What's your poison?
Buzz doesn't always come in a glass
Happy Friday,
Do you know what Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Picasso, van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron and Charles Baudelaire had in common?
They were all mad for la fée verte.
In English, the green fairy.
Absinthe.
Sparkling green and wickedly potent, it was 75% alcohol. That’s 150 proof. They drank it straight up with just enough water to melt a sugar cube.
Oscar Wilde, who wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray , mused upon what you see after the first, second and third drink. After the first, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they aren’t. And after the third you see thing as they really are and it’s horrible.
Can you imagine three glasses of 150 proof anything?
One, two, three, floor.
Absinthe was popular in France in the late 19th and early 20th century, mostly among artists and writers. Some said it was an aphrodisiac, others swore it was their muse.
Either way, it was cheap enough that even a starving artist could imbibe daily.
And they did. A legendary number of them.
Some historians mused that van Gogh’s skies maybe have been affected by Absinthe and Hemingway once imbibed so much he had a knife fight with his piano.
Buzz doesn’t always come in a glass…
From time to time, tech geeks run programs to determine the “top” stories on Medium for some period of time. A year, a month, etc. Maybe you’ve run across those.
So I used Dr. Google to help me find some of those pieces and there’s so much self growth on those lists!
On one hand, I get it. We all want to improve. Do better. Be better. I get that.
But as I saw the zillions of reads and claps, I couldn’t help thinking if all those people took the time they spent reading those — 7-10 minutes each — day after day, week after week — and used it to create something, maybe they’d achieve more?
Of course, that’s not why they’re reading. They’re reading because when you read something uplifting and motivating, it gives the brain a shot of dopamine.
Buzz doesn’t always come in a glass.
If you google the phrase “self help addict” you’ll see what I mean.
The real “secret” to success…
Years after the Absinthe craze was dead and gone, research scientists and doctors began to study things like addiction and the effects. Know what they said? They said all those Absinthe addled creatives succeeded despite imbibing, not because of it.
Plenty of people danced with the green fairy, but created nothing.
Hemingway, Poe, van Gogh, Wilde — all those creatives created words or art, not because of the buzz of la fée verte, but despite it.
In a bookstore, self growth is a genre. But in real life?
It’s a verb. Self growth comes from what you do.
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
More reading…
10 Sites That Pay Writers $50 to $1000 Per Article (Trending)
If You’re Struggling On Medium, One of These Will Help (New)
If you enjoyed this, please click the heart so I feel appreciated. lol.
Have a great weekend, and Happy Easter if you celebrate it.
xo,
Linda
I enjoyed this piece, per usual.
What I’m about to say might sound a bit pedantic: I’ve read three biographies of E.A. Poe and an 800 page dissertation of the six years Poe lived in Philly (his most productive years in terms of literary reviews as a “magazinist” and short stories; he lived here between 1838 and 1844). His alcohol consumption was more controlled in this my home city than previously or subsequently.
When I asked my NPS Park Ranger colleagues at The Poe National Historic Site, what was the alcoholic drink he favored, their response was port wine (I posed the question because I couldn’t find a reference in any of the biographical materials I read; yes, there are many more biographies written about Poe...). The common thread in all I read is that alcohol was quickly metabolized by him, getting drunk rapidly.
There’s also been a lot of mis-information about him, attributed after his death by his literary executor Rufus Griswold. Much of what Griswold wrote about Poe, such as drug addiction, has been discredited.
I know that you do a lot of research for your essays. So, now I wonder what source you used for Poe’s use of absinthe?
I’m curious, not being critical!!
Thanks for the information. I only heard of absinthe in novels, so I just assumed it was a cordial. It apparently had something other than alcohol in it. I had to research laudanum for a story I was writing, and found it was 10% opium with the alcohol. Nice to know stuff.