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