Absinthe makes you hallucinate and possibly even have a seizure, right? Nope. It's all a part of the myth of absinthe, which is really just a bitter tasting liquor with a bad reputation.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here as well, and it's the Three Green Fairies coming to bring you madness and delirium. Possibly. Yeah, on Stuff you Should Know. I wish I wish Jerry would put like some sort of twinkle effect in there after I say stuff you should Know too, just a nod to the fairy thing. Yeah, yeah, well you know she's listening. She is, and she's furiously scribbling notes in my imagination, yes, only in your imagination. That's right. She's really stirring me. So yeah, that's right. Man, smells nice. Um So, Chuck, I mentioned Green Fairies because that is a nickname for what we're talking about today, which is absentthe we've gathered here today to talk about this thing called absent dearly beloved, that's right. Uh, that's right. And this was my pick in Olivia. I think this is Olivia right, helped us that with this. I believe this was a grabster pick, which Chuck, I'm glad you said that, because this makes this week a grabster tri fedka is it the grabster because it seems like one. I was just talking recently on the show about how it's certain topics fit certain writers, and this certainly fits Grabster. Not that he's a big absent head, but oh, if he's anything, he's a huge absence. But it just feels like an ed thing. But for some reason, it was spaced like Olivia spaces things. I'm almost positive that it was absent. I'm I'm pretty sure that it was. I mean, it was the Grabster. No, I'm sorry, so it was Olivia. You're right. Wow, he comes off like a grabst article, for sure. It does. At any rate. This idea came to me not too long ago, because I don't I didn't definitely didn't see the movie again. But I saw that scene from the Johnny Depp Jack the Ripper movie that I can't remember the name of from Hell from Hell, where Johnny Depp is in the bathtub and he is uh may be because of that trial is going on or something I don't know, um, and he does his absinthe ritual, which includes uh, supersizing his the effects by do you remember what he does? Uh? I've not seen that one. Okay, it's okay, you know, it's fine. I remember hearing that it was just fine. Yeah, it was good enough. But he does the and we'll talk a little bit about the sort of ritual of how you prepare absinthe. But one such ritual is to light sugar on fire and let it drip through a slotted spoon into the absinthe, which is not recommended for a number of reasons obviously, uh not the which is alcohol and fire mixing. Um. But what he does is he drops uh laudan in. Is that what it is? I think? So alcohol and opium mix together. Yeah, some sort of opium from a dripper bottle, dropper bottle, and he drops it on the sugar then lights that on fire. So oh, that's a pretty hardcore. I guess that's the way they did it back then. The other big movie moment that I know of is in that bos Lerman uh Mulan rouge where you and McGregor and John Leguizama and some other pals all are all drinking absent and they see the green ferry. Kylie Minogue, I forgot about that. Have you seen the trailer for his Elvis movie coming out? No? Oh, it looks so good. I can't wait. What a great combination they all. I think the only one who could do maybe a better Elvis bio pick is maybe David Lynch and bos Lerman might have him, might have him beaten fun It looks awesome, man and the guy they got to do it just snails the body movements and like all the way up to the Vegas Elvis just stone cold? Was it? Peter stars Guard? Is that you think should play him? No? Okay, no, he's on my mind because I I, um, we're going to talk about Wormwood in a second, and I was like, man, wasn't that like a series on on Netflix? And sure enough it was with directed by Errol Morris. Oh I remember that? Was it called Wormwood? Yeah? It was about the MK Ultra program that. Yeah, it was really good. But uh yeah, So anyway, um, okay, I think we've covered everything movie wise right well so far. Okay. So the reason that I brought up Wormwood is because it is this main ingredient and absence. If you make absence, which, by the way, if if you're not if you don't know what we're talking about, absent is a type of liquor or liqueur. I guess it's a it's usually made from a neutral grain spirit. If you really want to get kind of authentic, you would make it from grapes um, distilled grapes um, and then you you kind of process it like you would if you were making gin. You take some botanicals, distill it together, and then the resulting stuff that cools down after after you evaporated is absentthe and to make absinthe you have to have three main ingredients distilled with the liquor um, fennel, annis and then wormwood. And wormwood is the big tricky key to the whole thing that has caused a lot of problems and misconceptions over the years. That's right, a lot of myths there. Absinthe is obviously known for its very bright green color before you have gone through your ritual, because it kind of changes the color a little bit, but that comes from reinfusing after it's distilled, reinfusing it with more of those ingredients. You don't have to do that. There is such thing as clear or white absinthe. But you know, if you really want to have the absent experience, it's got to be green. Yeah, why isn't this absinthe green? Take it away? Gar song? Right, that's right. Nice ref um. That was very postmodern of you. Thank you so um that that that essential ingredient. Wormwood has been known to humanity for thousands and thousands of years. Um. The earliest