Why did Van Gogh eat yellow paint? The troubled obsession behind the masterpieces.

Plenty of people know that Vincent van Gogh loved the color yellow, but did you know he loved it so much that he ate yellow paint? Questions about Van Gogh eating paint come up so often that the subject is addressed on the FAQs page of the official Van Gogh Museum website. Some people believe Van Gogh ate yellow paint because he thought it would make him more cheerful. Others, including Van Gogh’s psychiatrist, believed he ate paint because he was trying to kill himself. The truth is more elusive — even Van Gogh didn’t know why he ate paint. He wrote in a letter to his brother, “It appears that I pick up filthy things and eat them, although my memories of these bad moments are vague.” So what’s the real reason — why the heck did Van Gogh eat yellow paint?

Scientists now believe he had a biochemical craving for something called terpenes. To put it simply, terpenes are chemical building blocks found in nature, most often in plants. They give plants their distinctive aromas. Why do roses smell different from pine needles? That’s terpenes, baby! Cannabis enthusiasts might be familiar with the term because terpenes are what produce the wide variety of aromas found across different strains of weed.

But here’s the thing: Terpenes are pretty potent, so they’re usually found in very small concentrations. It doesn’t take a ton of terpenes to give a plant its distinctive scent. It’s like when you put on perfume or cologne — a little spritz of musk might draw people toward you, but if you use too much, people’s eyes are going to start watering and you’ll end up driving them away. Van Gogh had a strong nose for terpenes and sought them out relentlessly. But the twist is, he didn’t do it consciously. He had no idea what terpenes were or why he was drawn to them. He only knew that he wanted them.

That’s why he drank absinthe. Absinthe is a froufrou alcoholic beverage derived from wormwood and other plants. It’s emerald green in color, pungently woodsy in smell, and contains a terrifyingly high concentration of liquor. Nicknamed “the green fairy,” it typically clocks in at 60-something percent alcohol by volume. Absinthe is supposed to be heavily diluted before you drink it — in fact, there’s a whole stylized ritual you’re supposed to follow: First, you pour a shot of absinthe into a glass. Then you lay a slotted spoon across the top of the glass and gently place a sugar cube on top of the spoon. Then you drizzle ice-cold water onto the sugar cube. This dissolves the sugar, and the sugar-water solution drips through the slots in the spoon and mixes with the shot of absinthe. This imbues the liquid with a foggy green murk, and that’s when you drink it. Not pretentious at all, right?

Absinthe was super popular in France in the late 1800s, when Van Gogh lived there. When it was originally developed, absinthe was regarded as the drink of the intelligentsia and was consumed mostly by highbrow artist types. But in the 1880s, a disease infected the French vineyards, making wine ultra-expensive and absinthe a cheaper alternative, so absinthe quickly became the preferred beverage for the poor and downtrodden. This was ideal for Van Gogh because he was both a highbrow artist type and extremely poor and downtrodden. He craved the terpenes in absinthe and thus drank an insane amount of the stuff, far more than any human should. Unfortunately, while absinthe contains a ferocious amount of alcohol, it contains only a tiny amount of terpenes, so absinthe alone wasn’t sufficient to satisfy his terpene-related cravings.

He got the rest of his terpenes from even less salubrious sources. Some terpenes get processed into consumer products, such as perfumes, pesticides, and cleaning solvents. Obviously, this stuff isn’t meant to be eaten, but that didn’t stop Van Gogh. It’s a psychiatric condition known as pica — the unnatural compulsion to consume nonfood objects. Van Gogh was a painter, so his studio was equipped with a wide selection of art supplies that were positively teeming with terpenes, such as paint and turpentine. In fact, the word “terpene” is derived from an old, now-disused spelling of “turpentine.” The good news for Van Gogh was that paint and turpentine contain lots of terpenes; the bad news was they are highly poisonous and ingesting them causes brain damage.

