This post was originally published on this site
Addiction Recovery Bulletin
TOUSLED TALENT –
Jan. 30, 2025 – The colors swirled and pulsed before his eyes: electric blues, starburst yellows, deep, bottomless blacks. The world did not stand still for Vincent van Gogh; it flickered, danced, and whispered in a language only he could hear. But in the final years of his life, those whispers turned into voices: mocking, accusing, commanding.
In the dimly lit cafés of 19th-century France, absinthe was more than a drink; it was an obsession. Artists, poets, and dreamers chased its otherworldly effects, believing it unlocked creativity. But what many did not realize was that this emerald-green liquor carried a hidden neurotoxic secret: Absinthe contained thujone, a compound known to cause seizures, hallucinations, and disordered thinking. The more van Gogh drank, the more he saw things that were not there. Neurologists like Henri Gastaut (1956) later theorized that absinthe, combined with his likely epilepsy, triggered a storm of psychotic episodes. The American Journal of Psychiatry (Blumer, 2002) reviewed van Gogh’s medical history and found striking similarities between his symptoms and alcohol-induced psychotic disorder—a condition marked by auditory and visual hallucinations, paranoia, and violent agitation.
CONTINUE@PsychologyToday
The post Van Gogh’s Haunted Mind: Absinthe and Madness appeared first on Addiction/Recovery eBulletin.