Enrich Your Life with Sage (the Herb)

It Started with the “Green Fairy”#

There’s a drink called absinthe. It’s a beautiful green, high-proof liqueur made by steeping herbs like wormwood, and apparently artists like Van Gogh and Picasso were wildly into it in late 19th-century France.

What’s interesting is that absinthe is said to have a distinctive “intoxicating effect” that’s different from ordinary alcohol. The culprit is thujone, a compound in wormwood, its main ingredient. It’s said to take the brakes off the brain (the GABA receptors), pushing consciousness into an abnormal state of arousal and excitation, and back then people apparently believed this was the true identity of the “green fairy” that made you hallucinate.

So absinthe came to be seen as dangerous, and it vanished from history for a while.

Because thujone, the flavor compound of wormwood, was said to cause hallucinations and other psychoactive effects, absinthe was first banned in 1898 in the Congo Free State, a Belgian colony, and in the early 20th century its production, distribution and sale were prohibited in Switzerland, Germany, the United States and elsewhere.

Today it’s back under modern safety standards, but the thujone content of commercial bottles is strictly capped.

Still, hearing “it has a history of being banned” tickles the hacker spirit. I thought: “If I get my hands on some wormwood and steep it in liquor myself, couldn’t I legally recreate the powerful absinthe of the old days?” And that’s how all this started.

From Wormwood to Sage#

I eagerly started hunting for ingredients and immediately hit a wall. True wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) doesn’t grow wild in Japan, so it’s extremely hard to get. Japanese yomogi (mugwort), which is a relative, is in the same genus, but its thujone content, the whole point, is overwhelmingly lower, so it was no substitute.

So I dug through compositional data asking, “Is there any legal herb other than wormwood that’s packed with thujone?” And I landed on something right under my nose.

A familiar spice that’s sitting on the supermarket spice shelf: common sage (Salvia officinalis).

When I looked into it, apparently a whopping 20 to 50% of sage’s essential oil is thujone. Even more interesting, besides thujone (brain arousal), sage also contains β-caryophyllene, a powerful relaxing compound that resembles cannabis (cannabinoids).

In other words, if you take sage the right way, there’s potential to create a complex altered state of consciousness different from absinthe’s, where “the brain is awake and clear, but the body is deeply relaxed” (or an ideal sleep state for having lucid dreams). That was my conclusion.

Easy to get, versatile, and cheap. So I bought whole dried sage at Otsuya.

The Sage Experiment: An Unexpected Ending#

Now, thujone and the other active compounds are “fat-soluble” (they dissolve in oil). To get the compounds to your brain, the most sensible way is to slowly heat-extract them in butter or olive oil and eat them as a pasta or meat sauce.

That said, I wanted to check how strong this stuff is the easy way first, so I decided to just steep it in boiling water and drink it as sage tea.

Before trying it, I consulted Professor Gemini (the AI), who gave me a thorough scare:

“The thujone is too strong, and it’ll taste like boiled-down medicated patches and sawdust, a disgusting dead-leaf soup, so start with a really tiny amount!”

…it said.

“Good medicine tastes bitter, I guess this is the price of experimentation,” I thought, half doubtful. I poured boiling water over a rather generous pile of sage, covered it to steep, took a sip… and it’s pretty good!

None of the violent nastiness I’d been threatened with. It was a refreshing, cooling tea with a deep, herby bitterness that grows on you, and honestly just tasty. To be frank, it’s better than that “sleep-aid herbal tea” I bought on Amazon a while back. Plus, there’s no caffeine, so it’s totally fine to drink before bed.

I was let down and, at the same time, convinced that I could work this into my life without any strain. Noelle (the Genshin Impact character) had been telling me to drink plenty of plain hot water (sayu) anyway, so that checks that box too. Two birds, one stone.

By the way, I didn’t feel any of the psychoactive effects I’d originally been hoping for, like being totally wrecked or having vivid dreams. I may have fallen asleep more easily than usual that day, but that was probably just placebo, or simply the effect of the hot water.

Future Plans#

Even the tea gave me a good relaxing effect (and a clear-headed feeling afterward), but the real deal is still “lipid extraction.”

Brewing in water only dissolves about 20 to 30% of the active compounds, thujone included, and most of it stays in the spent leaves and gets thrown away. That’s because all of these compounds are “fat-soluble” (hydrophobic).

So next time, I plan to take on cooking a legal absinthe-style extra-loaded pasta, as a drug delivery system to get the compounds into my brain down to the last drop.

How can a plain herb pasta become “effectively absinthe”? There’s a clear chemical and pharmacological mechanism behind it.

1. A Substitute for Ethanol: Lipid Extraction and a Piperine “Absorption Boost”

The reason historical absinthe was made with nearly 70% alcohol was to fully dissolve the fat-soluble thujone and make it absorb explosively fast through the gut.

In cooking, the thing that plays the role of this “alcohol” is plenty of butter or olive oil. First, gently heat the sage in a frying pan over low heat (tempering) to transfer the compounds fully into the oil.

Then throw in a ton of coarsely ground black pepper. The “piperine” in black pepper boosts the intestinal absorption of other active compounds and slows their metabolism in the liver, improving bioavailability (an absorption boost). It’s a hack for slamming thujone straight into the bloodstream without any alcohol.

2. A Substitute for Anise: Basil to “Control the Uppers and Downers”

Absinthe’s other star is “anise” (a sweet-smelling spice). A compound in anise called anethole strongly arouses the brain together with thujone. But that would keep me awake at night, which is no good for exploring lucid dreams.

So instead of anise, I’ll add a huge amount of basil at the end. By coincidence, I’d bought some at Gyomu Super (a Japanese bulk-discount supermarket chain) just a few days ago because it caught my eye.

Basil contains “estragole” (a relative of anethole, mild arousal) and “linalool” (the famous lavender compound, strong sedation). On top of that, the “β-caryophyllene” found in both sage and basil acts on the CB2 receptors and deeply relaxes the body.

So if the original absinthe is “a drug that fully awakens both brain and body,” then this sage-and-basil pasta is a hybrid protocol specialized for lucid dreaming (sleep paralysis): “the brain is sharp from the thujone, while the body sleeps like a log on basil and fat”… or at least it should be.

I’ve been plagued by trouble falling asleep for a long time, so I’m looking forward to seeing what these easy, cheap herbs do, and how a familiar spice like sage changes my sleep and day-to-day performance.