reference written reference to it comes from the Ebbers Papyrus, which um dates back to Oh I would say something like about thirty five hundred years ago something like that. It's possibly earlier than that. And that was just the first written reference. So we already knew we being humans, knew about wormwood long before that, and up until the mid nineteenth century it was all is treated as like basically a medicinal plant. That's right, Um, there were you know, this is sort of one of the heydays of medicinal plant use. And you know, all kinds of supposed cures ills being cured, uh, including but not limited to, if you have stomach pains, if you want to get your mensies going h Uh. They say it could be hypnotic. They say it could give you a pick me up if you were tired. Um, what else? Uh, if it's an if it wasn't something you didn't want to drink before then, Knowing that wormwood was used as an insect repellent and an antiseptic for cleaning up a bacteria ridden mouth might do the trick right. And also one of the long standing um uses for it has been as an antihelmetic, which means that it's a d wormer And apparently when you ingest wormwood, it actually stuns the worms that are attached to your gut lining enough that they let go and you poop them out the other end um, and it really does work. The modern modern investigations of wormwood have verified it is an effective d werm er um, and it also is an appetite stimulant too, So um as we'll see, it became an appartif which you drink before you eat, and that makes a lot of sense, the little wormwood in it. But in German there's a little there's a little tiny facts here there in this episode. It's one of those which I love. But in German wormwood is called the ver moot, and that might sound familiar. Vermouth is a fortified wine that contains wormwood, among other things. Did you know that? I did know that? Because I love vermouth, I do too, I still didn't know what I also know that it's Modern studies even show that it can aid digestion, which gives credence to the old saying absinthe makes the farts grow stronger. My goodness. So, first of all, I know that that wasn't off the cuff. It's just not possible. You want to hear something terrible, I've been I made up that joke in my head years ago. Did you really? And I've never had the opportunity to drop it. You're you're in a chicken processing plant thinking that, and you're like, I need to get a job where I'm really public facing so I can share this one. Well, it's a punch line. It's not a joke. I thought of that punch line, and I've I've long tried to create a joke that would just take hold and spread around the world. Uh, but I just made a fun one. You just did that just spread around the world like this boslerman Elvis Biopick is about to let me ask you something though, Have you ever had malart? Yes, which is it's just such hipster ridiculousness, But yes I have, so, my lord, for those of you listening, Uh, that pretty good descriptor. I guess it's a liquor or a liqueur made from wormwood. It is very popular, almost exclusively in Chicago. Uh and Jepson's malard and it's you know, it is a kind of a hipster thing, like you get a PBR's All Boy and with the malard back at any hipster bar. But that was something that uh at max Fun Con, which is the podcast network Maximum Fun has this summer retreat they do every year where John Hodgeman and I do are pub tribute thing which is now ended. But uh, traditionally John would do the benediction, pass around bottles of malort and everyone would drink it. And that, my friend, is a taste that will stay with you for hours. Yes, yeah, because wormwood is a really really bitter tasting something. Um, and it's actually so. Wormwood has a compound in it called absinthe in, and absinthe itself is a Greek word that means undrinkable. That's how it bitter it is. The Polish apparently have a saying called bitter as wormwood, right, and um, this stuff absentthe that gives wormwood it's bitter taste is so bitter. Chuck that one ounce of absinthein, if you could extract it from the wormwood and you came up with just one ounce of it, if you poured it into five hundred and twenty four gallons of water, mixed it up, and then offered someone a cup of that water, they would be able to detect the bitterness. Wow. Yeah, I believe that wormwood oil. Um, well, we might as well go ahead and get into this a little bit. Um. Wormwood oil has a substance in it about of which this is a substance called food jone. And since time and memoriam, when people had absinthe, they used to talk about the fact that you would have hallution, uh, hallucinations and seizures. So this is one of the big myths that we're gonna bust is that's really not true. Uh, that food jone can cause seizures. And we know why. It's a it's a gabba inhibitor, and it's going to block the receptors that lead to these convulsions. But there's and and they've even done tests of of pre nineteen tin absence recipes and found it's about the same amount as today. And I saw one article that said it's basically about enough food jone that you would find from sage in a box of stove top stuffing, which has long been known to give you hallucinations and convulsions in addition to being very delicious. Yeah, so there's just not enough in there, like it does food jone does come from wwood oil, and it does cause seizures. But there's just apparently trace amounts and it's even restricted by law how much you can have in it, right, right, And it's the same thing is like, um, if you ate a kilogram of salt, it would affect you physiologically in some terrible ways, like you would just have to drink so much of