Absinthe/Absinth

Has anyone here ever tried the stuff? It's a greenish liquor containing a chemical called thujone, which has psychotropic properties. It's illegal to sell in the U.S.A., but it can be ordered online and shipped legally for personal consumption.

I've been doing a phenomenal amount of research on it's properties, brands, and availability. I live in Ontario, Canada, and the liquor control board of Ontario (LCBO) have the only liquor stores in the province. They sell only one brand of Absinth: Hill's. I've looked into reviews on Absinth, and apparently it's garbage (there are numerous brands of absinth that claim to be real, but are just coloured liquors trying to cash in on the market). Hill's does contain thujone, but a very small amount. All of the sites that claim 'worldwide shipping' do not ship to Canada, because they say shipped alcohol keeps on getting sent back at the border. Argh, this is so frustrating!

Anyone ever try it? What is your preferred brand, and how did you come across it?

i am sure that chemical has some nasty side effects. other wise it would not be banned. isnt normal alcohol plenty for you? it is for me and i dont need other stuff.

we dont talk about warez here so i dont know why we would talk about ways to smuggle stuff across the border. if they do have it in your country look if not let it go.

personaly i have never heard of it. never even heard of people doing such things to alcohol before.

but hey if they make a beer with a dead frog inside i am sure they have that

Sephiroth said:

i am sure that chemical has some nasty side effects. other wise it would not be banned.

It was banned in the early 20th century because the stuff made people crazy, but back then it was WAAY more potent than it is today. Also, there was virtually no regulation on the stuff, which meant that usually a drink was contaminated with something like copper or mercury (which make you go insane!).

we dont talk about warez here so i dont know why we would talk about ways to smuggle stuff across the border. if they do have it in your country look if not let it go.

I'm not talking about smuggling stuff across the border. It's an illegal drink to sell, not to own. As mentioned, there is a shitload of sites dedicated to shipping the stuff to homes in the states legally.

I knew some friends who made it in high school. I didnt try it myself but they said it was like being more drunk than was previously thought possible. One person reported mild hallucinations.

Edit: Oh I forgot to mention that one person had to have their stomach pumped.

yea, mercury is nasty. seen people go mad from that. ever hear of "mad hatter's desease" this was caused by the wearing of beaver skin hats. the skin some how had a high concentration of mercury and or lead, most likly during production. this would, over time, get absorbed by the skin and blood. the people years latter would be bat shit crazy, history teacher talked about it one day.

frog beer is made for a similar reason, they used cane toads. however this is very toxic and dangerous. cane toad toxin will cause hallucinations but it has many nasty side effects because it is a toxin

The green fairy was not banned because it made people crazy. One man who drank it murdered his entire family. That was the only reported "maniacal" incident. Propaganda distorted it, and therefore it was banned worldwide. Over recent decades, it was legalized again, and that chemical (a derivitive of wormwood and similar in chemical structure to THC, the main chemical in weed) is 10X less than what it SOMETIMES was in the past per volume, and is regulated. Absinthe is 136 proof, and has a very bitter, black licorice taste, flavored so by the wormwood. Pretty much all you need to make shitty absinthe (like you friends made) is wormwood and vodka. There is a process, but this is not the way to make it, and done wrong can make you sick. The chemical is only midly hallucinigenic, and anyone whose doesn acid or shrooms would be terribly disapointed. I'll try to find the link for a reliable source for purchase.

And Sephiroth, its perfectly legal to import (read:import not smuggle) it is just illegal at this point to sell in the US.

http://www.absintheoriginal.com/ Its like 70 bucks a bottle and they have some cool strainers too.

Making homemade absinth is NOT recommended. Wormwood extract is a banned food additive, and idiots who mix it with vodka deserve to get their stomach pumped.

One reasoj it was banned is because people started drinking pure wormwood extract. That's the equivalent of going from whiskey to rubbing alcohol. The stuff will kill you.

Anyway, I'd love to try some absinthe some day.

the_Danarchist said:

Anyway, I'd love to try some absinthe some day.

Me too. Heh, it's gonna make us REAL goths! :D :D :D :P

Ultraviolet said:

Me too. Heh, it's gonna make us REAL goths! :D :D :D :P

Hooraj!

Heh, it's good stuff. I once had a Gas Chamber shot - 100% absinthe, it was set alight and the fumes were caught in a glass. You downed the shot and then you had to inhale the fumes in the glass using a straw. My vision was going by the end of the night - thank god I was going to bed.

Absinthe has a really nice, sort of aniseed (sp?) flavour but it burns :P I've had it in various other shots as well, and unsurprisingly, it's the thing you can taste the most (apart from a Black Death - absinthe, black sambuca, tequila, and TABASCO. Depending on how much tabasco they put in, it can really blow your mouth off. But needless to say you don't taste much :P).

Absinthe contains dangerous ingredients, that will ultimately fry your brain and kill you. Or turns you into a vegetable. Don't mess around with it.

Have drunk it many times in my trips around the world, prefer it to pernod, always drank it with coke. Absinthe has never been outlawed in the United Kingdom. Absinthe is illegal for resale in the USA, but not illegal for personal consumption.

I actually have a bottle sitting on my desk right in front of me.

