October 24, 2024 • 9 mins
Absinthe once had a sinister reputation for causing hallucinations and even insanity, but it's only as hazardous as any other alcohol. Learn about the history and science behind absinthe in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/absinthe.htm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren bollebam here. When absinthe was banned in France, Switzerland,
the United States, and many other countries in the early
nineteen hundreds, this Anni's flavored liquor had become associated with
illicit behavior who was accused of turning children into criminals,
(00:24):
encouraging loose morals, and even inspiring murders. The fact that
regular old alcohol received similar treatment during the temperance and
prohibition periods in the United States turns out to be
pretty apropos We now know that properly made absinthe is
no more dangerous than any other properly prepared liquor. But okay,
(00:47):
what about all the tales of hallucinations being visited by
the grain fairy of Oscar Wilde and his tulips, of
family massacres and certain death. Absinthe does have a very
high alcohol content, anywhere between fifty five and seventy five percent.
Alcohol by volume is sometimes referred to in the industry
as one hundred and ten to one hundred and fifty proof.
(01:10):
A standard liquors like the whiskeys, vodkas, RUMs, and tequilas
are usually only about forty percent alcohol by volume or
eighty proof, with a high end. At absinthe's low end,
people who have experienced strange effects while drinking absinthe have
generally just been drunk, which brings us to an important
note here, drink responsibly. How absinthe got this dangerous and
(01:34):
almost otherworldly reputation is the result of the international temperance movement,
the French wine blight, and the perhaps overactive imaginations and
drinking habits of a generation of artists. But let's back
up a bit. Absinthe is traditionally made by first making
a high proof neutral spirit, that is, fermenting something like grapes, grains,
(01:58):
sugar beets, or sugar cane, and then distilling out or
concentrating the ethanol in that ferment. You then redistill the
spirit while adding botanical elements like wormwood, annis phenyl, and
various other herbs and flowers by either mastrating them in
the spirit or steaming the spirit through them. During that distillation,
(02:18):
some of the botanical oils and the alcohol will evaporate
faster than the water, so you can separate them. Ount
You might also steep some botanicals in the spirit after
distillation and strain the solids out prior to bottling. These
different methods pick up different flavor molecules from those botanicals,
and the final steep will give you the classic green
(02:39):
color from chlorophyll from the herb's leaves. Absinthe is not
a hallucinogen. The chemical that's long been blamed for its
alleged hallucinogenic effects is thujone, which is a molecule that
naturally occurs in wormwood. In very high doses, thu jone
can be toxic bitter of one of the main neurotransmitters
(03:02):
in the brains of adult mammals, called gamma amino butyic acid,
or GABBA. Very basically, under normal circumstances, GABBA helps regulate
activity across our entire nervous system, so when you ingest
too much of a GABBA inhibitor like thujone, it can
cause muscle spasms and convulsions. A thu jone occurs naturally
(03:25):
in many things that we consume, but you'd have to
take in a lot of it to experience negative effects.
In the US, fu jone levels and absinth are capped
at ten milligrams per liter. Some laws in Europe allow
for up to thirty five milligrams per liter. Either way,
someone drinking absinthe would pass out and possibly die from
alcohol poisoning long before they were affected by the thu jone,
(03:48):
and there's no evidence at all that thujone can cause
hallucinations even in those high doses. Modern science tells us
that any absence related deaths can most likely be attributed
to alcoholism, alcohol poisoning, or poisoning from subpar distillation practices.
Absinth started out as a mostly medicinal preparation of alcohol
(04:12):
and wormwood along with other plants, somewhere in what's now
the French to Swiss Alps sometime in the sixteen hundred's. Fish,
both spirits, and wormwood had been used medicinally for basically
as long as humans knew about them. Absinth started to
become a fun times drink around the turn of the
eighteen hundreds in France especially, and then absolutely boomed throughout
(04:35):
that century, partially due to its association with good health.
People turned even more towards it after a mysterious blight
hit Europe's and especially France's vineyards, wiping out millions of
hectares of wine grapes. From the eighteen sixties through the
eighteen nineties, no one had any idea what to do.
Winemakers were burning entire fields to attempt to contain the disease,
(04:59):
but to no avail. People blamed everything from the laying
of iron railways in the soil to the sins of
mankind and tried everything from volcanic ash from Pompeii to
mixtures of whale oil and gasoline. For decades nothing worked.
Upwards of seventy percent of French vineyards were destroyed and
the price of wine skyrocketed, and the people turned to absinthe.
(05:24):
Researchers eventually figured out a tiny bug, a type of
aphid from America, was causing the damage by sucking the
vines dry through their roots, and that American grape roots
were immune, so the fields could be replanted. But all
of that is a different episode. Meanwhile, artists from Degas
and Manet to both There and Oscar Wilde featured the
(05:47):
drink in their works. The market had everything from high
end brand names to cheap knockoffs made of questionable home brews.
