To the editors,
I just read your piece, “Goes down easy,” (Leisure, March 29, 2007) about absinthe by Chris Stanton.
Unfortunately very little of the information in it is at all accurate and appears to be gleaned from goth fan sites, not reliable sources.
I’d like to offer some updates and corrections, if I may, as this information is largely based on very old data which was erroneous and politically motivated. Modern studies do not support what has become conventional wisdom on absinthe liquor.
First, absinthe was never psychedelic. This is a modern misconception based primarily on reports that habitual absinthe abusers had hallucinatory states when observed in mental hospitals. Hallucinations and psychedelia were never among the reported desirable effects of absinthe, but only mentioned in the context of warnings from medical authorities and temperance lobbyists.
These hallucinations are now understood to have been the effects of alcoholic hallucinosis, the DTs, and were only observed in patients who had been abruptly deprived of all alcohol. Neither wormwood nor the thujone which is its primary volatile constituent have any psychedelic or hallucinogenic properties, certainly not in the small amounts found in absinthe.
Although absinthe was indeed favored by artists, writers and creative types, it was so ubiquitous as to be found in every one of the 33,000 cafes in Paris by the late 1800s. Virtually everyone who was a drinker was drinking absinthe at the time, including the less creative butchers, plumbers, fishermen and ditch-diggers. It’s just that the artists and writers were the ones who chronicled its role in their lives most eloquently. Absinthe basically got all the rap because it was the abused drink of choice in an alcoholic pandemic brought about by a scarcity of wine and the great availability of very cheap liquor (due to the grape vine phylloxera infestation of the late 1800s).
There are many absinthes on the market now which are made strictly according to historic 19th century recipes and protocols, with the same ingredients and amounts of those ingredients. They have all been demonstrated to contain levels of thujone well under the toxic range, so that one would have to drink literally cases of absinthe, at 70 percent alcohol, in oder to consume a toxic dose. There are however, as you point out, many products on the market which are imitations, actually fraudulent, most of which originate in the Czech Republic or other parts of Eastern Europe. These products use the bad-boy image of absinthe, along with exaggerations of thujone’s effects, as marketing gimmicks for the gullible.
You wrote, “On a trip to Lebanon last spring, I found people complementing theirmezze with a chilled glass of arak, a clear liquor distilled from grapes and aniseed diluted with water and ice to turn it an elegant, milky white color. The Lebanese drink pitchers of the stuff to cleanse their palates and their heads for a night out at Beirut’s famous night clubs. All of these delicious liquors, served well-chilled, are a wonderful conclusion to a great night out.”
This is precisely how absinthe was meant to be enjoyed and continues to be enjoyed by those who know how to drink it. The modern absinthe revival has unfortunately been swamped with hard-core college drinker and unscrupulous marketers cater to that image. This is not what absinthe is or was.
Please see our web site, www.wormwoodsociety.org, for more information.
Gwydion Stone
Founder, Chairman
The Wormwood Society
Seattle, Wa.
