Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Fitz-Hugh Ludlow was a recent graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York, when he vividly recorded his hasheesh-induced visions, experiences, adventures, and insights. During the mid-nineteenth century, the drug was a legal remedy for lockjaw and Ludlow had a friend at school from whom he received a ready supply. He consumed such large quantities at each sitting that his hallucinations have been likened to those experienced by opium addicts. Throughout the book, Ludlow colorfully describes his psychedelic journey that led to extended reflections on religion, philosophy, medicine, and culture. First published in 1857, The Hasheesh Eater was the first full-length American example of drug literature. Yet despite the scandal that surrounded it, the book quickly became a huge success. Since then, it has become a cult classic, first among Beat writers in the 1950s and 1960s, and later with San Francisco Bay area hippies in the 1970s. In this first scholarly edition, editor Stephen Rachman positions Ludlow's enduring work as not just a chronicle of drug use but also as a window into the budding American bohemian literary scene. A lucid introduction explores the breadth of Ludlow's classical learning as well as his involvement with the nineteenth-century subculture that included fellow revelers such as Walt Whitman and the pianist Louis Gottshalk. With helpful annotations guiding readers through the text's richly allusive qualities and abundance of references, this edition is ideal for classroom use as well as for general readers.

Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean

The Hasheesh Eater

Charles Dickens

William James

H. G. Wells

Aleister Crowley

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Stephen Crane

Charles Baudelaire

Horacio Quiroga

Guy de Maupassant

Peter Mark Roget

Jean Lorrain

Thomas de Quincey

Havelock Ellis

Marie Corelli

Greg Boyd

Maurice Level

Benjamin Paul Blood

Jean Richepin

Jordan Jones

Leo Tolstoy

Fred V. Williams

Ernest Dowson

Théophile Gautier

J. C. O’Day

Hendrik DeLeeuw

Harry Hubbell Kane

Claude Farrère

Santiago Dabove

Ahmad Mahmood

Sampurnanand

Eugenio Buona

Gaston Danville

Edward Levinstein

m. i. blue

Michael Stephans

From antiquity to the present, people have sought artificial paradise in the stimulations and insights afforded by the use of intoxicants. Famous literary figures have often been the first to experiment with little-known drugs, and to champion their unique fascination upon the human imagination. In this remarkable anthology, a dazzling array of authors, including H. G. Wells, Marie Corelli, Guy de Maupassant, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Stephen Crane, Sadegh Hedayat, Santiago Dabove, Jean Cocteau, William James, Charles Baudelaire, Théophile Gautier, and a host of others from many cultures and historical periods, raids a pharmacopoeia containing ether, absinthe, morphine, hashish, opium, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, chloral hydrate, psilocybin, ayahuasca, carbon tetrachloride, LSD, amyl nitrate, ecstasy, and angel dust, in flights of descriptive prose of unparalleled suggestive power and visionary splendor.

The Drug Experience in Literature

Pipe Dreams

First published in 1857, American author Fitz Hugh Ludlow's The Hasheesh Eater is one of the first examples of addiction literature. The book recounts Ludlow's initial fascination and subsequent addiction to hasheesh, and includes many detailed descriptions of the hallucinations he experienced while under the influence of the drug, a version of cannabis which he ingested in pill form.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1867.

Little Brother

Cinderella

Fitz Hugh Ludlow

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