It was called “the Green Fairy” Among the bohemian artists and writers of late 19th-century Paris, it took on legendary status for its supposed ability to enhance consciousness and bring on s inspiring hallucinations.
Its strange reputation was only enhanced when, in the early 20th century, country after country in Europe banned its production in response to stories of madness and illness supposedly brought on by its mysterious powers.
And now, at long last, modern science has stepped forward to examine this peculiar substance and discover what it was that made it so dangerous…
…only to find there really isn’t much of a mystery at all.
The substance in question is absinthe, a favored drink, once upon a time, of van Gogh, Degas, Toulouse-Latrec and Picasso, and most recently made famous by the movie musical Moulin Rouge (which itself appeared to be inspired by an over-indulgence in mind-altering materials).
Absinthe was first distilled from wormwood, anise, hyssop and various other herbs in 1792 by a French doctor named Pierre Ordinaire, who marketd it as a cure-all tonic. It proved so popular others soon started to make it.
I don’t now how it was taken as a tonic, but as a drink, it was traditionally diluted with iced water (four to six parts water to one part absinthe), which was poured through a sugar cube placed on a special slotted absinthe spoon, which was then used to stir the mixture, which would turn from clear green to cloudy.
According to La Fee Absinthe, a modern distiller of the liquor, diluted absinthe has a smooth anise flavor, which is “reminiscent of long summer days in the south of France,” which to me sounds like it probably makes you hot, sweaty and uncomfortable, although I doubt that’s quite the image the marketers wanted to evoke.
Eighty years after absinthe came on the market, it exploded in popularity, thanks to a bug called phylloxera that in 1870 began chewing its way through the root stocks of vineyards all over the country, almost destroying the French wine industry in the process. Wine became scarce and very expensive…and, in the hedonistic café culture of Paris, absinthe took its place. (The fact it was supposedly an aphrodisiac probably helped.)
As the stories of people who drank absinthe coming to bad ends proliferated, however, absinthe got the reputation it has had ever since, of being a dangerous drug just one step removed from pure poison.
France held on longer than most of the rest of the world before banning it. In 1910, the year Switzerland banned absinthe, 36 million litres of it were sold in france. By 1912, when it was banned in the United States, French sales had swelled to 220 million litres. But three years later, in 1915, France followed suit as well. (The country had been issuing absinthe to its troops in the belief it helped prevent malaria, but then blamed it for widespread desertion during the First World War. Also, the rejuvenated wine industry wanted its customers back.)
You’ll often hear claims that modern absinthe, legal since the ban was lifted in 1988, isn’t the same as pre-ban absinthe, that the pre-ban stuff had some mysterious ingredient that accounted for its mind-altering effects.
I don’t know why it took so long, but a team from Europe and the United States finally decided to find out if that was true. The researchers analyzed 13 samples of pre-ban absinthe from sealed bottles. Among the ingredients they searched for was thujone, a substance found in wormwood that some have claimed existed in higher quantities in pre-ban absinthe than in the modern stuff, and might have caused effects that we don’t see today.
And their findings? Pre-ban absinthe has the same small concentrations of thujone as modern absinthe. But they did find an ingredient that could explain some of absinthe’s supposed effects.
Absinthe, you see, is 140-proof, meaning it’s 70 percent alcohol. By contrast, gin, vodka and whiskey are “only” 80 to 100 proof, or 40 to 50 percent alcohol.
“Absinthism” was probably nothing more or less than good old alcohol abuse.
Doesn’t seem nearly so romantic when you think of it that way, does it?