it. Um. And then also because worm was so bitter that even like the staunchest wax bearded hipster in the country could probably not drink enough wormwood to uh to bring on a convulsion or hallucinations. Now, so that's just a big myth. The fact that, I mean, we'll get into the history of it, which is pretty interesting. But you know, it was all basically because people were getting blasted on alcohol, right, so the but but like you said, since time immemorial people have said, like this wormwood stuff, it'll make you trip. That was enough to attract some um artists, bohemians, writers poets um around the turn of the last century, particularly in Paris, to the idea of absinthe. We're not quite there yet, but once we get there, bear in mind all of this is wrong and made up, and it makes all it makes an entire basically the Impressionist art movement really cringe e that they were all just self deluded in thinking that this this stuff was like causing them to hallucinate and maybe get a little mad, and all this stuff it was. It's really just kind of uncomfortable to look back on now, it really is. So Chuck, let's say we'd take a break and then we'll come back and really kind of dig into the history a little more. Let's get our shovels out and get ready. Stuff you should know, lash sh stuffy should know. Okay, Chuck. So I mentioned earlier that, um, you know, wormwood was long considered a medicinal plant. And there's a story that goes that a doctor named Pierre Ordinaire who was hiding out from the French Revolution just across the border in Switzerland, uh in a town called Kuvey, Switzerland, in particular, um that Dr Ordinaire was um looking for a way to make worm would palatable to create a medicinal lick, sir, and that that is how he ended up coming up with absente. That's right, that's how the story goes. Like you said earlier, if you want the real authentic kind, use grape spirits, because distilled grapes is how it started. Now it's just sort of you know, a base um like a you know, any sort of uh, distilled vodka type bass like white lightning. Why am I tripping over all that? I don't know. It's almost like I didn't want to say it or something. I know, you really don't like that white lightning, do you know? But back in the day it was distilled grape spirit and it did have the worm would because that's what he was trying to make palatable, and he did. It appears at a bunch of botanicals to make it taste better. You know that star and niece was probably in it. Liquorice I see. Olivia also mentioned the finnel and the hyssop and parsley, coriander, kim a meal and spinach, which is quite a mixture. M hmm. When you take a little sip of absinthe and your friend would be like you've got a little spinach in your teeth. That is a really strange sounding mixture. Especially parsley would throw the whole thing off. You've ever had like a Green's drink, like fresh juice, the moment they put parsley in, it turns immediately south. It's horrible. It's horrific. Plea, leave parsley out of everything drinkable. Okay, yeah, never. We we go through periods where we're gonna we juice alli at at the house, but I know we've never added parsley because you're sensible salary. It's like, okay, you're getting a little close to messing this up. But then once you had the parsley is awful. It's it's punishment from that point on. So you want to leave the parsley out whether you're making juice or absinthe Um, and you said one thing, Melissa, Um, that's actually lemon ball. I saw as well, What did I say, Melissa? That's another term for lemon ball. And I'm just saying, like, it's not like you were incorrect in saying Melissa did say Melissa? I thought you said Melissa in there as well. Sorry it comes up later then, Okay, he said, did I say, Melissa, am I driving you mad? Like the green ferry? About one of one of us is on absinthe right now. So, um, that whole story about Dr Ordinair coming up with this chuck is um possibly wrong because at the end of the story, Dr Ordinair turns out to be this kind, benevolent man who leaves his recipe for absinthe um to the Henryoade's sisters who were his housekeepers, and they go on and start making this stuff um and sell it to a guy named Major Enri Danielle do bed Do bid um and probably make a tidy sum from that. But some historians have said no, actually, it looks like other people might have been making this stuff before him, including the henryode sisters, so it's possible that Dr Ordinair actually stole this from them. Yeah. And it was also a time where there was you know, this was the golden age of medicinal elixirs, so who knows, like everyone was experimenting with different recipes for stuff. And I definitely think we can't say for sure that it was Dr Pierre Ordinaire, but it is a great name. Um. But at some somehow Dr major Dubia did come into this recipe and started making absinthe, and he had a daughter named Emily spelled like your wife's name. Yeah, And Emily married another man, Henri Louis Peria Nude and Peria Nude Para Nude. Sorry I was adding an extra syllable in the Para nude. Um was the son of another family that had been making absinthe, And so the Dubids and the Para Nudes got together and became basically like an absentthe making dying is the along the Swiss French border. That's right. And what was the last name in that other family, Well, Para Nude finally changed their name to Pernode p r an o D, which is a very famous brand of liquorice flavored liqueur that was once absinthe that had the wormwood removed and became that's right, and they're now a I believe there was a merger in the mid seventies with another beverage brand