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too little activity. Natural chemicals present in the human brain regulate it by slowing it down and speeding it up. One of the ‘slow down’ chemicals is GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). Alpha-thujone blocks the natural inhibitory action of GABA, leaving the nerves able to fire off too easily.
    Therefore, the ingestion of too much wormwood oil will definitely cause convulsions.
Wormwood and Thujone
The name ‘wormwood’ comes from the belief that this plant would fight worms living in your gut. Way back in the first century BC, Pliny the Elder wrote in his Historia Naturalis that wormwood had this action. Even way back then, he noted that the use of wormwood as a medicine was an ancient practice.
Wormwood is also mentioned in the Book of Revelations 8:10-11: ‘A great star from heaven, burning as if it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the foundations of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.’
Wormwood is first mentioned in the Ebers Papyrus, dating back to between 3550 and 1550 BC. It is also mentioned in three of Shakespeare’s plays.
The active ingredient in wormwood is a chemical called thujone (C 10 H 16 O). It is found, in varying levels, in most species of Artemisia , a genus of the daisy family. Thujone is also found in other plants such as tansy, sage and white cedar.
However, the main sources of this chemical are regular wormwood ( Artemisia absinthium ) and Roman wormwood ( Artemisia pontica ). The plant is a herb with a perennial root system, with firm, leafy branched stems that reach to a height of 0.6-1 m. Wormwood has tiny globular yellow-green flowers and silver-grey leaves. Oil of wormwood (containing thujone) is extracted from all parts of the plant.
Essential Oil
If you go to a weekend market and follow your nose, you may end up at a stall selling a variety of essential oils.
These oils are originally stored as microdroplets in the glands of plants. They diffuse through the walls of the glands to spread over the surface of the plant and evaporate, filling the surrounding air with a perfume.
In most cases, we do not know the function of these essential oils in the plants.
But we use them as deodorisers, for adding flavour and, in some cases, as pharmaceuticals.
    Thujone—Part 2
    So, did thujone cause absinthism?
    Almost certainly not, according to Dr Dirk W. Lachenmeier from the Chemical and Veterinary Medicine Investigation Laboratory in Karlsruhe in Germany.
    First, some varieties of wormwood (e.g. those from the Spanish Pyrenees) that are used to make absinthe have zero levels of thujone.
    Second, the levels of thujone found in the tested bottles of absinthe were much too low to cause absinthism. Dr Lachenmeier tested 13 bottles of pre-ban absinthe and found their average level of thujone to be 25 ppm, with the highest only 48 ppm. To get the absinthism effect from the thujone, you would have to drink so many litres of absinthe that its alcohol content would kill you first.
    Furthermore, we still have some of the recipes that were used to make absinthe in the old days. Typically, low amounts of driedwormwood were added, which would give the low levels of thujone measured by Dr Lachenmeier.
    No, alcohol caused absinthism—in other words, absinthism was plain old alcoholic poisoning. While whisky and other spirits rate at 40-50% alcohol by volume, absinthe was typically 70%, and has been measured at 90% alcohol. The alcohol level needs to be so high to ensure that the essential oils are dissolved. This keeps the liquid clear, not murky. When ice-cold water (part of the ritual) is added to the absinthe, some of the oils come out of the solution and make the drink cloudy. This milky opalescence is given the exotic-sounding name of louche.
    The demon alcohol by itself can account for all the symptoms of absinthism. In his article