Mordeth is right. Absinthe is evil. I recommand not to drink a whole bottle on your own during a party. You may end up pretending to be DW's webmaster while Ling is dealing with the 10th anniversary... wait...

Mordeth said:

Absinthe contains dangerous ingredients, that will ultimately fry your brain and kill you. Or turns you into a vegetable. Don't mess around with it.

I hope you're being sarcastic.

Anyways, I emailed a website that said they have never had a problem shipping to Canada. So, woo hoo.

I might get a bottle for a new year party at, err, new year.

Or me and my friends can invent interesting cocktails/shooters, always a good laugh.

Meh, I don't do drugs.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY "DOOM"!!!!!!!

the only way i heard of it was cuz the pic of the keyboardist in the newest Dimmu Borgir cd's liners had a bottle with him. wondered why i hadnt heard of it before, and i guess i now know the reason. banx0red in the states

Absynthe also has the added bonus of making your girlfriend like you more. We have all heard the well known phrase Absynthe makes the heart grow fonder :P

"Absinthe makes the heart grow Fodders?" Hmmn.

from the rotten library:

Absinthe combines the potency of hard liquor with both the thrill of a dangerous poison and a ritual elaborate as that of any intravenous drug's. The beverage even has an enticing street name: The Green Fairy. As an added bonus, it's been illegal in the U.S. for almost a century.
Over the years, celebrity endorsements from the likes of Aleister Crowley, Oscar Wilde, and Marilyn Manson have contributed to the drink's illicit reputation. Even better for its image, it was the subject of famous artworks by Degas, Manet, Van Gogh, and others. These paintings often depicted lethargic addicts, tending to their glasses of green milky death. (No wonder, then, that absinthe has become an affectation of today's goth scene.)

In 1912, this actually quite humdrum greenish liqueur was banned in the United States partly because it was rumored to be a psychoactive aphrodisiac, but mainly because it was mistakenly regarded as the PCP of its day; in large doses it was supposed to induce uncontrollable homicidal urges. And long-term abuse of the drink was known to cause a debilitating syndrome known as absinthism, which manifested itself as insomnia, tremors, paralysis, hallucinations, convulsions, and so on. Today a physician would recognize these effects as being symptomatic of Delirium Tremens, resulting from nothing more exotic than chronic alcoholism.

Confusing the matter somewhat, absinthe does contain a small quantity of wormwood oil, which in turn contains thujone. Thujone is a colorless liquid marked by an aroma not unlike that of Vicks VapoRub. Chemically, the molecule resembles the bastard child of menthol and THC. What's more, it is a virulent neurotoxin. When administered orally to mice, alpha-thujone produces lethality in 50% of subjects at a dosage of 87.5 mg/kg, making it about half as dangerous as fluoride (LD50 at 44.3 mg/kg). For this reason the FDA banned wormwood oil as a food additive, although for some reason they haven't banned sage oil, which also contains the dreaded compound.

It is assumed that in the good old days, absinthe contained lots and lots of wormwood oil. Nowadays, the drink is manufactured primarily in Europe and so is subject to regulation by the European Economic Union. The EEU's maximum allowable proportion of thujone in absinthe is 10 parts per million. Experts speculate that a century ago, 260 ppm was not unheard of. However, this is really nothing more than an educated guess, and some critics propose that 60 ppm was probably more like it.

The most likely way that this stuff will kill you is to drink somebody's homebrew -- you just never know about the quality control. In 1997, a 31-year-old Boston man gave himself seizures and renal failure after he drank a small amount of straight wormwood oil. Evidently the guy was gathering ingredients for an absinthe recipe and decided to sample the notorious wormwood. Whoops.



the ritual
Of course, nothing anyone will say can dissuade you once you're determined to get some of that Green Fairy poontang. To do it right, you will need a few things in addition to the hooch itself: some cold water, sugar cubes, an absinthe glass, and an absinthe spoon.

Fill your glass with absinthe up to the marked fill line.
Lay the spoon flat across the mouth of the glass.
Position a sugar cube over the slots in the spoon.
Slowly trickle water over the sugar cube and into the glass. With the introduction of water, the mixture will turn milky as the various oils and aromatics precipitate out of solution. (See? Chemistry class was useful.)
After your sugar cube has finished doing its impression of an eroding urinal cake, continue adding water until you reach your preferred strength. The most popular ratio of absinthe to water is somewhere around 1:5.
When you're ready, remove the spoon and take a sip.
Then, in your best Jackie Gleason voice, interject: "MMMM, THAT'S GOOD ABSINTHE!"
That last step's the one that the goth kids always seem to omit.



Further adding to absinthe's mystique was the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Oddly enough, the Ukranian word chornobyl means "wormwood."

This was also called "Fee" here in Germany. But the word does not mean "charge" in German, it means a good witch, a women with magic powers who tries to help. Like the good woman in the tales, who comes in the night and takes away the teeth of the children - but leaves a gold coin.

Peter Heinemann said:

This was also called "Fee" here in Germany. But the word does not mean "charge" in German, it means a good witch, a women with magic powers who tries to help. Like the good woman in the tales, who comes in the night and takes away the teeth of the children - but leaves a gold coin.

I fell asleep with my head under the pillow one night and she took out all my teeth!