and now they're a huge sort of liquor company that owns I think they owned Sea Grims, They own a couple of other vodkas. They owned lots of stuff and you can see that green pernol on any liquor store shelf, and you've probably if you're not an aficionado, you've probably always wondered, is that absinthe? Or what the heck is up with that bright green stuff. Well, as we'll see, it was a stand in for absinthe, which had become kind of popular taste wise. Um, after it got banging. That's right, since absence, man, you're full of it today, you're just full of like it, he splits in vinegar. I've never heard that term. I just made it up. Okay, So, uh, we're still not at this point where absinthe has become an actual popular drink really honestly. So Dubi Ed was like, I want to buy this, but I think you're wasting it selling it as a medicinal. I think people would actually like to drink this, And he was right. But it wasn't until it was used extensively as a medicinal with the French army who were sent off to North Africa by Napoleon in the eighteen forties, I believe, and we're given absinthe during their stay to fight off malaria. Um. The absence became popular because those French soldiers came back and said, hey, have you guys tried the absence stuff? Like they gave it to his medicine. But we loved drinking it regardless, And the French Army was popular enough of the time that whatever was fashionable with them became fashionable with the rest of France as well. That's right, So they bring the taste of absinthe back. At first, it is expensive, and it is you know, basically people with money, sort of the higher class that are drinking absinthe. And then even early on, because of its reputation as a hallucinogen, artists were into it, trying to get inspiration for their poems and paintings and things like that. And things change though, starting in about the eighteen seventies when there was a insect, the Philo Rexerra, the rexa mhm by Losera. There we're adding letters all over the place today. Uh so it's the insect five loserra. It really in you know, France, as everyone knows, is most famous for its wine growing, and this devastated grapes in France and that was a bad thing for the wine industry because that just meant obviously, when something like that happens, wine is going to be more expensive, and so absinthe came along and said, hey, we can make this with anything. We don't need grapes, we can make it with cheaper stuff, and all of a sudden, absinthe is cheaper, and all of a sudden that people drinking absinthe became just sort of the working class because wine was so expensive. All of a sudden, yeah, because the French said, we got to drink something. So they replaced their wine, which is now ridiculously expensive, which with much, much, much cheaper absinthe. But the thing is, Chuck is absinthe is a spirit. Wine is not a spirit. So you know, wine definitely contains alcohol, and you can make wine with more or less you know, alcoholic content. But one of the things about absinthe is it's one of the highest proof liquors on the market. I didn't know it's. It frequently hits sixty to seventy up to eight alcohol. So if you get a really um high a b V or high proof absinthe and you are yourself a glass of it, that is not alcohol. The other is pure alcohol. So that's a really big switch. That's a huge switch over from wine, drinking a couple of glasses of wine and dinner, and drinking a couple of glasses of absinthe at dinner. It's a big difference. Yeah, I guess I should have asked, have you ever had absinthe, like just real deal, straight up at some drink or not in cocktail, but it's absinthe? Yes, yeah, you mean, got me a little bottle of St. George absinthe. I think they're out of San Francisco. Um yeah, yeah, they make really good gin too, um uh and a little spoon, a little slotted spoons. So I made this absinthe here there a couple of times. It's fine, okay, home about Yeah, all right, I've never had it. I meant to get some and try this. I'm gonna try it after now that I know the whole deal and how to do it. But I can already tell that it's not going to be like something I'm gonna drink a lot of. No. I mean, it's tasty, you definitely want, and diluted with water and sugar water in particular as we'll see. Um and but it's neat that there's like a ritual to it. It's fun to like kind of learn the ritual, make the drink like that, you know, following these this kind of ritualized, and then never do it again. Sure, and then yeah, the problem is when you want like a second one or something like that, it's like, oh, I gotta go through this whole rigamarole again, you know. So it's one of those things, you know. Uh, then you just crack a beer when it is less beer. Yet you don't drink beer anymore, do you? Oh? Yeah, sometimes, Um yeah, I mean once in ace in a while. It's not frequent or anything, but um uh last beer I had it was probably a few months ago. But they I don't drink it much anymore. I miss it. If you want a beer and you have a beer, it can be really satisfying under the right conditions, you know. Yeah. And I think what I do with beer now is uh, it used to just be beer, beer, beer, you know, when you're younger or when I was younger. But now I treat beer as like a treat that I have every once in a while and I'll have one, maybe two, and that's it. And that kind of think back, like, man, how did I used to drink like a lot of this? That's just a lot of liquid, yeah, a lot of bourbon, yeah, a lot of like your pants falling down, I mean, like a lot of weird stuff happens when you drink, and a lot of beer. Yeah. So anyway back to absinthe um, where are we? Okay, it