Thanks to Food Dude for pointing out Sarah Hepola’s recent Salon piece about absinthe:

Absinthe is legal in the United States for the first time since 1912, the year it was banned in America…

So let’s clear up a few misconceptions. Absinthe does not make you hallucinate. It is not wildly addictive. It will not cause you to lop off your ear, unless (possibly, on the off-chance) you are a deeply disturbed painter racked by poverty, heartbreak and mental illness.

Absinthe’s story proves how powerful a story can be even if it isn’t true. There are razor blades in the Halloween apples! Someone could steal your kidneys and leave you in a bathtub of ice! And you could start out the evening with a nice cocktail and end it in a mental institution, stark raving maaaaad.

As a poppy little primer on how absinthe gained a reputation disproportionate to its actual properties, it’s a good read, if not exactly ground-breaking (anyone who hasn’t picked up on absinthe’s revival as the spirit snob’s* drink du jour obviously hasn’t been reading the New York Times). I wish, though, that she had devoted a few more lines to explaining absinthe’s “legalization,” as it’s fairly confusing. Absinthe was illegal thanks to its thujone content (thujone being the chemical found in wormwood believed to have hallucinogenic properties); no beverage that contained more than 10 ppm of thujone could be sold. As I understand it, all that’s changed is that distributors realized that the margin of error when testing for thujone is such that many European absinthes, which contain the chemical in low amounts, can now be sold stateside. According to the Wormwood Society, no regulations have actually changed, though the Salon piece tells us a ban has been lifted. But either way, I did learn one thing from the article: Marilyn Manson has a line of absinthe called Mansinth. Of course he does.

*In the same entry, Mr. Food Dude talks a little trash about the term “foodie.” I’m right there with him in disliking the word, although for different reasons. The term for me suggests not someone who loves food (or loves staying abreast of the latest fads, as the Dude sees it), but someone who takes pride in their own pickiness, in being hard to please. Spoiled grownups who are way too interested in what goes on inside their own mouths. Which is fine, gotta have a hobby, but I don’t want to have dinner with you. Anyway, I need a similar term for someone who gets insufferable about what beverages they consume… any ideas?