Absinthe Controversy - Absinthism and Thujone
On October 07, 2007 in Back to basic
It was thought that excessive absinthe drinking led to effects which were specifically worse than those associated with overindulgence in other forms of alcohol - which is bound to have been true for some of the less-scrupulously adulterated products, creating a condition called absinthism. Undistilled wormwood essential oil contains a substance called thujone, which is a convulsant and can cause renal failure in extremely high doses, and the supposed ill effects of the drink were blamed on that substance in 19th-century studies. Many of these studies were flawed, such as a study by Dr. Magnan in 1869 that exposed a guinea pig to large doses of pure wormwood oil vapor and another to alcohol vapors. The guinea pig exposed to wormwood had seizures while the other did not. Based on this it was concluded absinthe was more dangerous than alcohol. These studies were further taken advantage of as the French word for wormwood is “absinthe,” and it was incorrectly stated that absinthe, the drink, had caused these problems.Past reports estimated thujone levels in absinthe as high, possibly up to 350 mg/kg. More recent studies have shown that very little of the thujone present in wormwood actually makes it into a properly distilled absinthe, even one recreated using historical recipes and methods. Most proper absinthes, both vintage and modern, are naturally within the EU limits. A recent French distiller has had to add pure essential oil of wormwood to make a “high-thujone” variant of his product. It can remain in higher amounts in oils produced by other methods than distillation, or when wormwood is macerated and not distilled, especially when the plant stems are used, where thujone content is the highest. Tests on mice show an LD50 of around 45 mg thujone per kg of body weight, much higher than what is contained in absinthe and the high amount of alcohol would kill a person many times over before the thujone became a danger. Although direct effects on humans are unknown, many have consumed thujone in higher amounts than present in absinthe through non-controversial sources like common sage and its oil, which can be up to 50% thujone. Long term effects of low wormwood consumption in humans is unknown as well.
The effects of absinthe have been described by artists as mind-opening and even hallucinogenic and by prohibitionists as turning good people mad and desolate. Both are exaggerations. Sometimes called “secondary effects”, the most commonly reported experience is a “clear-headed” feeling of inebriation - a “lucid drunk”, said to be caused by the thujone. The placebo effect and individual reaction to the herbs make these secondary effects subjective and minor compared to the psychoactive effects of alcohol.
A study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol concluded that a high concentration of thujone in alcohol has negative effects on attention performance. It slowed down reaction time, and subjects concentrated their attention in the central field of vision. Medium doses did not produce an effect noticeably different from plain alcohol. The high dose of thujone in this study was larger than what one can get from current beyond-EU-regulation “high thujone” absinthe before becoming too drunk to notice, and while the effects of even this high dose were statistically significant in a double blind test, the test subjects themselves could still not reliably identify which samples were the ones containing thujone. As most people describe the effects of absinthe as a more lucid and aware drunk, this suggests that thujone alone is not the cause of these effects. The deleterious effects of absinthe as well as its hallucingenic properties are a persistent myth often repeated in modern books and scientific journals with no evidence for either.