DOSE:

180 ml

oral

Absinthe

(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

85 kg

My friend S is really into distilling and brewing alcohols. About a month ago he came across a recipe for absinthe, a psychoactive alcoholic drink. He gets most of his recipes from http://homedistiller.org and http://www.feeverte.net/bedel/

S prepared the 'sinthe as follows;

Ingredients:
Wormwood 25g Look in legal herbal high shops
Green Anise 30g Chinese cooking stores
Star Anise 15g Chinese cooking stores
Fennel 30g Chinese cooking stores
Coriander 5g Supermarket
Alcohol at 90% 830Ml
Water 415Ml

1. Bruise (place in a plastic bag and hit it with a hammer) all of the herbs
2. Place them in the 90% alcohol
3. Leave the mixture for 12 to 24 hours
3. Add the 415Ml of water to the mixture (making 1245ml)
4. Distill the whole mixture VERY slowly, using the lowest power setting in a pot still. (Refer to the homedistiller website above for more info on pot stills)
4. Collect the first litre of distillate, which should be around 70% alcohol. This is your absinthe.

Experience:
One night at around 8pm a few weeks ago we took a bottle of 6 shots (30mL per shot) of absinthe (180mL) each with us into the bush. The bottles were diluted with about 70mL of water each. A tablespoon of sugar was also added to each bottle.

We stumbled about 50 meters down a bush track near his house until we found a small waterfall and sat down on a rock. The sinthe tasted amazing, it was like liquid barley sugars and liquorish. It tasted very strong despite the dilution and was white, opaque and slightly greenish. After we had downed the sinthe we sat around for quite a while.

T+10: The first effects were a numbness in the mouth and a slight blurriness of vision. The sky seemed as if it was emitting a bright white glow. All sources of light seemed to be unbelievably strong. Auditory reception seemed to be much more sensitive then usual, S would hear a dog barking in the distance which I couldn’t, then I would hear a plane or a dog bark which he couldn’t. We could feel the alcohol slightly but only as you would after about three or four beers. It was definitely a different 'buzz' to alcohol. After a while we got up and left, walking back up the bush track back to S's road. When we arrived there I had no scene of direction at all- I had no idea were we were and was very disorientated. We decided not to go straight back to S's house but wander around a while to let the sinthe wear off because his mother was home.

T+15: We walked up the street where I stopped to have a jump on someone's trampoline. We felt happy but not euphoric, the sort of feeling where you want to wander around and be active. This was when the full effects of the sinthe really started to kick in. As we walked up the road we found the strip outside someone's house to contain sand not grass, but on a close inspection it turned out to be grass and it was just the sinthe playing with us. The visual texture was definitely one of sand but it felt like grass. We then decided that some sculptured trees near us were lollypops and we ran over to them to lick. Big mistake as I got taken out by a branch in the face.

T+30: We walked up another street which had a cul-de-sac at the end. When we got to the end of the street and were walking around the cul-de-sac, the street moved with us while the cul-de-sac stayed stationary. We walked faster but could not catch up with the street. When we finally made it my mobile rang and I managed to have a coherent conversation.

T+40: We walked back to S's house where his mum insisted on having a long and very fast conversation with us. I thought that I could control myself enough to seem sober. I walked over to a couch and sat down without noticing the cat under me. S talked to his mum for a while and sat down opposite me. He was really out of it, his eyes were half open and he couldn’t sit up properly. In conversation with S’s mum I couldn’t tell whether I was speaking very fast or very slowly. We felt really tired and went to bed almost immediately. Falling asleep was no problem although I felt quite nauseous.

S and I woke up after seven hours of sleep feeling fine and not at all hung over. Absinthe is truly amazing and great tasting. Definitely worth doing it again. The buzz of absinthe is remotely comparable to the buzz before a chemical rush kicks in.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 25991
Gender: Not Specified
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Oct 1, 2004	Views: 99,507
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Absinthe (4) : General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)