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+--- Thread: Absinthe myths and facts (/thread-5481.html)
Absinthe myths and facts - Magical Realist - Jun 5, 2018
https://curiosity.com/topics/three-myths-and-three-truths-of-absinthe-curiosity/
"You've seen it in "Moulin Rouge." You've seen it in your local goth's fan-fiction. And the Toulouse-Lautrec fanatics among you are only too familiar with it. Absinthe is probably the most mysterious, myth-shrouded spirit out there — so much so that you might think that modern absinthe is only a pale imitation of the real stuff. But how much of the legends are true? Simultaneously less than you might think, and more than you might expect..."
RE: Absinthe myths and facts - C C - Jun 10, 2018
Quote:(#3) . . . The people who reported having strange visions or experiencing lasting medical problems as a result of absinthe weren't making it up, though. It's just that the culprit was sloppy distillation techniques, just like how improperly brewed moonshine can cause blindness and neurological disorders.
Can you really go blind doing that?: . . . So where does the methanol that causes blindness come from? It's not the alcohol itself you need to be worried about so much as the distiller. Methanol--also known as wood alcohol--is cheap, and its physiological effects on the body are the same as ethanol's, at least at first. Unscrupulous moonshiners will actually add methanol to their product to up the potency. And when they do so, the results can range from slightly unhealthy to absolutely deadly.
Methanol helps impart a good drunk to the consumer, but just a few hours later as the body metabolizes everything things can turn physiologically very bad. Optic nerve damage could end up being the least of your worries.
"It's very, very toxic, so even a small amount--just 10 milliliters of pure methanol--can cause blindness," says Dr. Bruce Goldberger, professor and director of toxicology at the University of Florida College of Medicine. "But just a few ounces of methanol can kill. So one effect is someone becomes permanently blind due to the effect of methanol on the optic nerve. But the second is that it's just lethal, physiologically, to the body."
Such was the case in India's West Bengal state, where 168 people died from drinking a methanol-tainted batch of moonshine [...in 2011...]. But methanol isn't the only danger inherent in spirits of unknown provenance. The copper coils generally used as condensers in the distillation process aren't exactly optimal for making large batches of moonshine for distribution. For large volume illicit stills, nothing works quite like a truck radiator immersed in the product. Of course, alcohol is a solvent and will leach all kinds of things from a radiator, including lead salts that can lead to lead poisoning. Glycol products from antifreeze have shown up in batches of moonshine as well.