Get high on hash with Victor Hugo

“Hallucination, that strange guest had set up his dwelling place in me.”
-- Théophile Gautier, “Le Club des Hashischins” 1846

“The doctor’s face beamed with enthusiasm, his eyes sparkled his cheeks reddened, the veins in his temples stood out and his dilated nostrils drew in the air with force. 

‘This will be subtracted from your share in Paradise,’ said he, handing me my allotted dose.”

Thus begins one of history’s great experiments in doing drugs — specifically hash. In his essay “Le Club des Hashischins,” the 19th century writer Théophile Gautier, recounts one of many nights spent getting high on hash with some of France’s heaviest literary hitters. Over the course of a five year period the group, which included Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas among others, gathered at the Hôtel Pimodan on the Île Saint-Louis for monthly séances, where they would trip balls under the observation of Dr. Jacques-Joseph Moreau, who used hallucinogens to study the effects of psychosis. 

Gautier’s account of one séance in particular begins with Moreau feeding guests a spoonful of dawamesc, a green, a jelly-like blend of nuts, spices, and hash, and ends in a funeral for time. As one guest lamented, time was tired:

“Eternity was worn out. There had to be an end.”

You can read Gautier’s full account in “The Hashishin Club,” an English translation of “Le Club des Hashischins.”