DOSE:

oral

Absinthe

(liquid)

Wandering the streets of Glasgow I came across a funky off-licence called 'The Cave' and through the window I noted the brilliant green of a bottle of Absinthe. I had been wanting to try this drink (after hearing it was, or at least use to be, hallucinogenic) so I purchased a bottle. I'm afraid I can't remember the brand but I think it was eastern European and had a pictures of a not very attractive woman on the front, it claimed to be 70% although I'm not certain.

When I returned to my flat I shared the news of my exciting find with my flatmate. She told me that her brother had drunk quite a lot of absinthe on a holiday once and he had explained to her a ritual for the drinking of it.

Apparently, you filled a double shot glass with absinthe, took a teaspoon of sugar and dipped it in the glass, then lit the sugar which will burn for 20 seconds or so until caramelised (be careful not to do this over the glass as little drops of flaming liquid fall from the spoon and the shit is quite flammable) finally you mix the sugar back into the drink and down it. I reckon that this is more for show and for slowing down consumption for the sake of safety, but it did sweeten the drink which was pleasant.

Anyway, I had two of these with my flatmate and then some friends came over. A joint and another shot followed. I must add at this point that it was fairly foul tasting to begin with but at this point it tasted like very rank cough medicine. Also very little could be done to remove the taste from your mouth although a little piece of bread helped. Another joint and another shot followed, by this point I was kinda drunk and mildly stoned. After a third joint we decided to go to a pub.

When we got there we met with some people my friends knew but I did not. The place was very busy and I didn't feel like making the effort of conversation with these FOAFs so I just sat their, quite happily in the manner of the stoned. Then I began to notice an odd effect, instead of hearing the conversation going on beside me it began to merge into a unified chattering crowd noise. Then the movements of crowd seem to slow down. If I concentrated on something or spoke to someone everything was normal but when I sat back this weird slow-motion effect happened and the chattering began again.

I asked my friend if he had noticed anything odd but shook his head so I told him to sit back and relax a moment. I waited a moment or two and then he exclaimed something along the lines 'Fuckin hell!' and described the same effect I had noticed. We enjoyed this strangeness for a bit and then decided we were to wasted to be out in public and went home to get more stoned.

In conclusion, I am reluctant to suggest the absinthe was the cause of our minor time warping as I have been told that the absinthe available these days has little to no hallucinogenic powers, particularly stuff imported into Britain. However, I have never noticed that sort of effect when stoned or drunk/stoned before or since, especially given that I wasn't even very stoned. I do recommend Absinthe though, even if just as a funky drink for parties because of the mystique.

Exp Year: 1999	ExpID: 2926
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 16, 2000	Views: 10,633
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Absinthe (4) : General (1), Various (28)