Get blown 'On Wine and Hashish' with Baudelaire

“Now you are a tree moaning in the wind and murmuring vegetable melodies to nature; now you hover in the azure of an immensely extended sky. Every sorrow has disappeared. You have ceased to struggle, you are transported, you are no longer your master and little do you care. Soon the very idea of time will disappear.”  -- Charles Baudelaire, On Wine and Hashish, 1851

Théophile Gautier wasn’t the only member of the 19th century French elite hash eaters club (aka Le Club des Hashischins) to write about his experiences on the drug. Charles Baudelaire would go on to write countless poems and essays on the subject, much of which were critical of hash users and the long-term effects of the drug. While Baudelaire turned out to be something of a buzzkill on the subject, his descriptions are no less intoxicating. His essay, On Wine and Hashish, is both beautiful, for its descriptions of hash-induced euphoria, and frustrating, for its ultimate and unfortunate conclusion that “Wine is useful and produces fruitful results. Hashish is useless and dangerous.”

Sounds like someone had a bad trip.