the mid to late 19th century, dozens of producers started making cheap knock-offs, making clumsy tinctures with industrial alcohol rather than distilling properly, and adding god-knows-what dangerous chemicals in order the achieve the proper “opalescent” effect when sugar and water are added.
Also, a lot of the horror stories (“Verlaine drank absinthe, and became a murderous homosexual maniac!!!”), neglect to mention that such people were often mentally unstable chronic alcoholics who’s brains were swiss cheese thanks to syphilis, before they ever touched the absinthe.
This has been Mitsquana, your guide to the world of useless trivia!
twizted yes the effects are mild, but not if you have about a half bottle of 150 proof to yourself (made that mistake).
Don’t drink to excess, and it’s quite an enjoyable altered-mind-state. The Canadian Absinthe doesn’t have too much wormwood, so it won’t make you hallucinate, however, it is still quite enjoyable.
The present day consensus on the wormwood/thujone content as ever being sufficient enough to cause any enhanced effects is as Karl Elvis and Mitsquana have indicated. However, this doesn’t mean that at one time there weren’t other herbs which may have contributed to absinthe’s aphrodisiacal effects.
Quinine for instance, a typical absinthe ingredient, is a known muscle relaxant capable of fooling lie-detection machinery upon consumption. It can also be deadly by the way, and can act directly on the beating of one’s heart. High quinine content can make absinthe glow florescent under barroom black-lights (Ultra-Violet) by the way, which can contribute to it’s mystique…
Gentian, another common herb ingredient, can inhibit the urinary excretion of quinine, and can also act independently upon the heart and blood pressure.
A liqueur called Green Chartreuse (flavored with 130 herbal extracts) was sold in this country pretty much throughout the absinthe ban. A popular men’s magazine once boasted it may have aphrodisiac properties. Combining it with angostura bitters might even boost it’s psychoactive properties… Bitters contain the missing herbs that were once found in absinthe.
The most likely cause of it’s reputation may be that it was reported to produce a clear-headed drunken state. Alcohol by itself is a “downer” (or sedative or depressant), that can lead to unconsciousness. This isn’t too sexy, unless you’re planning date rape. Counteracting this sleepiness, by mixing it with a stimulant, can lead to getting laid (“Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker”). A typical modern day solution is the Jolt Cola (extremely high caffeine content) mixed with rum, or a cocktail known as the “Purple Monster”, consisting of vodka, Red Bull (which was developed in Thailand to keep truck drivers awake, by the company TC Pharmaceutical, and contains twice the caffeine as regular Cokes), and NyQuil, which one popular late-night TV talk-show host claimed was the reason Britney was acting so strange, and losing custody of her kids.