is now the working classes drinking it, they're loving it. And advertising what we know is like modern advertising is just starting to be a thing. And in France they went a few different directions, kind of like with I mean, look at any beer now and you can kind of say the same thing. Some of it was patriotic, like they would adorn it in the French the colors of the French flag, um. Some of them were even called things like patriot uh. And then they had the sexy ads with you know, sexy ladies drinking absinthe uh. And so that's like any you know, that could be a Budweiser poster. But the thing that they don't do on a Budweiser poster is they also advertise it as a hygiene product. Right because again, remember this whole thing started off as a medicinal liquor medicinal lick, sir, So they could still kind of lean on that because it was close enough in the recent past that people recognized it as such. You know, got worms drink absinthe or got bad breaths drink absin imagine switching it around in your mouths. Yeah, it's probably like a mouthwatch, I guess a little bit. It's like um, you know that old timey liquorice flavored toothpaste. I imagine to be like that. Yeah. Probably. So we should also point out this is mainly in Europe. It never really took off in the United States around this time, except and of course French inspired New Orleans. It was pretty popular there. Yeah, But like you said, in Europe it was very popular, especially among artists, in particular Bohemian artists. And there was a real transition going on in the late nineteenth century early twenty, very very early twentieth century um the aughts, as you call them, UM, where art was getting a little more rebellious, a little less stuffy um. And the old guard did not really like this very much. But the new Guards said they cared not um, and one of the one of the things that they were interested in was changing altering their perceptions. So they used opium. They drank lots of booze. But there was this idea that um, in particular absenthe could change your perceptions of the world and life and yourself in ways that nothing else could. Again because of this super hallucinatory wormwood, that if you drank too much, it might drive you mad. And so they adopted absence to kind of fuel this transition to a much more rebellious um like type of art or movement of art. Yeah, and I think, you know, I didn't quite get with you Mentalier about looking back on it, it is kind of gross and embarrassing because they were just getting plowed on liquor, is what was happening. And you know, they were writing poems about it, and they were painting paintings, you know about absinthe. Then you know, Manet had one called the Absinthe Drinker, and it was a man. It was a portrait of a man named Colordette who was just sort of a street drunk who was dressed up a little fancy. And that was a big scandal because you weren't supposed to paint portraits of people like that. And van Go drank a lot of abs And then Picasso had a sculpture called the Glass of absinthe, and there were poems written about it in stories, and it was just it was all it was all fake when you look back, it was nothing but getting plowed on liquor. Yes, exactly right. And um to give an example of how it's just kind of uncomfortable, it can make you. Bode laire um who I always think of with um, what was that bomb vivant that John Lovitts played on SNL kind of a dandy, the one I'm an actor. Maybe I just remember him invoking bodel Oh, Bodelaire, And this is who he was talking about was Charles Baudelaire, who was a very influential poet of this time who really liked getting wasted, and he in particular thought that getting wasted on absinthe was amazing because quote, neither wine nor opium equals the poison welling up in your eyes. That show me my poor soul, reversed my dreams, thronged drink at those green distorting pools absinthe, when really it was just high proof licker. That was it. Everybody that was it? Yeah, he could have been said, I've been about hunch punch exactly. You know, like college Freshman wrote similar poems inspired by Jim Morrison and hunch Punch. Oh yeah, exactly. Hunch Punch really does get on top of you pretty quick too. That never had that stuff. If it's well made, you don't even taste the incredible amount of high high hy. Yeah, it's crazy. You're like, how is this being hidden? But it does, I guess because it's a neutral spirit. But it's um wow, And for some reason it's all there's always like an entire garbage can full of it. It's never like a small amount. Nobody ever makes like a nice cocktail of hunch punch. Here and there there's a garbage can. It's a very dangerous thing to do. Actually, in retrospect, I have a theory about absence, and I haven't really seen anything about this, but I think the mere fact that it was this bright, bright green just I think if it would have been a clear or brown liquor, it wouldn't have taken hold like it did. I think there was something about that color that just sort of entranced people. I think you're totally right, and the point that shouldn't be mistaken is that in some way, shape or form, absent, even if it was a mythological concept when you really get right down to it did fuel some really creative art at that time. I mean we're talking about man A Dega van go All. These guys were like fueled by absinthe. Like it really did have a huge impression on the art world, even if they were kind of self deluded. Yeah. The Oscar Wild quote, of course, you know every Oscar Wild quote is pretty great. But he liked the stuff, and he said, after the first class of absinthe, you see things as you wish