Consuming too many terpenes causes mood swings, seizures, blackouts, hallucinations, and all sorts of psychotic behavior. No sane person would choose to suffer these dire consequences, so why did Van Gogh keep doing this to himself? Well, as you’ve probably guessed by now, someone who is eating paint and drinking turpentine might not be a paragon of rational thinking. Van Gogh made a host of poor life decisions — he smoked too much, drank too much, and visited brothels all too frequently, exposing himself to a cornucopia of sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, which can cause brain damage. On top of his already über-unhealthy lifestyle, he was eating paint that contained high levels of lead and other toxins, and drinking an industrial-grade solvent used to thin and strip paint. Things were not going to end well for this man.

Pica wasn’t Van Gogh’s only mental disorder. Doctors have spent decades trying to diagnose the exact nature of his mental illness. There are literally dozens of different theories, including epilepsy, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, syphilis, borderline personality disorder, cycloid psychosis, delirium tremens, manic-depressive disorder, even sunstroke — but his exact pathology remains unknown. Clearly, he had some sort of episodic psychotic disorder, meaning he experienced fits of madness during which he behaved in unpredictable and dangerous ways. It became a recurring pattern in Van Gogh’s life: He would black out and do something horrible; then, when he finally started recording memory again, people would stare in horror at him, but he’d have absolutely no clue what he had done.

The most notorious example is the time he sliced off his left ear. Everyone knows Van Gogh cut off his ear in a fit of rage, but do you know what crazy thing he did after cutting it off? He went to the brothel he frequented to deliver the lopped-off ear as a gift to an underage maid named Gabrielle, who was responsible for cleaning the rooms at the brothel. Of course, when he was later questioned at the hospital, Van Gogh didn’t remember anything about the event. Quite memorably, though, he painted a bunch of self-portraits that depicted bandages wrapped around his head, covering his now-missing ear.

As a result of his increasingly self-destructive behavior, Van Gogh realized he couldn’t live independently. He had himself committed to a mental institution, and it was definitely the right move, because just before he entered the asylum, he had to be restrained from drinking a quart of turpentine directly from the bottle. He moved into the asylum on May 8, 1889, at age 36, a few months after the infamous ear-cutting incident, with his wound still healing and his neighbors still terrified of him. He remained there for slightly more than a year, and the asylum and its gardens became the subject of most of the paintings he created during that time. Notably, it was during his stay at the asylum that he painted Starry Night — one of his most famous and beloved works. For the most part, life in the institution provided him with peace and stability, and because his commitment was voluntary, he was occasionally permitted to paint outside the grounds and to travel to Brussels and Paris for art shows.

Unfortunately, one year after checking into the asylum, Van Gogh changed his mind, said he felt trapped, and insisted he needed to live independently. The asylum allowed him to leave (since he was there voluntarily), and he moved to a small village north of Paris, where he planned to reside in the country, paint all day, and live happily. As a safeguard, a sympathetic doctor named Paul Gachet, who lived nearby, agreed to keep an eye on him. However, Gachet’s occasional supervision was entirely ineffective at dealing with Van Gogh’s unpredictable bursts of insanity. Everything seemed to be going well for Van Gogh in the village — but on July 27, 1890, only two months after he left the asylum, he was struck by another fit of madness. This time he shot himself in the belly with a revolver. Even though he missed his vital organs and received medical care soon after, it wasn’t enough to save him. The injury became infected, and he died two days later. His final words were: “The sadness will last forever.”

Today, Van Gogh is regarded as one of the most talented artists who ever lived, and his paintings are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. During his lifetime, however, he experienced almost no success. He was a madman who died broke and unappreciated, saying in a letter to his brother: “I can’t change the fact that my paintings don’t sell.”

Maybe if he’d lived longer, he would have eventually found fame, and possibly even a small degree of happiness. But it wasn’t to be. The weight of his insanity was too heavy to bear; he simply couldn’t escape his fits of madness and self-harm. Even in modern times, it would be challenging to treat someone like Van Gogh, but at least there would be medications and therapies that might give him some degree of control over his actions. But in the time period in which he lived, there was no way for doctors to give him what he most desperately wanted — a peaceful life in the French countryside, where he could paint and feel happy.