Do you know any people who are in the goth crowd? Of course you do; everyone does. Have they told you how totally cool they are, because they’ve had real absinthe? Like, not the fake American stuff, but the real stuff from [insert European country here]. What’s the difference? Well the real stuff makes you hallucinate, because it’s got wormwood in it. It’s illegal in America, because it’s that damn cool.

Well, my friends… such poseurs might have had hallucinations when drinking “real” absinthe, but they were probably caused by the same lack of oxygen to the brain that killed enough of their brain cells to make them buy into the absinthe hype in the first place. Real absinthe does not make you hallucinate.

Let me repeat that, because it bears repeating. Real absinthe does not make you hallucinate.

But, but… it’s got wormwood! Fuck wormwood. The chemical in wormwood that supposedly makes you hallucinate is called thujone, and it’s a GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid) inhibitor. There is no evidence that thujone causes hallucinations, even in high doses. It does block the things that inhibit neural activity though, which means that combined with alcohol, it causes you to have a rather alert drunkenness. And the one thing that that real absinthe will do is get you bloody drunk — it’s typically around 110 to 140 proof.

I could go into the history of absinthe, and why it was banned in many countries, and why it had a sudden revival as being the “cool” drink (no goth movement, but an insidious corporate scheme, I assure you). But you can look all that up on your own. Here are a few links of interest:

How Stuff Works’ entry on absinthe
Wikipedia entry on absinthe

Read, be educated, and call some tool on their “real absinthe” story, my people!