they are, wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that that is the most horrible thing in the world, which just means you're plastered. Yeah. Um. Another one that we could not just not shout out though was pretty much the the head cheese as far as getting super plowed on absinthe goes, which is to loose la trek, Henrida, to loose la trek. He loved the stuff, very famous with pastel portraits, very famous. Um, just kind of hard living, hard drinking French dude from the era um. And he apparently loved absence so much that he had a walking cane that he carried a little like a couple of shots of absente poured into hollowed out walking cane with him everywhere he went. That's a nice party trick. So it was, Um, it was really something like everybody was really getting plowed on absence. Remember a lot of working class French people replaced their morning afternoon and evening glasses of wine with morning afternoon and evening glasses of liquor absinthe instead, and this was starting to like make a lot of people worried. Um, there was a temperance movement in eighteen seventy two, beginning in eighteen seventy two in France, and it was not gaining traction, and then absinthe really started to come along and a target began to emerge. And Chuck, I say that we take a uh break and then come back and talk about how the ban on absinthe began. Let's do it. Stuff you should know, lawsham shure stuff you should know, all right, So you teased that. Uh, the temperance movement in France didn't take at first because simmas France, I'm sorry, the French should love to drink lots of wine and other things. God God bless him, but absinthe is started to grow in popularity, and they rode in and said, all right, here's our chance. This stuff is is the devil's juice, and we can really have a way in here if we target absent as a thing. And then wine makers, which is sort of weird, got involved in the temperance movement in a way when they said, yeah, absentthe is terrible and it's not like cognac, which is you know, it was just really sort of high falutin alcohol made from uh, distilled grapes. Um. But this stuff is really bad stuff. It's cheap and it's it's it's petty, and it's for the lower class. So we're going to join up in the temperance movement ourselves to help get rid of it. Yeah, and it worked really really well. I mean they had a common enemy, absence. And then what was really kind of helped alonger helped the entire thing along. We're a couple of things. One was a psychiatrist named Valentine Magnart Magna in Magna And sorry, I printed this undraft setting so I can't see very well. Um, but even and we'll come back to magna and slash magnart in a second. Um. But what what really kind of shocked the nation's and in fact the world's conscience about just letting absinthe flow freely was um jehan le phrase murder of his entire family Um while he was about as drunk as a human being can be, right, but not so much on absinthe, which is the irony here. This was in nineteen o five, and as the story goes in court, they say he drank five liters of wine, six classes of cognac to crim demense, just you know, because a coffee with brandy, I guess to sober up, and then but two ounces of absinthe, gets in a fight with his wife, his pregnant wife murders her with a gun and his two and three year old daughters amazingly horrible domestic comicide case. Then tried to kill himself, survived it and was basically spared the death penalty. But because they said he was in the throes of absinthe madness and it worked. Yeah, there was a psyche, a different psychologist from Switzerland named Albert Albert Albert Mayhem, and uh he said no, this man was was in the grips of this absinthe madness, even though he just had two ounces of absent throughout the whole day. But the fact that he had had absinthe and absinthe had this reputation, he was able to seize on it. And so that that really caught the attention of everybody that if you drank absinthe it could drive you to murder your own family. That really made a lot of people reconsider it. And then either um, like before this, well full thirty years before this, there was a um a psychiatrists in France named Magnan Valentine Magnan and he I guess was part of the temperance movement as well. Um and he had conducted some studies where he got his hands on wormwood and just basically kept giving wormwood or two dogs until they'd finally start having convulsions and seizures. And then he published a study saying wormwood I will give you convulsions and seizures. Doesn't really matter how much wormwood oil you drink. Just the fact that wormwood oil was in absinthe made it questionable, made it dangerous. And so these two things Magnan's pretty much made up study and Jean Le phrase horrific crime came together to give that strange bedfellow um joint movement between the temperance people and the wine industry a huge target on the back of absinthe. And they went after absinthe full bore. And it did not take very long after Jean Le phrase crime for absence to start to get banned around the world. Yeah, I mean that had they made up a name for it, even it's called absinthe is um instead of alcoholism. And I think the murder was in He, by the way, appears died by suicide just a few days after he was put in jail. Just to put a button on that, but that was in nineteen oh five. Switzerland bandit in nineteen o eight. Uh, the US bandit in nineteen twelve. France finally gave in in nineteen fifteen, and then that is when in nineteen twenty we mentioned that Pernou started making pernol a nie which is now just known as perno as that substitute for absent in nineteen