Actual Drinks of Madness
Actual Drinks of Madness
One plot element in my novel THE WITCHMASTER OF NORWAY is a cursed drink of aquavit that offers the drinker either rapture or madness. You’ll have to travel to Vardø to find out if that aquavit is real or not, but there have been real drinks of madness through history over the years. Here are my favorites!
Absinthe. Easily the most notorious “drink of madness”, absinthe was a high-alcohol drink (120-140 proof) that was rumored to cause hallucinations. The culprit at the time was thujone, which supposedly gave its is madness-unducing properites, and the effects were likely played up by both opponents of the drink (the French wine industry and temperance movement, which you can count on in any alcohol-banning campaign) and proponents of the drink (Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gaugin, Oscar Wilde, and Edgar Allan Poe, among many), and we know what notoriety does for something’s popularity. At its peak, there was demand for it in the local taverns (who offered a “green happy hour” for absinthe), and was everywhere. It was time for backlash and moral panic, which peaked in 1905, when Jean Lanfray (a Swiss worker) killed his family after drinking two glasses of absinthe. He also drank a lot of wine AND other hard liquor – it was a fifteen-drink day, if not more - but the two glasses of absinthe was the culprit. Cue the public petition to outlaw the drink, which worked. Abinsthe was banned in 1910, and then other countries followed suit. It took almost a century for it to come back. Modern science has shown alcohol content to be the issue and not the thujone, though I’m pretty sure modern thujone levels are lower.
Gin. "Madness” is probably overblown here, but boy were Londoners mad for gin centuries ago! (See what I did there?) From the 1720s to the 1750s, gin was popular, but the good stuff was expensive, so cheap, unregulated gin was popular with lower-income workers. Londoners loved real gin and the unregulated stuff, which was a problem, as the bootleg, moonshine-level drink often had dangerous ingredients like turpentine or sulfuric acid in it. This “gin” led to hallucinations and reported madness in the drinkers (which seems sensible since, you know, it was poison). The government passed the Gin Act, imposing a hefty £50 fee (a lot of money at the time) on anyone who wanted to sell gin, and the people responded by... rioting. The riots worked, and gin remained popular until public opinion swayed against it due to a well-circulated drawing by William Hogarth called “Gin Lane” that showed a dilapated city block full of wretches and even a drunk mother tossing her baby off the stairs. It was one of a pair - the other drawing “Beer Street” showed painters, lovers, and writers enjoying it in a classy fashion.
Mad Honey. A honey produced mainly in Nepal and Turkey, where it’s used both as medicine and a recreational drug due to its hallucinogenic effect, it was used as a poison in ancient Greece. Of the three drinks here, this one’s the real deal. The Greek military leader Xenophon wrote of it, describing how Greek soldiers near the Black Sea ate mad honey and then got sick and disoriented and could not stand amidst the drug-induced mania. Aristotle also wrote of its madness-inducing effect in users. Centuries later, with the same type of logic that would give the world “Purple Drank” in the 20th century, European importers decided to add it to alcoholic beverages, creating a strong beverage that brought people to the brink of their own mind (and health).
Sources: Wikipedia
“Absinthism: a fictitious 19th century syndrome with present impact," (Stephan A Padosch, Dirk W Lachenmeier, Lars U Kröner).
“The Five Biggest Absinthe myths,” Liquor.com.
“Why was Absinthe banned,” Maison Absinthe site.
“The Gin Craze: When Gin Caused Riots, Madness and Mayhem in the Streets of London,” Summerhall Distillery.
"Mad Honey: The Reality,” Gunduz, Abdülkadir; Ayaz, Faik Ahmet (2013).
