Absinthe

[Dazey]

i never did understand all that percent proof stuff y'know.

Well then sit quietly little Lennikins and I shall explain! You're gonna like this actually cos it's basically how sailors (see I saw your ears prick up then ) used to tell if they were being fucked over back in the day when a daily rum ration was part of the deal for serving in the British Navy. What they used to do was get a small amount of gun powder and douse it in rum then try to light it. 100% proof was the minimum strength at which you could light it so they'd know at that point whether some cunt was watering down the rum rations. I think it's a fucking great little story me. When you talk about % alcohol by volume it means exactly that, so if you've got a pint of vodka then if it's 37.5% then 37.5% of the contents of that bottle are ethanol. Saying something is 37.5% proof is something completely different but for simplicity's sake it's usually about double the ABV. So 70% proof is about 35% alcohol by volume. Class dismissed!

[Nobodys_Fault]

Absinthe doesn't, and never did, cause hallucinations. The stories of hallucinations came about because they used to mix it with laudanum, which contains opium.

It does get you shitfaced drunk though.

Opium don't give you hallucinations though, it just mongs you out. The theory about the fungus and shit in it, makes sense that'd cause hallucinations, like mushrooms and that.

It doesn't cause LSD holy-crap-my-shoes-are-talking hallucinations but it does put the user in a vivid and euphoric dream state that a lot of people would've interpreted as "hallucinating."

The chemical in wormwood (thujone) that some claimed was to blame for hallucinations isn't psychoactive. In very high doses all it does is cause convulsions and by the end of the distillation process there is very little of it in absinthe. The amount of absinthe you would have to drink means you would die of alcohol poisoning long before thujone had any effect on your body.

[Dazey]

It doesn't cause LSD holy-crap-my-shoes-are-talking hallucinations but it does put the user in a vivid and euphoric dream state that a lot of people would've interpreted as "hallucinating."

That's called being shitfaced dear!

[Nobodys_Fault]

It doesn't cause LSD holy-crap-my-shoes-are-talking hallucinations but it does put the user in a vivid and euphoric dream state that a lot of people would've interpreted as "hallucinating."

That's called being shitfaced dear!

Yeah, but I'd imagine there's a difference between falling asleep at the bar shitfaced and falling asleep in an opium den shitfaced.

[YOUCOULDBEMINE.]

The only one tried was a bottle of Absinthe 89,9%. It tasted OK, burned in my throat and got me fucked up. Was a great night.

[Dan H.]

Buddy had a bottle at the bonfire last night.

I thought it tasted nice. A little minty with a black licorice taste.

All it did was fuck me up fast. I imagine the European shit is better since it has tujone or whatever in it.

Edited August 12, 2012 by NormalGuns

[dalsh327]

Absinthe doesn't, and never did, cause hallucinations. The stories of hallucinations came about because they used to mix it with laudanum, which contains opium.

It does get you shitfaced drunk though.

If they were going to someone bootlegging it at the time, and I'm sure there were low budget versions of it, who the hell knows what else was in it. I'm sure there's old articles about absinthe fatalities. You're also talking about an era of lead and mercury poisoning, untreated syphilis and a bunch of snake oil salesmen in their horse and carriage going town to town. They could prob dig up a few cadavers or find someone's hair and do toxicology reports. Civil War played a big part in opium addiction in the mid-late 1800s, Asians were bringing it by the boatloads by the end of the century. Freud used cocaine to treat opiate addicts.

Our great great grandparents were getting high as fuck over 100 years ago, and could buy your dope from a Sears catalog.

Tried it a couple of times, tasted like licorice. It was more about the bartender putting on a show than it was about the drink. It was kind of a short lived gimmick at the bars when it became legal, I guess once the thrill of it was over, they put it in storage. I got a freebie because everyone else there wanted to give it a try, and people were afraid they were going to be tripping balls. The one thing I couldn't do was the cobra heart shot in Thailand.