Prototype Issue
The Green Fairy
By Nathaniel Page
(page 1 of 1)It's called "Lucid Absinthe Superieur" and it comes in a jet-black bottle graced by a pair of evil cat-eyes. It's green, 124-proof, and nearly unpalatable taken strait.
Absinthe was illegal in most of Europe and the United States for the better part of a century. Though popular amidst 19th-century bohemians, artists, and writers such as Oscar Wilde, and rumored to stoke the fires of creativity, the spirit was popularly demonized in the early 1900s for allegedly causing hallucinations and violent behavior. Vincent Van Gough cut off his ear while drunk on absinthe, for instance, and a Swiss man chopped his family apart before committing suicide drunk on a variety of liquors including absinthe.
Over the past decade the spirit made a comeback in Europe, buoyed partly by its reputation among literary figures and the myth of its hallucinogenic properties, and last May the American ban was finally lifted. Absinthe remains controversial, with scattered critics still claiming that it’s a dangerous psychoactive. Thujone, a neurotoxin derived from grand wormwood, one of the three main herbs in absinthe, causes blindness and muscle spasms in high doses and thus the FDA mandates that no product contain more than 10 parts per million of the chemical. Lucid is within legal limits, and its producers maintain that high levels of thujone are neither hallucinogenic nor indicative of authenticity of the spirit.
RealTalk obtained a bottle of Lucid from Viridian Spirits along with a brief description of how to prepare it in the traditional manner. Hang a slotted spoon on the edge of a glass containing a shot of Lucid, place a sugar cube in the spoon, and drip four ounces of ice cold water over it. Lacking a slotted spoon, I used a fork, which worked just as well. When the sugary cold water hit the absinthe the spirit turned milky green, a result of non-water soluble chemicals being released, called by connoisseurs the “louche.” Also supposedly various aromas are released with the louche, but I didn’t notice any in particular. Lucid smells strongly of anise and fennel, the other two herbs from which it is derived.
Obeying my old maxim of “save money on food and alcohol” I drank the absinthe on an empty stomach. Although I experienced no hallucinations, I did notice that the liquor hit me momentarily with a very unique feeling of intoxication. My compatriot in the act described the feeling as “watery.” I also tried the stuff strait, and must conclude that the added water is crucial to making Lucid a pleasant drink.
A few mildly bizarre things happened that evening, though I hesitate to attribute them to Lucid in particular. I found a portrait of a beautiful black-haired woman in a magazine and for some reason sat staring at it transfixed for perhaps ten minutes, trying to deduce the deeper meanings of her facial expression. I also at one point opened Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy” and began reading his megalomaniacal, barely-coherent rants aloud, and found myself laughing uncontrollably at such passages as “the only way I am able to view Doric art and the Doric state is as a perpetual military encampment of the Apollonian forces.” Eventually I fell into a comatose slumber.
I never felt any compulsion to kill or mutilate myself, nor did I feel especially creative, rather just drunk and taken to fits of giggling. Meanwhile, after a few whiskeys my roommate punched out a lightbulb with his fist while going on about something. His commentary on the possibility of hallucinating on absinthe: “You can hallucinate on anything if you just keep on drinking.” I must conclude that whiskey is still my drink of choice.
For more information on the mysterious green drink, check out www.drinklucid.com.
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