Who Needs Poitin When You’ve Got Ether?

Many people lament Ireland’s “lost liquor”, poitin. Basically, distilled starch-derived alcohol. Why did it “disappear”? Where did it go? Was it a kind of forbidden nectar, or just another super strong distilled grain alcohol?

Ireland entered a period of economic warfare with the United Kingdom during the latter half of the 18th century. This led to the Act of Union in 1801 that abolished the Irish Parliament and removed from Ireland any real ability to enact its own tax and excise policies. As a result, Ireland suffered under an increasingly punitive Prohibition for most of the 19th century and domestic alcohol production and consumption within Ireland plummetted due to extremely restrictive, punitive laws and taxes. There was also the small matter of an extreme religiously-motivated persecution against alcohol manufacturers and consumers. As a result, the main brewing company left was the “Protestant” Guinness company which enjoyed strong political links with the UK occupation regime.

An Irish solution to the unavailablity of potin was to replace alcohol consumption with dietheyl ether consumption. Ether was sold openly in shops and usually drunk “straight”, that is, chased with water, as opposed to Continental forms of ether consumption that mixed it with cognac or whisky. Ireland led the world in per capita ether consumption for two generations, averaging around half a litre per person annually at the peak of its popularity in 1891. During the 1890s the UK government scheduled ether as a narcotic and made it easier and cheaper to drink in Ireland in private and in public. Just over 20 years later there was a Rebellion against UK rule.

I for one do not consider these developments unconnected. Many of the Irish Nationalist agitators made names for themselves during the 90s and noughties by opposing the massive growth of pubs and drinking establishments that presented a quick route to economic advancement for some yet were reviled as nefarious instruments of a new, decentralised policy of social control on-the-cheap. James Connolly’s screeds against the growing power of the “gombeen” pub owners of Ireland are classics of their kind.

To paraphrase Trainspotting: “Poitin? Who needs Poitin when you’ve got ether?”

We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls … The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had sampled almost everything else, and now — yes, it was time for a long snort of ether. And then do the next 100 miles in a horrible, slobbering sort of spastic stupor. The only way to keep alert on ether is to do up a lot of amyls — not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus…