Sat, 10 Oct - Absinthe Forum: I make the stuff

As the title says, I distill Absinthe using my very spoilt home-grown herbs.
I love it.
My problem with Absinthe started when my wife exclaimed how beautiful something was : She has particular taste, and it is hard to buy something for her. I looked over her shoulder at the laptop screen and saw an absinthe fountain.
I knew not what it was, but tracked it down to Artemisia products in Germany, and bought it.
Then I bought Absinthe.
The cost !!!! ( 2 bottles is a labourer's monthly wage, in this country ).
So, I loved it, and bought the live herbs necessary, who are spoiled silly, and the distilling equipment.
And now, after 5 months of failures, I have perfected the recipe.
It is most drinkable, and has wonderful effects. I can only measure alcohol volume, I have no way of measuring thujone content. I just know I put a shitload of fresh wormwood into the maceration process.

'Meeting the Green Fairy' is a metaphor sometimes used to describe the curious effects of the green liquor.

About the effects of absinthe

When it comes to the effects of drinking absinthe, people's opinions -- and experiences -- vary wildly. Some go as far as to claim the drink is psychoactive, while others say there is no "secondary" (that is, other than alcohol-induced) effect at all.

As early as 1993, Matthew Baggott posted his Absinthe FAQ in the Usenet newsgroup "alt.drugs" (there wasn't much of the web as we know it back then). As you will suspect from the newsgroup's name, the issue of absinthe's "psychoactive qualities" was one of the interests of the document.

Some people take it further still. We definitely do not recommend any experiments with Paxil and absinthe (nor, for that matter, mixing any medicine with alcohol). Anyway, it's quite clear which way the wind blows here, since Jasmine Sailing's bizarre piece more or less concludes absinthe is a narcotic. Is it really? Yup, it does read like the girl was out of her mind when she wrote the page -- and no, we don't think the Fairy was to blame!

A far more sober look at the effects of the Green Fairy can be found in "The Return of the Green Faerie", an article written by Frank Kelly Rich of the Modern Drunkard magazine (no pun intended). Recommended reading.