Did Drinking Absinthe Cause Van Gogh to Lose His Mind?

One of the allures to the story of Vincent Van Gogh is that this brilliant artist went crazy.  He didn't just go crazy -- he went bug-fucking nuts. Things he did included:

eating his paints
following women into their homes when he was clearly uninvited
pissing off anyone who could have helped his career
that cutting off his ear lobe thing


So Let's Try the Question Again

Why did Vincent Van Gogh become bug-fucking nuts? Because he died in 1890 (even before Sigmund Freud's publication of The Interpretation of Dreams for crying out loud) we really have no idea what spicy stew of mental and physical disorders that Vincent actually suffered from.  It was known that around the time of his death he suffered from:

• syphilis
• impotence
• rotting teeth
• hallucinations, which may have been caused by temporal lobe epilepsy
• starvation due to extreme poverty
• paranoia
• alcoholism

Clearly, drinking absinthe was the least of Vincent's problems.

What About the Hallucinations?

One theory is that he hallucinated because he was addicted to absinthe.  The real absinthe was banned in France in 1915 but returned in 2012.  America's ban on real absinthe was lifted about 2007.  Until then, all anyone had to drink was weak substitutes.  Why was the stuff banned?  It was 110 to 144 proof.  I'm surprised Vincent lived as long as he did while quaffing this brew.  Rumor is that he drank it straight but absinthe was an expensive drink and so a bottle may have always been out of Vincent's price range.  It was usually drunk with lots of water and a melted sugar cube.

Absinthe has never been proven to cause hallucinations more than any other alcoholic beverage.  It could be that Vincent was especially sensitive to absinthe that it could have tipped him over the edge of sanity but Vincent was already teetering there.  Epilepsy and mental illness appeared frequently in Vincent's family.  Most of his siblings committed suicide.  His beloved brother Theo died insane and incontinent because of advanced syphilis. 

It wasn't just one factor that caused Vincent to go mad.  It was a large combination of factors.

"Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life"; By Nancy Mowll Mattews: A Review

No other artist impacted Vincent Van Gogh than Paul Gauguin -- literally.  Gauguin is thought to have been responsible for cutting off part of Vincent's ear.  Vincent, not wanting to lose a man he so admired, told others he cut it off himself. 

Gauguin was magnetic, intelligent and an utter bastard.  He wanted to be seen as living the erotic life that was the envy of all other men, which is why Professor Nancy Mowll Matthews titled her extensive biography Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life (Yale University Press; 2001.)

This is a large, heavy book with very small print and lots of endnotes.  I hate endnotes.  I realize that footnotes are essential for establishing and embellishing facts presented in the text, but this gets out of hand.  Some people may like flipping back and forth from the text to the notes, but in this case it got to be ridiculous.  Why not just add the endnote information in the damn text?  Because that's not the way biographies are properly done, apparently.

I have to admit, I do not like most of Gauguin's work.  Yes, I realize he was pushing boundaries, breaking new ground and championed working from imagination rather than just from life, but his stuff creeps me out more than H. R. Geiger's stuff (and he designed the Alien for Alien (1979.)

Despite the title, the book does not have much about Gauguin's sex life or imaginary sex life but does talk to great length about how much he hated women.  It also describes the cruelties Gauguin would casually inflict on anyone he encountered.  He also left his wife and five children high and dry while he went and lived the high life as one of the most famous artists of his day.

The book also hints that Gauguin was somehow responsible for Vincent's final breakdown which lead to his suicide but does not follow up on these hints.  I have to admit, I couldn't wait for Gauguin to die because he was such scum.  Yes, many of his works are considered masterpieces, but Now I know why most of his subjects have such evil expressions on their faces.

"The Tragic Life of Toulouse-Latrec"; By Lawrence & Elizabeth Hanson: My Review

Why am I talking about a book on Henri Toulouse-Latrec on a Van Gogh blog?  Well, the two knew each other, albeit briefly.  I think Vincent's work was influenced by Toulouse-Latrec's work, although I'm not sure many art historians and critics would agree with me.  Reading  about Vincent's contemporaries helps not only flesh out the times that Vincent lived in, but also helps you appreciate what Vincent was comparing himself to.

Which brings us to The Tragic Life of Toulouse-Latrec (Random House; 1956) by the husband and wife team of Lawrence and Elizabeth Hanson.  The couple also wrote biographies of Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.  I haven't read those and think I may skip them.  This book was enough.

This is not a particularly detailed biography and suffers from some of the biographers' criticism of his private life.  However, this is one of the shortest biographies out there.  If you do not have a lot of time and know elementary French, then this book will be okay.

Although Vincent was considered freakish by the French because of his intensity, his penchant for pissing people off and his problems speaking French, Toulouse-Latrec drew horrified stares or quickly averted eyes.  His parents were first cousins and boy, did it show in Toulouse-Latrec's dwarfish and incredibly fragile body.  He wasn't a dwarf in that he did not suffer from dwarfism, but his legs broke when he was a child and he basically stopped growing then.

Sadly, this book has very few illustrations -- all of  which are in black and white.  Read it and Google the works described. 

Did Van Gogh Have Syphilis?

It's generally assumed that Vincent Van Gogh had syphilis because (quite frankly) 10% of all European men had it in the late 1800s.  He was diagnosed with another sexually transmitted disease, gonorrhea, in 1882.  Both STDs have similar symptoms so Van Gogh could have been misdiagnosed.

Van Gogh is thought to have had syphilis for 2 reasons:

1. He frequented brothels
2. He was kinda loopy

According to Van Gogh:The Life (Random House; 2012) Van Gogh did have syphilis about 1885.  During this time he had terrible mouth sores and lost a lot of weight because he was unable to eat. (See p. 447)

Unlike gonorrhea, syphilis caused insanity (or seeming insanity) in it's last stages, called neurosyphilis.  In teriary syphilis, the face become deformed, as seen in the bust of such a patient (pictured.)

According to The Lobotomist John Wiley & Sons; 2005), one fifth of all patients in American psychiatric wards had syphilis in the 1920s and 1930s.  The book, a biography of lobotomist Walter Freeman, includes some really vivid passages describing neurosyphilis patients, such as this little gem from page 59:

Though largely forgotten today, neurosyphilis was a terrible disease, a near epidemic that left its targets -- mainly men thirty and over -- in a wasted, twisted condition, riddled with bedsores and unable to speak coherently...They frequently grew demented, demented, incontinent and unable to control their muscles.
 

The problem is that Van Gogh was not really old enough to begin showing symptoms of neurosyphilis.  Men usually begin showing them 10 to 20 years after they get infected. 

My theory (and I think I'm alone on this one) that Van Gogh thought he had syphilis.  Since he had spent time in asylums, he saw what happened to men suffering in the final stages of neurosyphilis.  Perhaps one of the deciding factors in his suicide was that he feared developing those horrible final symptoms.