twenty. Right, So there's a band and a lot of different countries, not all countries. Apparently the UK never banned it, but I read that it was partially because they were just ignoring things that have to do with French tastes for real. Um. The UH the checks never never banned it. So you could go to Prague, which was also a center of like artsy intellectual um Bohemian vibes. In fact, I think Bohemia actually is in that area. UM, so they would definitely have an original claim to that UM. But for the most part, if you wanted to get absinthe, it was very, very difficult, and because it could drive you mad, it can make you kill your family. And you mentioned it a second ago. Absinthe is um this UH syndrome, which was the collection of maladies everything from m hallucination, sleeplessness, tremors, convulsions, madness from drinking absinthe. And in retrospect historians say this didn't exist. Like what this person was describing was excessive alcohol use, like all this stuff you can get from drinking way too much high proof alcohol, which is what they were doing. So in addition to like just this kind of moral panic about it making you kill your family, there was an accompanying made up syndrome to to give like a veneer of science to the moral panic as well, and it was so effective Chuck that absinthe was banned for over a hundred years in places. Yeah, I mean it took the liquor industry and distilleries basically beating the drum saying, you know, we want to make absent, we want to make this probably highly marketable. Super hopped up liquor again and they said all right. The EU started lifting the band in the in the late eighties and eight Uh. France, it was sort of in a gray area basically, but they finally removed the law against it in I believe the US was two thousand seven when the a T the Alcohol, Tobacco, Tax and Trade Bureau said all right, well, here's what you can do. You can distill this liquor. You can call it absinthe, but it can't it's gotta be through jone free. It's got to have less than ten parts per million. And uh, if it's coming across the border, if you're importing it, you can't import something labeled absinthe or any bottle that you know, shows like people tripping or any kind of hallucinogenic effects on the bottle, right, which just underscores the government's preoccupation with control link citizens perception of reality really strange if you step back and think about it. You know, so, Um, you can get absinthe here today. In Switzerland they have one of those. Man, I can't remember what it's called, but where you know, in Champagne there's rules about what qualifies a champagne and anything that don't follow those h something about appellation I can't remember, but um, Switzerland has something like that. And Couvey is kind of I saw it described as the spiritual home of absinthe. UM, so you can get it. Uh. It's widely available today and there's some really good craft distillers making absinthe all around the world. And if you do get your hands on it and you do say like I want to try this, there is a pretty interesting ritual involved. Um and absinthe is typically drunk, at least with water and sugar, and the way that you combine those two things with absinthe is kind of where the rituals start to kick in. That's right. Uh. And firstly, you should look for abs sinth that is not made green with some artificial coloring. You don't want that. You want something that's like genuinely colored from the post distillation process of infusion. So once you've got your hands on some good absinthe, uh, there's different ways you can do it. There are cool little things that look good on your bar. I've seen some. They look sort of like these clear vases with a a little spout on one side. But you don't even need all that stuff. Really, you just all you really have to do is poor and you don't even need sugar. I think sugar helps the taste. But if you want to uh, what is it pronounced the luch, that's what I think, l o U c h E. If you want to create the luch, which is this sort of cloudy effect in your absinthe, all you really have to do is dribble ice cold water in your absinthe. So you know, you pour just a little bit. You don't need much, like an ounce, maybe two ounces if you're really going for it, and then you want to mix about four parts ice cold water, just dribble it in the little flat spoon on top. If you want to get into the ritual, it can be a little fancier, but I saw people online that literally just sort of held a glass of ice cold water high above their absent glass and just sort of dribble the water in. Yeah, those drippers that are really cool. They look like a virus almost like three or four legged virus that sits atop your glass, and then there's a tray beneath it that you put the sugar cuban and then you just pour the four or five ounces of cold water into the reservoir above the tray over the glass, and it drips it onto the sugar at a steady rate, which drips the sugar water into the glass of absinthe below. Um. And they're very, very pretty for the most part, like that bellop hoc Perry look um, and it's yeah, it's really cool. It's like I could see how people get into this kind of thing too. But that loose chuck. There's a really cool legend about it. So the luci is created when the water dissolve some parts of the alcohol but not some of the oil based plant stuff, and rather than just separating like oil and water, it separates out enough to just kind of create this vapor cloud. And there's a legend, I don't know if it's true or not that at the Pernode Distillery Um there was a lightning strike that threatened to blow up. I guess