By the turn of the nineteen hundreds, absinthe was the
drink of comoner's gutter escapist of the poor but decadent
bohemian and of the wealthies showy extravagance. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the
(06:09):
public mood in France was shifting. With the Industrial Revolution
came the economic and cultural movements that allowed for all
of this art and opulence. But there were also more
poor working class folks struggling in cities and lower birth
rates because of the higher employment and education of women,
plus all those convention defying artistic types, and there was
(06:30):
a boost in diagnosis of insanity, probably because of a
shift in diagnostics, But public officials were concerned. In France,
there was a nationalistic concept that the population was in
decline or even degenerating, and people wanted reasons. The temperance
movement was gaining traction at the time, and alongside that
(06:52):
a few pseudoscientific texts were written decrying absinthe is specifically
worse than other alcohols. Then there came a high profile tragedy,
the murder of a woman and two small girls by
their own head of the family in a small village
in Switzerland in nineteen oh five. The man claimed to
(07:13):
not remember the crime, and it's no wonder because it
turned out he had started drinking before dawn and gone
on to have another dozen or so drinks by the
time he and his wife got in a fight that evening,
all of which was apparently habitual, but a few of
those drinks were absent, and the town mayor and the
newspapers and basically everyone latched onto that as the cause
(07:36):
of the murders. All of that is why countrywide bands
started going into effect in nineteen oh five and lasted
about a century. However, finally scientific research prevailed and absinthe
is now perfectly legal in every country in which alcohol
is legal. To begin with two, drink absente in the
(07:56):
traditional style, pour about an ounce of it into a
small glass. Place a perforated absence spoon or fork if
you do not possess such a thing over top of
the glass, and place a cube of sugar on top
of it. Then slowly pour about three to five ounces
of cold water over the sugar cube. It should crumble
into the drink. A stir with a spoon or fork
(08:16):
to dissolve. The liquid in the glass will go from
clear bright green to almost opaque pastel green. This cloudiness
happens because absinthe contains anis, which itself contains an oily
compound called anathol. Anathol is soluble in alcohol but not
in water, so when water is mixed into the absinthe
(08:37):
it beads up, and those beads disperse themselves evenly throughout
the alcohol, making it appear cloudy. Furthermore, it stays beaded
and dispersed in a way that essentially confounds modern physics.
This is called the Uzo effect due to the Greek
liquor uzos. Similar anis based properties. Researchers are looking into
(08:58):
ways that this reaction could be applied to all sorts
of industries, from food science to cosmetics to nanotechnology. It's
not quite a green fairy, but it's possibly more fascinating.
Today's episode is based on the article does add someth
really cause Hallucinations? On how stuffworks dot com? Written by
(09:19):
Julia Layton. For even more about the history and science
of absinth, check out our episode about it on my
other podcast saver available wherever you get your podcasts. Brain
Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. For more
podcasts from My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren bollebam here. When absinthe was banned in France, Switzerland,
the United States, and many other countries in the early
nineteen hundreds, this Anni's flavored liquor had become associated with
illicit behavior who was accused of turning children into criminals,
(00:24):
encouraging loose morals, and even inspiring murders. The fact that
regular old alcohol received similar treatment during the temperance and
prohibition periods in the United States turns out to be
pretty apropos We now know that properly made absinthe is
no more dangerous than any other properly prepared liquor. But okay,
(00:47):
what about all the tales of hallucinations being visited by
the grain fairy of Oscar Wilde and his tulips, of
family massacres and certain death. Absinthe does have a very
high alcohol content, anywhere between fifty five and seventy five percent.
Alcohol by volume is sometimes referred to in the industry
as one hundred and ten to one hundred and fifty proof.
(01:10):
A standard liquors like the whiskeys, vodkas, RUMs, and tequilas
are usually only about forty percent alcohol by volume or
eighty proof, with a high end. At absinthe's low end,
people who have experienced strange effects while drinking absinthe have
generally just been drunk, which brings us to an important
note here, drink responsibly. How absinthe got this dangerous and
(01:34):
almost otherworldly reputation is the result of the international temperance movement,
the French wine blight, and the perhaps overactive imaginations and
drinking habits of a generation of artists. But let's back
up a bit. Absinthe is traditionally made by first making
a high proof neutral spirit, that is, fermenting something like grapes, grains,
(01:58):
sugar beets, or sugar cane, and then distilling out or
concentrating the ethanol in that ferment. You then redistill the
spirit while adding botanical elements like wormwood, annis phenyl, and
various other herbs and flowers by either mastrating them in
the spirit or steaming the spirit through them. During that distillation,
(02:18):
some of the botanical oils and the alcohol will evaporate
faster than the water, so you can separate them. Ount
You might also steep some botanicals in the spirit after
distillation and strain the solids out prior to bottling. These
different methods pick up different flavor molecules from those botanicals,
and the final steep will give you the classic green
(02:39):
color from chlorophyll from the herb's leaves. Absinthe is not
a hallucinogen. The chemical that's long been blamed for its
alleged hallucinogenic effects is thujone, which is a molecule that
naturally occurs in wormwood. In very high doses, thu jone
can be toxic bitter of one of the main neurotransmitters
(03:02):
in the brains of adult mammals, called gamma amino butyic acid,
or GABBA. Very basically, under normal circumstances, GABBA helps regulate
activity across our entire nervous system, so when you ingest
too much of a GABBA inhibitor like thujone, it can
cause muscle spasms and convulsions. A thu jone occurs naturally
(03:25):
in many things that we consume, but you'd have to
take in a lot of it to experience negative effects.
