![]() trembling hands, arms and legs, intense thirst, tingling in the ears, illusions of sight and hearing," an Agriculture Department official told the New York Herald in 1907. ![]() "A large drink of absinthe will produce insensibility, convulsions. Recent research suggests that the chemical cuts the brain's brake lines, leading to runaway synapses.īut the amount of thujone in absinthe isn't nearly enough to account for the lurid descriptions of "absinthism" common a century ago. Yet ask the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms why it won't allow absinthe into the U.S., and it says it is simply enforcing the FDA's ban on thujone. ![]() The chemical is banned under Food and Drug Administration regulations, but FDA spokesman Mike Herndon says that his agency has no say in the regulation of alcoholic beverages. I asked a Drug Enforcement Agency spokeswoman about absinthe and she said, with a laugh, "We don't have a dog in that fight." At issue is a chemical found in wormwood - thujone - long thought to be the reason for absinthe's reputation as a ticket to the asylum. Though it is illegal to sell or import absinthe into the U.S., the drink is not a controlled substance. And probably the biggest factor in the enduring mystique has been absinthe's quasi-illicit status. But others are attracted by the self-destructiveness of it all - Van Gogh hacked his ear off while deep in his absinthe cups. The false promise of absinthe inspiration has long fueled the underground appeal of the drink - not unlike the lure of heroin to a generation of jazz musicians who assumed smack would help them play like Charlie Parker. It also helped that it was cheap, so starving artists didn't have to be thirsty artists, too. Absinthe was "the green fairy," a muse in a bottle. Bohemian poets like Verlaine and Rimbaud, Impressionist painters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin: All celebrated the drink as an aid to creativity. But the artsy avant-garde most noisily embraced it. Absinthe, that Belle Epoque-making drink, was indulged by rich and pour alike in France. It isn't just the slack, unfocused eyes that tell you: Slumped against the banquette, her shoulders droop listless arms drift away under the plain zinc table her legs are splayed forward so that the shoes look like they might be on the wrong feet.Įdgar Degas's 1876 painting of Ellen Andree at a Paris cafe came to be called "L'Absinthe." It's hardly an advertisement for the greenish liquor - the picture is such a blunt statement of dissipation that when the painting was sold at Christie's in 1892, the London auction crowd hissed it. The large glass of absinthe sitting in front of the woman is clearly not her first. If you have any stories you would like us to reference we would love to hear from you, also take a look at our archive of stories.Ĭopyright: 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Here we feature recent articles about absinthe from various media sources.
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