TODAY'S ABSINTHE WON'T DRIVE YOU MAD

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Human beings have invented or discovered an
abundance of substances that offer short-term pleasure, often in exchange
for long-term grief - substances like alcohol, cocaine, heroin. Few have
yielded such a spate of grief as absinthe, the drink favored by bohemians a
century ago in Paris and other cosmopolitan locales in Europe and the
United States.

Absinthe drove men mad. Degas portrayed its stupefying effect artfully in
his painting "L'Absinthe." Picasso and Manet worked the same theme. Some
believed this drink, formulated in the 18th century by Henri Louis Pernod,
stimulated artistic creativity. Talky Oscar Wilde prattled on about
visions. Baudelaire drank it for inspiration. So did Toulouse-Lautrec,
Gauguin, Van Gogh. Others regard tales of its inspirational qualities as
pish posh.

Looking back, the pish-posh school of thought seems to hold more credit, if
only because of the millions upon millions of others who drank absinthe
during its heyday and went on to create absolutely nothing.

The French had been making and selling absinthe for nearly a century before
they banned it in 1915, by which time they were consuming 10 million
gallons a year. Other countries had moved more quickly: Belgium banned the
drink in 1905, Switzerland in 1910. A little later, the United States went
along. This followed years of physicians' observations of absinthe's
long-range effects, including convulsions, hallucinations, insanity and
other reactions that made the drink's prohibition understandable.

After absinthe's earlier prohibition, substitutes emerged: Pernod, anis,
ouzo. Newsweek reports that there's one on the market in the United States
called Absente. All taste similar to absinthe but lack the stuff that made
the original so dangerous: thujone. Thujone, contained in wormwood, upon
which the drink is based, was absinthe's sinister secret.

Production of absinthe began again in the Czech Republic after the Velvet
Revolution of 1989 kicked out the Communists. The current product,
according to Daniel Hill, whose family produces absinthe in the town of
Jindrichuv Hradec, in southern Bohemia, has a "negligible" amount of
thujone. "It wouldn't be absinthe without it," he says.

The best news, says diplomat Marcel Sauer at the Czech Embassy in
Washington, is this: "You don't go mad anymore."

Absinthe has always had a certain appeal, even for nondrinkers. Anything so
hotly denounced by the righteous-and-correct, and so lavishly praised by
the creative-if-bent, has to pique the most dormant sense of curiosity.
Disputes over dangerous substances seem to be part of what we're all about.

In Prague, with my own curiosity piqued, I purchased a bottle of the
substance - the color of some gasolines - in a shop near a tram stop just
below the Hradcany Castle. Hill's Absinth. It cost 300 crowns, about $9.
The same bottle in London costs $70. The Hills aren't doing badly, it
seems.

For several days the bottle remained untouched on the table in the hotel
room. It looked so pedestrian, such an ordinary thing to have such a
history, so many fey associations. It is, after all, just something to
drink. So what was one to do but to try it, a dash in a glass. Bottoms up!

My mouth caught fire. Then a bitterness came through, a bitterness beyond
measure, an unpromising bitterness, a taste from another world, utterly
ignorant of the sweet. After that unpleasantness the strong taste of anise
announced itself. It was a good, almost a rescuing, taste. But it lasted
only briefly, to be replaced by a treacly sensation, like sweet licorice.

The second dose was prepared the way absinthe aficionados take it (as I had
read), in a glass with cold water and sugar. This made the drink entirely
more palatable, even pleasant. A luminous green sipping liqueur.

No visions arrived, not one hallucination. Nor did I experience a
compulsion to draw, paint or write poetry. I did begin to feel a little
elevated, which led to a conclusion about the possible reason for
absinthe's popularity so many years ago, and not only among the artsy, but
among low-paid European workers in the period before the Great War, the
street cleaners, chimney sweeps of Paris and Madrid, even New Orleans and
Greenwich Village.

First, absinthe is strong, really strong: about 140 proof. If you want a
fast ride to oblivion, an escape from the here and now, absinthe will do
it. Second, it was cheap back then, which was what drew so many poor
people, especially artists, to it.

Daniel Hill and his uncle, Vladimir Hill, operate out of Canada, where they
distribute Hill's Absinth - spelled without the final "e" - to any country
that will buy it. Those countries include Germany, Austria, Russia and
Britain.

Britain never did ban absinthe, maybe because it was never as popular there
as it was on the Continent. The Brits had their own substances to worry
about, such as laudanum, an opium derivative all the rage during Victorian
times. Absinthe is still legal, which may be why London has become the
locus of absinthe's revival. The stuff they're drinking these days in
fashionable SoHo bars and clubs comes from Hill's distillery.