Hashish Club

The French physician, Jacques Joseph Moreau, remains the most-cited connection between cannabis and the art community. Moreau first used hashish while traveling through the Middle East in the 1830s. He assumed that cannabis-induced sensations might model the hallucinations and delusions common in psychotic individuals. He had hoped that this research might help the treatment of the mentally ill. The outspoken hedonist and popular novelist, Theophile Gautier assisted Moreau in this research. He not only participated himself, but he also recruited other members of Frances artistic community. This group of hedonists and experimenters met monthly in an old mansion in Paris which was known at the time as the Club Des Hachichins (Hashish Club). For historical reviews on cannabis, see Abel and Mechoulam. ... 

Al-kief was replaced by a nightmarish stage in which Gautier felt fear, fury, and aspects of paranoia. Then, finally, around five hours after entering The Hashish Club, the drug effects ended ... 

Baudelaire first met Gautier toward the middle of 1849 thanks to a mutual friend, the artist Fernand Boissaid. Boissard and Gautier were both tenants at the Hotel Lauzun, and in the course of things Baudelaire was invited to attend the meetings of the Hashish Club. Yet, always the loner, Baudelaire rarely accepted the invitation. 

Baudelaire was not the only well-known nonparticipant to attend the meetings of the Hashish Club. As Baudelaire noted, Honore de Balzac also preferred to watch the proceedings without personally partaking of the "green paste" handed out by Moreau ... 

Balzac s curiosity finally got the better of him, however, and in a letter dated December 23, 1845, addressed to a Madame Hanska, he confesses that he finally took some hashish at one of the gatherings of the Hashish Club, adding that as he was leaving the group, he began to hear celestial voices and see divine paintings. 

Gerard de Nerval was another prominent French writer who belonged to the Hashish Club and who wrote about the drag in his books. Like, Baudelaire, Nerval was plagued with fits of melancholy. Most of his life he lived in poverty and dissipation. Also, like Baudelaire, Nerval tried to kill himself. Unlike Baudelaire, he succeeded. 

In America, George Washington was a hemp farmer, although it seems that there was little knowledge of the intoxicating properties of the plant until Mexican immigrants later introduced social consumption of the plant. By the 19th century, cannabis use had spread from the Middle East to the artists and writers of Europe, most notably by Le Club des Haschischins (The Club of Hashish Eaters) in Paris, and as a result popular fiction also raised the profile of cannabis use thanks to the... 

Cannabis saliva (marijuana, hemp) (Cannabaceae) [cannabis leaf resin (hashish), marijuana leaf extract (bhang), smoked leaf (ganja)] [incorrectly reputed intoxicant of assassins of Hasan-i-Sabbah (story according to Marco Polo) Arthur Rimbaud Pierre Gautier Charles Baudelaire, members of Club des Hachischins ... 

French writer Th ophile Gautier described in detail his consumption of hashish at the Le Club des Hachichins. 

His second article appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1846 and was entitled "Le Club des Hachichins". Although it contained relatively little concerning his experiences under the influence of hashish that he had not already described, it was to become the better known of his writings on the subject because of his description of the Hotel Lauzun and the members of the club that gathered there. 

In 1845, J.-J. Moreau (de Tours) published the first scientific study of Cannabis in Paris, including psychonautic bioassays on himself and on residents of Egypt (Moreau 1845). Moreau was at the center of a Parisian literary circle called Le Club des Hachichins, at whose meetings a confection of hashish called dawameskvtas... 

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