In the US, fu jone levels and absinth are capped
at ten milligrams per liter. Some laws in Europe allow
for up to thirty five milligrams per liter. Either way,
someone drinking absinthe would pass out and possibly die from
alcohol poisoning long before they were affected by the thu jone,
(03:48):
and there's no evidence at all that thujone can cause
hallucinations even in those high doses. Modern science tells us
that any absence related deaths can most likely be attributed
to alcoholism, alcohol poisoning, or poisoning from subpar distillation practices.
Absinth started out as a mostly medicinal preparation of alcohol
(04:12):
and wormwood along with other plants, somewhere in what's now
the French to Swiss Alps sometime in the sixteen hundred's. Fish,
both spirits, and wormwood had been used medicinally for basically
as long as humans knew about them. Absinth started to
become a fun times drink around the turn of the
eighteen hundreds in France especially, and then absolutely boomed throughout
(04:35):
that century, partially due to its association with good health.
People turned even more towards it after a mysterious blight
hit Europe's and especially France's vineyards, wiping out millions of
hectares of wine grapes. From the eighteen sixties through the
eighteen nineties, no one had any idea what to do.
Winemakers were burning entire fields to attempt to contain the disease,
(04:59):
but to no avail. People blamed everything from the laying
of iron railways in the soil to the sins of
mankind and tried everything from volcanic ash from Pompeii to
mixtures of whale oil and gasoline. For decades nothing worked.
Upwards of seventy percent of French vineyards were destroyed and
the price of wine skyrocketed, and the people turned to absinthe.
(05:24):
Researchers eventually figured out a tiny bug, a type of
aphid from America, was causing the damage by sucking the
vines dry through their roots, and that American grape roots
were immune, so the fields could be replanted. But all
of that is a different episode. Meanwhile, artists from Degas
and Manet to both There and Oscar Wilde featured the
(05:47):
drink in their works. The market had everything from high
end brand names to cheap knockoffs made of questionable home brews.
By the turn of the nineteen hundreds, absinthe was the
drink of comoner's gutter escapist of the poor but decadent
bohemian and of the wealthies showy extravagance. Meanwhile, meanwhile, the
(06:09):
public mood in France was shifting. With the Industrial Revolution
came the economic and cultural movements that allowed for all
of this art and opulence. But there were also more
poor working class folks struggling in cities and lower birth
rates because of the higher employment and education of women,
plus all those convention defying artistic types, and there was
(06:30):
a boost in diagnosis of insanity, probably because of a
shift in diagnostics, But public officials were concerned. In France,
there was a nationalistic concept that the population was in
decline or even degenerating, and people wanted reasons. The temperance
movement was gaining traction at the time, and alongside that
(06:52):
a few pseudoscientific texts were written decrying absinthe is specifically
worse than other alcohols. Then there came a high profile tragedy,
the murder of a woman and two small girls by
their own head of the family in a small village
in Switzerland in nineteen oh five. The man claimed to
(07:13):
not remember the crime, and it's no wonder because it
turned out he had started drinking before dawn and gone
on to have another dozen or so drinks by the
time he and his wife got in a fight that evening,
all of which was apparently habitual, but a few of
those drinks were absent, and the town mayor and the
newspapers and basically everyone latched onto that as the cause
(07:36):
of the murders. All of that is why countrywide bands
started going into effect in nineteen oh five and lasted
about a century. However, finally scientific research prevailed and absinthe
is now perfectly legal in every country in which alcohol
is legal. To begin with two, drink absente in the
(07:56):
traditional style, pour about an ounce of it into a
small glass. Place a perforated absence spoon or fork if
you do not possess such a thing over top of
the glass, and place a cube of sugar on top
of it. Then slowly pour about three to five ounces
of cold water over the sugar cube. It should crumble
into the drink. A stir with a spoon or fork
(08:16):
to dissolve. The liquid in the glass will go from
clear bright green to almost opaque pastel green. This cloudiness
happens because absinthe contains anis, which itself contains an oily
compound called anathol. Anathol is soluble in alcohol but not
in water, so when water is mixed into the absinthe
(08:37):
it beads up, and those beads disperse themselves evenly throughout
the alcohol, making it appear cloudy. Furthermore, it stays beaded
and dispersed in a way that essentially confounds modern physics.
This is called the Uzo effect due to the Greek
liquor uzos. Similar anis based properties. Researchers are looking into
(08:58):
ways that this reaction could be applied to all sorts
of industries, from food science to cosmetics to nanotechnology. It's
not quite a green fairy, but it's possibly more fascinating.
Today's episode is based on the article does add someth
really cause Hallucinations? On how stuffworks dot com? Written by
(09:19):
Julia Layton. For even more about the history and science
of absinth, check out our episode about it on my
other podcast saver available wherever you get your podcasts. Brain
Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks
dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. For more
podcasts from My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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