Absinthe

[Travis_R]

Has anyone here ever tried Absinthe? I recently have, and I must say I was not too inspired. Has anyone had any hallucinations or reminders of works by artists and authors on Absinthe? What is your general opinions on the drink?

PS. Nasty stuff it was.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes I bought a bottle and gave it away, it’s just poison. Belgian beer is the drink of the Gods; and water the drink of the wise. The hallucination business is myth anyway if you read up on it, and certainly today there's nothing in it to cause hallucination, it's just 70% pure alcohol in a green bottle - besides, I have hallucinations all the time and they're called dreams!

[kiki1982]

I think the drink tastes of aniseed?

Other than that: Thank you Neely for the compliment ;).

I thought absinthe did actually at some point cause delusions and things like that because there was that substance in it. Because it caused so much trouble amongst the generation of Degas adn Renoir and the like, they decided to forbid the drink and make it illegal. At some point they did reallow it, but without that substance in it (when they had finally identified the problem chemically). So now, they sell it again, but no-one is actually going to become crazy. But maybe that's a little over the top as double-blind tests proved inconclusive, though the compound is adictive. Maybe they got hallucinations that way (lack of it). Or one just decided to make it out and then the rest immitated... :p

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, it was the wormwood element that was supposed to cause hallucinations or the chemical thujone, but many of the stories it seems were greatly exaggerated and could also be attributed to a variety of other things – for example high alcohol content, poor diet, lack of sleep combined.

I’m sure that there are some better quality versions out there but the one I had recently was rank, and like I said, I gave it away to friend – is that not what friends are for? I did have some several years ago that must have been of better quality because it didn’t taste too bad, but on the whole it is mostly good quality beer that I like (see the most noble Belgian beer thread in general chat) or the occasional glass of wine, especially with a meal that does it for me. I usually avoid spirits anyway.

Hey, the German wheat beers are very refreshing too!

[Travis_R]

I read that cheap versions of Absinthe often contained cyanide and ammonia which are what lead to the hallucinations. Yum.
I must admit it was a different kind of drunk however, I seemed to have more control over my thoughts however my legs went numb after a while :rolleyes:

[Vladimir777]

I had heard that you can't buy absinthe in the states with the hallucinatory chemical in it (I guess wormwood, as someone else said). Did you get it in the US, or did you get it overseas?

And yes, not sleeping for days most definitely can cause hallucinations, as Neely pointed out. Hope to not be there ever again....

[billl]

There's articles about the history and stuff, and I think there might be differences between Absinthe "then" and the type that is sold now. Certainly, at the beginning or the recent resurgence, there was stuff being sold that was in almost no way comparable to the "real stuff." But I forget pretty much everything I read about it, and a lot was contradictory. I do remember that the Absinthe from Renior's time was much more bitter, and that's why there was a whole ritual with sugar and a special spoon.

I've had it a few times, but only went beyond being "buzzed" with it twice (the other times, I just had a single glass). One important thing to keep in mind (I can't tell from the preceding posts if this might factor in or not) is that Absinthe will taste absolutely terrible if you drink it straight, and that isn't how it was/is drunk. (Well, maybe some French soldiers drank it that way 100 or so years ago in Africa or whatever.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe#Preparation

You are supposed to pour water into the glass of Absinthe very slowly. After a few seconds, a certain concentration of water will cause the liquid to turn white and translucent. It is cool-looking when it happens, and the drink is pretty good. It is STILL pretty strong, though.

This is the kind I had:
http://www.pernod.net/main.htm

It was actually sweet (I believe the sugar is pre-mixed in the absinthe these days). I got pretty crazy drunk off of it, and maybe noticed visual distortions a bit at our table at the restaurant, but I was of course LOOKING for such distortions, and it was a place I'd never been before.

Anyhow, IF you haven't mixed in the water, definitely give that a shot, and be safe.

[JuniperWoolf]

I got a bottle for christmas. I liked the process of setting it up better than the actual drinking (the little spoon and lighting the sugar cube on fire, it was neat. I pretended to be a self involved nineteenth-century French poet). It didn't taste as aweful as I thought it would.

No hallucinations on my part.

[Red-Headed]

I had heard that you can't buy absinthe in the states with the hallucinatory chemical in it (I guess wormwood, as someone else said).

You can buy the real thing in my country, & yes, it can be hallucinogenic.

[Emil Miller]

A couple of years ago absinthe was being drunk in the UK as a fahionable drink. It wasn't the real stuff that comes from France but an imitation that was being made in the Czech Republic. I know of only one place in London where the real stuff can be bought but it is extremely expensive.
I have never drunk it although William Somerset Maugham said it was heaven to drink a dry martini with a dash of absinthe.

[Red-Headed]

A couple of years ago absinthe was being drunk in the UK as a fahionable drink. It wasn't the real stuff that comes from France but an imitation that was being made in the Czech Republic. I know of only one place in London where the real stuff can be bought but it is extremely expensive.


