Van Gogh and Absinthe

It's no secret that Van Gogh was addicted to absinthe, a green drink that became so feared it was banned, being castigated as "the Devil in a bottle."  It was thought to cause hallucinations and was blamed for a murder in the early 1900s.  Absinthe is legal in many countries.

The main ingredients were  wormwood, florence fennel and green anise.  (If you wonder what anise taste likes, wonder no more.  It tastes like black liquorice.)  A sugar cube and water was often added to it just before drinking.  The intoxicating ingredient is thujone, found in wormwood.  Thujone is in a class of chemicals called terpenes.  Terpenes are also in turpentine, which Van Gogh reportedly tried to drink and in his paints, which he did eat at times. 

Any "absinthe" drinks available today are much milder than what was available in the late 1800s when Vincent Van Gogh lived.  Back then, one glass of absinthe could have as much as 70% alcohol, giving it a 140 proof sock to the gut. A chemical anaysis of 100 year old bottles by the Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Laboratory of Karlsruhe in Germany in 2008 did not find any hallucinatory substances present and as much thujone as in modern absinthe.

However, you're not supposed to drink it neat, but mixed with water and sugar.   Each manufacturer of absinthe used a different amount of wormwood, so it's unsure how much thujone contributed to drunkenness, dreamy sensations or other symptoms.  Just how dangerous and how addictive absinthe actually was is a source of never-ending debate by historians, doctors and the generally curious.

Absinthe was a commonplace drink in Europe.  Other known absinthe drinkers include Henri Toulouse-Latrec, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Rimbaud and the infamous "wickedest man in the world" Aleister Crowley.

Does absinthe cause an upsurge in creativity?  Probably not any more than any other kind of drug or alcoholic beverage.  Some art historians claim that absinthe hallucinations may explain some of Van Gogh's more bizarre paintings and his suicide.  Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle (I.B. Tauris; 2004) points out that absinthe wasn't as addictive as any other alcoholic drink.  Addictions were thought to be moral failures rather than chemical diseases, so the ban on absinthe seems a bit silly today. 

Image is "Still Life with Absinthe" by Van Gogh, oil on canvas, 1887.