Absinthe and thujone

Poststructural Pub
1

Ok, I’m not much of a drinker. I’ll nurse a beer along through a session. Every blue moon, (less than every month), I’ll have a beer or a mixed drink with a meal.

That’s pretty much it.

But there is one kind of alcohol that’s always fascinated me, the bitter liquor absinthe, made from wormwood and a variety of other herbs.

There was a special ritual involved in drinking it, where you drizzled it carefully over a sugar cube held on a special spoon into water, where it formed a milky cloud on contact. Then you drank the mixture.

Absinthe is illegal in the United States. No alcoholic beverage of any kind can contain thujone, which is a chemical that comes from wormwood. This is because thujone was blamed in the late nineteenth century for the condition known as absinthism, which was supposed to be a kind of drunken stupor complete with hallucinations and memory loss found among chronic absinthe drinkers.

Modern studies have shown that there is no special condition as “absinthism;” rather, the observed condition was simply advanced alcholism, which isn’t good, but certainly isn’t unique to absinthe.

So even though I have some curiosity about this drink from antiquity, I doubt I’ll ever get to try it.

Ok, that’s not really a big deal. I drink very little anyway, so no great loss.

However, reading today on wikipedia, just surfing around, I wound up on the article about thujone, and read something that irritated me a bit.

Even though no beverage can contain thujone, sage and sage oil can legally be 50% thujone.

Yep, that’s fully half. :astonished:

Thanks for letting me rant a bit…I hate it when laws are inconsistent with reality.

–James

2

Calm down, James. Sounds like you could do with a drink.

3

Actually, in the US, it’s only illegal to sell the real stuff. You can buy it from overseas - the Czech varieties are considered quite good, but they’re not cheap- and keep it for your own use. I believe Canada’s laws about it are much more restrictive; it’s illegal, there, period.

One of my local liquor store sells “Absinthe”, but it’s ersatz in that the species of wormwood used for flavor supposedly doesn’t contain the thujone in question.

Among modern makers, the prevailing wisdom is that the bad effects were from bad makers who thought nothing of impurities, intentional or otherwise, in their product.

4

Ok, here’s another question for ya:

Sage can be legally half thujone.

So that wonderful, lightly buzzed, sleepy feel you get after the Thanksgiving feast…is it really the chemical in the turkey that gets you…or are you just in a drugged stupor from the dressing!!! :smiling_imp:

–James

5

What a sage musing, James.

6

Prevailing wisdom (again) sez that it’s the tryptophan in turkey flesh that does it.

I read an account from an American who sent for a bottle of the best Czech stuff ($120.00 or some ungodly amount) containing something like at least 70% thujone, probably more, and kept a journal while he went through the entire bottle in one night. Seems like a crazy sort of alertness was more his experience, and he said he didn’t even have a hangover the next day. Not exactly an experiment I’d care to research, but it was an interesting read indeed as his entries progressed. :boggle:

7

I thought Absinthe was illeagal due to it possesing similar effects of THC. Athough, according to this webpage it does not, nor does it have a high thujone content. Although, it does have a high alcohol content (around 60% or 120 proof), which is probably why people thought it caused insanity.

8

A high alcohol content is not necessary for insanity.

Do you know how many folks’ last words on this earth are “Hey! Hold my beer and watch this!” :boggle: :laughing:

–James

9

Okay, here’s a website that seems to have some straight information:

http://www.wormwoodsociety.org/index.html?http://www.wormwoodsociety.org/czech.html

Apparently the legalities in the US concerning Absinthe are less clear than I thought. According to the statutes presented, no wormwood products are legal for any species of wormwood, and yet you can still get the unofficial stuff, which has another species in it. Hmm.

10

My local wine store sells it,but I’ve never tried it and don’t feel the urge to either.

11

And apparently the Czech brands have in the main been touted due to hype, nothing more.

12

Oh! I watched a movie where they did that! I think it was Alfie with Jude Law…he was having drinks with the Susan Sarandon character. It looked rather odd to say the least. Not that it matters, I just thought I’d share. :wink: I just didn’t even know that it the stuff existed before I saw the movie.

13

In these cases, the high alcohol content isn’t in the can…:wink:

14

Interesting. I use and recommend products containing various kinds of wormwood on a regular basis – Artemisia species are commonly used in Chinese medicine, and a quick check of one of my materia medicas shows at least one species contains thujone. There have been problems getting certain herbs into the US (ephedra and other ephedrine-alkaloid containing products, for example), but i’ve never heard of any problem importing herbal prepared medicines containing any of the wormwoods.

15

Niether are drugs like Cocaine, LSD, etc., but that doesn’t stop people from acting insane while on them. :stuck_out_tongue:

It looks like interesting stuff. Any alcoholic beverage that is illeagal makes one wonder…

16

My grandmother often said, “Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.”
That always confused me. :confused:

Jef :wink:

17

When I was little I really hated turkey stuffing. My mom finally decided it must be the sage I didn’t like. I wonder if maybe, although the amount of sage must have been very small, I didn’t feel very good when I ate it or something. I love sage stuffing now.

I know that I didn’t feel good when I ate hotdogs when I was little and I concluded later that it must have been the nitrites. I didn’t have the problem when I was older, and bigger.

I didn’t know that asbinthe wasn’t dangerous. I drank a lot of that Pernod, which I think was supposed to be similar, once and I’m still not over how sick I got. It was over 30 years ago and I still can’t even look at a bottle of it. Served me right though. :laughing:

18

That’s another thing I don’t get. At least one of the Artemisa species is commonly called mugwort, right? I was aware that mugwort was used in Asian medecines. So as far as the US statutes go as presented in the link I provided, there must be some leeway, although it isn’t entirely clear to me how.

19

Yes, mugwort is Artemisia Argyii or Artemisia Vulgaris. It is used both internally and externally (the leaves are burned to create heat which is used to warm areas of the body, a practice called “moxibustion”). In addition, there are another dozen or so species of Artemisia which are commonly used in Chinese medicine. I can get the raw stuff by the pound, but more to the point, i can get alcohol extracts of these plants or tablets containing them with no problem.

Herbal medicines are regulated as dietary supplements (in other words, they are regulated as food rather than drugs) by the FDA. Granted, i need to have my license number on file with my suppliers to order the herbs wholesale, but you can get a lot of these preparations at your local health food store as well.

Strange, the law looks like FDA territory rather than ATF, but maybe FDA doesn’t involve itself with liquor so that’s why the inconsistency. Not that i’m complaining, mind you, my life would be more difficult without access to these plants…

20

I was taught that thujone is solute in alcohol
and that thujone isn’t very solute in water if at all.

You could infuse the herb in some Everclear to see what thujone poisoning feels like, but then Everclear is enough to trash your liver on its own.