created a fire that threatened to blow blow up thousands of barrels of absinthe, So the workers were dumping it out as fast as they could into the nearby river, the Dubes River, and um, there was a local theory that the Dubes River fed another river through an underground channel, and when the other river showed a lush a couple of days later, that confirmed that theory, which is pretty neat although not necessarily a fully documented story. It's a good story though. Yeah, and the lucio is cool looking, like admittedly it's you know what you start out if you've never seen it, what you start out with with absinthe is uh, sort of a see through green, very bright green thing. And the lush, once it gets cloudy, it ends up looking kind of almost like, uh, lime juice, sort of a cloudy lime juicy look. And again it's it's mostly water. Uh. And you know there is that fire method where you light the sugar cuban fire uh and then extinguish it with cold water after it drips down and melts into the thing. But I saw that a this was not a good idea for a lot of reasons because the danger of fire. If you're in a bright room, you might not see that light blue flame and go to drink something that's still on fire. Uh, and that it's really uh it's usually or historically was a way to disguise like really bad absent. Then if you have good absinthe then it's not something you need to do at all. The best thing, in my opinion, that you can do with your absence is use it to rinse a glass that you're about to make a sazarek in. Yeah, I've heard of that. Oh man, it's good. A good sazarek is, Oh my gosh, I like a sazarek. I'd never I don't think I saw. I've seen one being made at like a bar. It has come to me at the table. So I don't know if they've done that or not. They most definitely have if they if they're making anything approaching an accurate sas reck, I guarantee they have for sure. Like you just put just a little bit in, like a quarter ounce or less of absence and then you turn the glass kind of on its side and twisted around in a circle on its axis. Yeah, I guess with yaw control. Maybe I'm not sure, and um, now your your glass is ready to have the sas rec poured in. Or if you really want to get fancy, they sell little atomizers like those perfume atomizers that you can put absinthe in and just spray it on the inside of your glass and it should stick to the sides. Yeah, that's when I get a You know, I love my martinis, but I like a martini with a little vermouth in there. Not much. I like them dry, but I do like a little actual vermouth in there. And uh, it annoys me when asked for a dry martini when they just put their vermouth in, swish it around, then dump it out. I'm always like, come on, just just a little bit, put it like a bone dry martini, or or they don't even like the thought of vermouth isn't even an option. It's just straight up gin. I'm like, Martini, it's supposed to have a little vermouth in there. Yeah, you might as well say, can I have three ounces of gin? Please? Yea cold gin. That's basically what I have with a little brine. Yeah, So you got anything else about absinthe? Nothing else? There are plenty of cocktails out there that have a little absent in there if you're into that. But I'm gonna give it a try. I'm gonna see what it's all about. Some have a lot of them. I saw the Necromancer. It's equal parts um, absinthe, lilas blanc, Saint Germain and lemon juice with a dash of gin. Saint Germaine is green, right, No, it's a kind of a goldish color. It's elder flower liqueur. Okay, it's not cream. You're thinking of art truce. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of, which is another difficult thing to find recipes for. Actually, yeah, I've got some of that stuff on my bar now and it remains largely touched into digging. I think that's another one that sorted out as a botanical medicinal remedy too. Yeah, well that's it for botanical medicinal remedies. Everybody, in particular absinthe. And if you want to know more about absent, then just check it out. See what you think you should be over twenty one though, you know, just c o A. And since I said just c o A, it's time for listener mail. Yeah, and don't do the fire method. Just don't do it, agreed, No need. All right, this is a Simpsons reference that we missed. I always love these, and this is from Lauren, Andrew and Homer. Believe it or not, Hey, guys, just listen to the wonderful episode on postmodernism. So forgive me. This has already been pointed out to you, but I couldn't believe that no one, especially Josh, made any reference to the classic Simpsons episode Homer the Mo in which Moe transforms the tavern into a swanky club called m Right. Do you remember that one? Yeah, there's a great scene where Homer and the other longtime patrons are questioning Mo about some eyeball art on the wall, and after some attempt to get the guys to understand it is poem, he finally describes it as being we had for the sake of weird and they all get it. Uh. This definition has been what I think of when I think of postmodern art for my entire adult life. So I thought i'd share again from Lauren, Andrew and Homer. Prince's actual name pretty great. Thank you for that. Thank you for waking us over the coals from missing that one. But is pretty obvious and we should have thought about it, I didn't kind of king. Yeah, I guess so still hurts so bad. But if you want to make us hurt so bad, you can get in touch with us like Lauren Homer and uh and Andrew and if you want to make it hurt so good to get in touch with John Mellencamp. It's my last joke that wasn't a joke. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H