Can Absinthe Make You Hallucinate?

Absinthe has a dangerous reputation. But will you really meet The Green Fairy if you drink it?

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Episode Transcript

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(01:29):
and this is brain stuff. The one that is about
the most powerful of liquors absinthe. So in a Swiss
vineyard worker named John Lanfrey shot his pregnant wife and
his two daughters. Then he tried to kill himself unsuccessfully.
The public were absolutely outraged and blamed the whole thing
on two glasses of absinthe that Lanfrey had consumed before

(01:52):
his rampage. What is this beverage that could drive a
man to such madness? How is it made? Does it
actually make you hallucinate as some people claim? Well. Absinthe
is an annis flavored alcoholic drink, and for a while
there it was banned in the United States, Switzerland, and France.
It tastes kind of like liquorice. People used to call

(02:14):
it the green Fairy because it's green and supposedly it
made its consumers see things like you know, fairies. The
traditional recipe from before the band has a really high
alcohol content anywhere from fifty five to seventy, so you're
supposed to dilute it when you drink it, unless you've
already started the day drinking paint thinner, that is absence

(02:37):
made from anis phennel, a plant called wormwood, and a
variety of other herbs and flowers. You soak all these
ingredients in alcohol for anywhere from a day to a month.
Then you distill the mixture, causing it to evaporate and
leave behind bitter essences. You then recondense these with the
alcohol as it cools and dilutes. Manufactures add more herbs

(03:01):
later to give it the milky greenish color that it's
known for. It gets it the roma from the wormwood,
something like a mix of cinnamon and clothes. But don't
go buying this stuff out of the trunk of a
stranger's car. Falsified absinthe is typically made with industrial alcohol,
food dye, antimony, and copper salts. With that combination, you

(03:23):
might as well just stick with the paint thinner. But
the vintage absinthe from before the band that stuff can
go for as much as five hundred dollars for three
ounce vial, or ten thousand dollars for an entire bottle.
Wormwood has been used medicinally since fifteen fifty two BC
in Egypt. It's bitter taste is so old it's actually

(03:45):
mentioned in the Bible as a representation of injustice. It
was used as a general remedy for disease in the
Middle Ages, and get this, Mothers used to apply it
to their nipples to wean their babies off of breast milk.
In the eighteenth century, a French physician is rumored to
have developed the absinthe recipe with wormwood. This recipe was

(04:07):
first commercially produced in seventeen seven by Henri Louis Pernode,
and a century later it was incredibly popular because a
vine pest had made wine less available and people needed
to get their drink on. Simultaneously, an anti alcohol movement
was growing, called for by both doctors, the clergy and

(04:28):
the wine growers who wanted their industry back. The growers
started a misinformation campaign linking absinthe to hallucinations, seizures, suicides,
and murders like those committed by Lanfrey. They even produced
posters denouncing addiction to the drink as absinthe is m
Recent studies however, have shown that if there was a

(04:49):
real problem, it was actually widespread alcoholism that was to blame. Remember,
absinthe has an incredibly high concentration of alcohol in it,
and at the time it was one the most highly
consumed drinks in France, so the two went hand in hand.
But the scientists of the time, perhaps misguided by absintheism propaganda,

(05:09):
missed this inter relationship. Instead, they performed experiments on animals
to prove that wormwood was at fault, and rather than
use absinthe in their tests, they use essence to absinthe,
which is essentially pure wormwood oil. They shut guinea pigs
up with saucers of absinthe and alcohol, testing the effects

(05:30):
as the animals huffed in the fumes. They even made
lesions in the brains and spinal cords of cats so
they could administer wormwood directly. Guess what, When you cut
up a cat and rub wormwood oil on its bare brain,
it has seizures. Seeing this as a confirmation of their hypotheses,
their results were assumed to have the same effect on

(05:51):
the humans who drank commercial absinthe. Now here's the thing.
There's a component in wormwood called fo jone that in
high doses can be toxic. We used to think that
it suppressed neurotransmitters in the brain, but it's actually a
gamma amino betric acid inhibitor, meaning it blocks the brains

(06:12):
GABBA receptors. This causes convulsions. Food jone occurs naturally in
a lot of different foods, but never in doses that
are high enough to hurt you, and this includes absinthe.
Even with the variation in its alcohol levels, by the
time the drink is distilled, there's barely any food jone left.
There are different chemotypes of food jone two, and not

(06:34):
all of them have the same toxicological effects. And furthermore,
any effects felt under the influence of absinthe were in
conjunction with the intoxicating depressant of the ethanol that's also
in the drink. Examination of historic absinthe products has determined
that they actually had about the same food jone in
them as today's maximum limits will allow, meaning they weren't

(06:57):
toxic but did absent to make people hallucinate. It's unlikely,
but if it did, it was probably caused by the
ethanol content and not the thoo jone in the wormwood.
The absentthe available today in Europe has less ethanol and
a legal food jone content a thirty five milligrams per leader.

(07:18):
Most brands have the same ingredients and extracts as absinthe
from before the band they simply monitor the thoo jone.
Since two thousand seven, modern absinthe can only be sold
in the United States if it's through jone free. If
it has wormwood in it, the f d A considers
it adulterated. But honestly, you could probably get away with

(07:39):
bringing a bottle or two into the country in your suitcase.
And if you're looking to hallucinate with the Green Fairy,
there is no evidence that absinthe, even with high doses
of thoo jone, will get you there. Frankly, you'd probably
die from alcohol poisoning well before you felt any effects
from the thoo jone. It's possible that the constituents in
wormwood or other absent ingredients may cause health problems, but

(08:04):
so far there is no evidence. So don't let advertisements
fool you that absinthe will have any psychotropic effects. That's
just marketing trying to cash in on the beverage's past reputation. Oh,
and for the record, when John Lanfrey killed his family,
he had a lot more to drink than absent. He
also had about thirteen glasses of wine, six cognacs, two

(08:26):
copies full of brandy, and a Creme de men. Check
out the brain Stuff channel on YouTube, and for more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com.