This was the real thing, & I acquired it from a an exclusive shop (I knew the owner well). & yes, it was expensive.

[sixsmith]

I've consumed what must be a cheap and bastardized version of absinthe on 2 or 3 occasions. That is to say, it was called 'Absinthe', though i suspect Degas, Renoir et al were drinking something different. The hallucinatory properties of this faux absinthe appear to be minimal, unless the vomit inducing headache and temporary loss of motor/language skills were part of a very **** fantasy.

[MANICHAEAN]

As an aperatif I enjoy a Pernod Ricard when in France. Long glass, ice cube & when you add water to taste it turns milky. Clean, refreshing taste. But apparently its a not too good modern imitation of the historic pre 1915 absinthe drink.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Probably no thread on Absinthe would be complete without mentioning Wilde, so here are a few: (taken from Ellmann)


Wilde had only enough energy to live out the day, or rather the night, for like his mother he did not get up till afternoon. Increasingly he sought assistance from stimulants, the favourite being the Dutch liqueur Advocaat, though he then switched to brandy and absinthe. His attitude to absinthe varied. “It has no message for me,” he told Bernard Bernson. But to Arthur Machen he said, “I never could quite accustom myself to absinthe, but it suits my style so well.” Gradually he warmed to it, and said in Dieppe, “Absinthe has a wonderful colour, green. A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?” And, “I have discovered,” he said, “that alcohol taken in sufficient quantity produces all the effects of drunkenness”.

Leon Daude’t Schwob’s account of Wilde:
"A big man, with a large pasty face, red cheeks, and ironic eye, bad and protrusive teeth, a vicious childlike mouth with lips soft with milk ready to such some more. While he ate – and he ate little – he never stopped smoking opium-tainted Egyptian cigarettes. A terrible absinthe-drinker, through which he got his visions and desires”.


Later Mrs Leverson would remember some of his conversation. He had romantic ideas about absinthe, and described its effect to here: “After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.” “How do you mean?” “I mean disassociated. Take a top-hat! You think you see it as it really is. But you don’t because you associate it with other things and ideas. If you had never heard of one before, and suddenly saw it alone, you’d be frightened, or laugh. That is the effect absinthe has, and that is why it drives men mad.” He went on, “Three nights I sat up all night drinking absinthe, and thinking that I was singularly clearheaded and sane. The waiter came in and began watering the sawdust. The most wonderful flowers, tulips, lilies, and roses sprang up and made a garden of the cafe. “Don’t you see them?” I said to him. “Mias, non, monsieur, i’ n’y a rien.”’ There was no drug to make the world flower now.


In such meetings Wilde passed June and July of 1897. Most of his friends paid for their pension in the Hotel de la Plage, although Dowson not only failed to do this, but borrowed money from Wilde as well. It took months for one hard-up writer to retrieve the money from another. On the other hand, Wilde always defended Dowson. When someone said, “it’s a pity he drinks so much absinthe,” Wilde shrugged his shoulders as he replied, “if he didn’t drink, he would be somebody else. Il faut accept la personnalite comme elle est. Il ne faut jamais regretter au ‘un poete est saoul, il faut regretter que les saouls ne soient pas toujours poetes”. (“Personality must be accepted for what it is. You mustn’t mind that a poet is a drunk, rather than drunks are not always poets”.)

Near the end of Wilde’s life:

With some difficulty he made his way to a cafe, where he drank absinthe, then walked laboriously back. Wilde said to Claire de Prata, “my wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death, One or the other of us has to go.” Ross said, “you’ll kill yourself, Oscar. You know the doctor said absinthe was poison for you”. “And what do I have to live for?” Wilde asked.

Ellmann:

No wonder he drooped. Or that he had a constant sense of ill being, checked but not eliminated by absinthe and brandy. No wonder that he stayed in bed longer and longer, until he discovered that he was bedridden. His body had its reasons, his mind also. Ross was cheering himself up when he contradicted his earlier statement by saying that Wilde’s last years had not been so bad: though he had continued to find young men, to talk, eat and drink, all these familiar activities took place in a desolate environment, the memory of what he had been and the sense of what he had become, the trivial debts at which he had once laughed and now could only cry, the snubs and insults which every day brought. English laws had misdone him by punishment, and English society finished him off by ostracism.

[Phaedra's Love]

It wasn't so much the alcohol that killed me, but the aniseed taste. Unfortunately nobody told me that spice is called "anise" in English! I've hated anise since I was a child so when I had my first sip I gagged. I'm not going anywhere near that liquid ever again.

I wonder what sambuca is like, I hear that it's absinthe without the anise. That I could do with.

[mtpspur]

Never tried it and certainly never will. But this might be of interest. In Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Return of Tarzan, our favorite Ape Man is doing a very good job of indulging in Chapter 3 while in Paris studying what the civilized boys do. And they go on and on about Sherlock Holmes' cocaine use.

[JuniperWoolf]

I find it kinda tastes like warm liquorice.