The most popular alcoholic drink of the French artistic intelligentsia of the early twentieth century, absinthe, as it turned out, does not have a psychotropic effect.
The popularity of absinthe, a vodka made from wormwood, came to the countries of central Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century. For the representatives of bohemia, absinthe became a source of creativity and early death of many famous people of art – the green fairy of absinthe intoxicated and lured. In the twenties, absinthe was banned in European countries and America, presenting it as a hard drug.
For a long time, hallucinations and mental disorders, which were caused by the use of large doses of absinthe, were considered a consequence of the influence of thujone, a psychotropic substance, a component of the wormwood herb. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the manufacture and sale of absinthe came out of the ban, but the content of the psychotropic compound was limited by law to 35 mg / l.
Having examined more than a dozen samples of old ” pre-forbidden ” absinthe, the organizers of the study concluded that the negative effect of wormwood vodka is hardly due to the presence of thujone in it in large quantities. It turned out that in the absinthe of that time, thujone was contained in the same concentration as it is in modern wormwood vodkas, permitted by law.
Other components of absinthe – antimony and copper compounds – were also included in absinthe in a very insignificant amount. In other words, even all of the listed toxic substances in the complex could not have a psychotropic destructive effect. In this regard, modern scientists explain mental disorders of bohemian people at the beginning of the twentieth century with the most common alcoholism.