War has not been kind to the descendants of Henri-Louis Pernod, that Frenchman who in 1797 gave to the world the aperitif known as absinthe. Henri-Louis used the formula of a Dr. Ordinaire, who was celebrated up & down the Alps for cures effected with mountain herbs. One of these herbs was wormwood, an excellent stomachic, which by the time of World War I had also acquired a reputation as an aphrodisiac, thereby helping to enrich the firm of Pernod Fils, leading manufacturer of absinthe. In 1914 the publisher of a small Paris newspaper started a campaign to prohibit absinthe, based on the popular beliefs that: 1) wormwood is an aphrodisiac; 2) continued use of aphrodisiacs produces impotence; 3) France is a nation of absinthe sippers; 4) therefore France as a nation is becoming impotent. Frenchmen’s mortal fear of impotence, coupled with war hysteria and a falling birth rate, put the campaign over with a bang.

I’ve heard of “beer goggles” and “whiskey dick”…
Looks like absinthe should have its own little phrase.

“Absinthe is the aphrodisiac of the self. The green fairy who lives in the absinthe wants your soul. But you are safe with me.”

Gary Oldman as Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

“It is a charming fairy! . . . one wave of the opal wand, and sorrow is conveniently guillotined!”
Corelli M: Wormwood-A drama of Paris London, UK, Richard Bentley and Son; 1890.

“…sit daily for six hours in the Old Absinthe House, and sip the icy opal; endure till all things change insensibly before your eyes, you changing with them; till you become as gods, knowing good and evil, and that they are not two but one.”
From: Absinthe: The Green Goddess, by Aleister Crowley

“The first month of marriage is the honeymoon, the second is the absinthe-moon.”
François-Marie Arouet, pen name: Voltaire
21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778