This Frontier 'Whiskey' From The American West Came With Creepy-Crawly Side-Effects

The history of the American West may fascinate us, but the more you learn about it, the less you would want to live through it. Many who did turned to alcohol, though not as we would recognize it today. One grim example is "tarantula juice," a frontier "whiskey" that was anything but. Even worse, this beverage came with some distinctly creepy-crawly side-effects. Tarantula juice should not be mistaken for moonshine, which is simply distilled alcohol that has been made illegally, nor was it made from tarantulas.

A 2015 article in the Tahoe Daily Tribune explains that in 19th century Carson Valley, Nevada, it was common for traders to buy a solution of strychnine, a poisonous alkaloid promoted at the time in a diluted mixture with prussic acid as a stimulant and a cure-all for those with pulmonary issues. The strychnine would be mixed with what the traders misleadingly called "gin" — in actual fact, wood grain alcohol made from turpentine and other ingredients. Around 1852, Nicholas Ambrose, owner of the notorious Empire, Nevada saloon "Dutch Nick's," further modified it with prussic acid and tobacco oil. Thus, tarantula juice was born.

The effects were predictably unpleasant. Whilst the alcohol was inebriating, the strychnine would give a methamphetamine-like burst of stimulation, a combination which often left drinkers violent. The strychnine would also cause muscle convulsions, lockjaw, and the sensation that the imbiber's skin was crawling with baby tarantulas — symptoms so disturbing that victims would, ironically, drink even more of the juice the next day to ward them off. Despite all this, strychnine-laced liquor was widely (though erroneously) considered a palliative for contaminated water, which led to frequent outbreaks of cholera.

To understand why anyone would resort to such questionable alcohol, you have to understand the context of the American whiskey industry in the 19th century. There was very little stopping unscrupulous characters from selling possibly dangerous concoctions under the guise of quality liquor. Per Serious Eats, what we would today consider bourbon only accounted for about 10% of the whiskey market in the decades following the American Civil War. The rest was essentially mass-produced grain neutral spirits flavored and colored by wholesalers.

Further down the supply chain, these drinks were adulterated with dubious additives ranging from prune juice to sulfuric acid. The corruption-plagued whiskey industry would only become properly regulated after the advent of the Bottled In Bond Act of 1897, establishing quality bourbon in the U.S. before further standards for whiskey production arrived in the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

This is why, even if you wisely avoided tarantula juice, the whiskey of the 1800s 'Wild West' probably tasted horrible. In fact, though tarantula juice did not contain any element of the eponymous spider, one Western "whiskey" made use of a venomous creature found on the dusty trail. According to True West Magazine, the appropriately named "Ol' Snakehead" was made by combining alcohol, river water, tobacco, black molasses, and red Spanish peppers with two rattlesnake heads per barrel for "spirit." Anyone else suddenly in the mood for a wine spritzer?