It's green. It's distilled from wormwood. It is reputed to have psychoactive effects (ie. It makes you hallucinate), and was the "cocaine of the Belle Epoche", along with opium and, er, cocaine. It was given cutsie names, like The Green Fairy. Baudelaire, Hemmingway, Manet, Picasso, Van Gogh, Talouse-Latrec, Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde and others from the artistic and writing community used it. Picasso did some pretty nifty paintings on the subject. It is prepared by placing the absinthe in the bottom of a glass, then pouring water over a sugar cube placed on a special, perforated spoon to dilute and sweeten it. It can potentially kill you, although it didn't get Hemmingway. Then again, that man should have been done in by a lot of things, but apparently had the constitution of an ox, or possibly a woolly mammoth. It was banned in most countries, including the USA and most of Europe sometime before 1925. Recently, France started allowing sales of absinthe providing it didn't contain the substance that makes you go all loopy, whatever that is. After I drank some on Saturday night, I felt distinctively loopy myself and not at all well.

Well, that's what I thought I knew about absinthe when I ordered it late Saturday night at a funky Greek bar in Tomar. I especially thought that whatever absinthe was available would be unleaded, so to speak-- devoid of all hallucinogens. And let's face it: would you ever mix absinthe with something such as drambuie? I think not.

It's possible that the copious amounts of wine consumed beforehand may have had something to do with it, as well.

Those same copious amounts of Templar wine (which is an excellent value, by the way) probably explain why I actually drank it when it arrived, thereby violating my own, strict, "Never Drink Anything That Has Been Set On Fire Rule", which I have adhered to faithfully for the eight years since I last drank anything that had been set on fire. I drank it straight down, as instructed, instead of sipping it like I usually would drink a drink like that. I even used the straw to quickly inhale the fumes from the glass the barman tightly covered with his palm right after I drank it. Basically, I did whatever I was told at that point.

Boy-oh-boy, was I sorry. I felt hot. I felt ill. I felt disoriented. I abandoned my glass of wine and started in on the water. And I attributed it to the copious amounts of (admittedly cheap) red wine, fatigue, and the fact that I hardly ever drink alcohol-- let alone shots-- save the occasional amaro after dinner or bloody mary.

I made Elvis take me back to the hotel. Then, the fresh air having woken me up a bit, left again and went back to the (non-Greek) bar and rejoined the others. I'm not sure, but I think I was aiming to go somewhere different, but it's just as well that I ended up where there were people to watch after me. I drank more water. And finally, after I managed to slot my brain back into my skull, sometime after 3 am, Dick informed me that Portugal never banned absinthe.

In other words, the absinthe I drank was the real thing, baby.

I took this with a grain of salt. Hell, I took it with an entire salt-lick. Dick is the man, among other things, that believed the Portuguese police would come and arrest him for allowing more than ten people on his balcony. Not, by any means, a reliable source.

And there were still the other factors to consider. A staggering amount of wine. What amounted to a double shot. Sucking in a large quantity of CO2 directly afterwards. On four hours of sleep.

So I said, "Really, Dick? I had no idea", and got on with trying to keep my eyelids regulation distance apart.

But I did look it up on the internet, and I'll be damned but Portugal never did ban absinthe, along with several other countries, such as Spain and the Czech Republic. One factor in this was the phylloxera epidemic, which killed off all the root-stock of grape vines and led to a wine shortage. In other words, if they can't drink wine, let them drink absinthe. When the European vinyards grafted their old grape vines to New World root stock, the wine shortage ended, and the powerful wine producers wanted their customers back.

The active substance in absinthe is thujone, and it seems to be legal in the EU up to a certain potency, although how that potency compares to what Van Gogh was drinking is beyond me, but it seems that modern absinthes are not nearly as strong. Anise liquors, such as Pernod and Turkish raki (which I love), are closely related to absinthe, although without the thujone. Pernod, in fact, was a famous absinthe brand until absinthe was banned, and Pastis was designed, in part, to grab as share of the market after France banned absinthe. Some vermouths (which I also aqurired a taste for in Italy) also contains thujone, and sometimes more than the current batch of absinthes.

Thujone is found in herbs such as sage and tarragon. It is also found in Vap-o-rub and Absorbine Jr. The first absinthe is credited to a Frenchman, the fabulously named Dr. Ordinaire, who put it on the market in 1792 as one of those "it'll cure anything" type of deals. It was even marketed as curing drunkenness, which, I must say, tickles me to the point of rolling around on the floor and losing all control of my bladder.

A popular current Czech brand is Hill's Absinth, and, yes, that is the correct spelling, possibly because it contains no discernible thujone. What it does have is a serious amount of alchohol. Apparently, it's been referred to as Windex.

Was this what I drank? Could be. I've never had much tolerance for 151 Rum, either. But it's unlikely, because both Portugal and Spain still make the real thing. In fact, one website states that absinthe is available in Portugal in bars, restaurants, liquor stores and supermarkets?

Supermarkets? I don't recall seeing it in Jumbo.

Turns out that's because I wasn't looking. It's there, all right, in every supermarket I've looked. Some of them even have two brands to choose from. Hill's does not seem to be popular, and most brands have an even higher alcohol content.

The proper way to drink it is, as I thought, to trickle water over a sugar cube placed on the funky slotted spoon, into the absinthe in the glass. The proper glass, by the way, is rather like a parfait, or ice cream sundae, glass. The modern variation of setting things on fire is "cheap melodramatics", and it should be sipped, not slammed.

So, did I really do absinthe? Possibly, although I think the effects were more to garden variety drunkeness. In fact, I'm sure of it. Mixed with Drambuie? What possessed me?

I've had an urge to buy some. I'm not sure I'd actually drink it, although possibly I would. But properly: sipping it, and with no setting things on fire whatsoever.

What I really want, to be honest, is the paraphernalia. I want that funky spoon, I need that funky spoon, and the more baroque the better. I have always been a fan of gadgets. I like to accessorize.

I wonder if they sell them at Jumbo?