Most absinthe is legal at least in bigger part of EU lately. it mostly depends on amount of thujone which is said to be responsible for all that "yellow vision" stuff and so on.
I quite rarely drink it nowadays, but it's mostly because of its price. For the last couple of years when my friend was living in Switzerland, he used to bring me excellent absinthe from some little brewery in Alps.
Here is its web:
http://www.absintissimo.ch/It's one of the best i've ever tasted. Most cheaper ones are just simple strong alcohol with the taste of anise.
Anyways as for hallucinogenic effect of absinth though there are still discussions about it whether it's possible or not, once i had this weird experience:
We had some weed and a liter+ of absinth. At that time i was with my broken leg and could barely walk so i was sitting on the chair with my back turned to the wall of the house. So I stand up, turn around and notice there are doors in that wall. I open it - long stairs going up. I start going up, there's some sort of brothel. Everything's painted purple and I just wander through the rooms. There are people fucking here and there and so on, the usual activity of such place. After wandering around I turn back, go downstairs, close the door and sit back on my chair and sort of "wake up" from it. I don't know if it was absinthe or something else, but it was very real and very nice experience. Anyways, after one of Budrus recording session we ended up mixing Abba and SPK vinyls 4am in the morning so absinth does some good.
I also remembered one tasty drink when talking about anise - sambuca. It's rather sweet, but when you drink with all that ritual with coffee beans, burning up sambuca and inhaling the fume and so on it usually gets you drunk pretty quickly.
