The Club des Hashischins (sometimes also spelled Club des Hashishins or Club des Hachichins, "Club of the Hashish-Eaters") was a

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

ian group dedicated to the exploration of drug-induced experiences, notably with hashish.Levinthal, C. F. (2012). ''Drugs, behavior, and modern society''. (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson College Div. Members included

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

, Alexandre Dumas,

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited ...

Gérard de Nerval Gérard de Nerval (; 22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855) was the pen name of the French writer, poet, and translator Gérard Labrunie, a major figure of French romanticism, best known for his novellas and poems, especially the collection '' Les ...

Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly , ; born Honoré Balzac;Jean-Louis Dega, La vie prodigieuse de Bernard-François Balssa, père d'Honoré de Balzac : Aux sources historiques de La Comédie humaine, Rodez, Subervie, 1998, 665 p. 20 May 179 ...

Paul Verlaine Paul-Marie Verlaine (; ; 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the '' fin de siècle'' in international and ...

, and

Arthur Rimbaud Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...

Club's origins

Several drugs like hashish and opium were increasingly well known in Europe by the beginning of the nineteenth century. At that time, recreational use of these drugs was widespread among scientific and literary circles. The Armée d'Orient, along with a contingent of 151 scientists and anthropologists from the

Commission des Sciences et des Arts The Commission des Sciences et des Arts (''Commission of the Sciences and Arts'') was a French scientific and artistic institute. Established on 16 March 1798, it consisted of 167 members, of which all but 16 joined Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest ...

, brought quantities of hashish home with them from

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...

's expedition to

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

. The French conquest of Algeria of 1830 to 1847 further increased the popular consumption of hashish.

History

The club was active from about 1844 to 1849 and counted the literary and intellectual elite of Paris among its members, including Dr.

Jacques-Joseph Moreau Jacques-Joseph Moreau (3 June 1804 – 26 June 1884), nicknamed "Moreau de Tours", was a French psychiatrist and member of the Club des Hashischins. Moreau was the first physician to do systematic work on drugs' effects on the central nervo ...

Théophile Gautier Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier ( , ; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and rema ...

Eugène Delacroix Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...

and Alexandre Dumas. Monthly "séances" were held at the Hôtel de Lauzun (at that time Hôtel Pimodan) on the

Île Saint-Louis Île Saint-Louis (), in size, is one of two natural islands in the Seine river, in Paris, France (the other natural island is the Île de la Cité, where Notre-Dame de Paris is located). Île Saint-Louis is connected to the rest of Paris by ...

. Gautier wrote about the club in '' Revue des Deux Mondes'' in February 1846, where he described his first visit: "One December evening, obeying a mysterious summons, drafted in enigmatic terms understood by affiliates but unintelligible for others, I arrived in a distant quarter, a sort of oasis of solitude in the middle of Paris that the river, surrounding it with its two arms, seems to defend against the encroachments of civilization. It was in an old house on the island of Saint-Louis, the Hotel Pimodan, built by Lauzun, that the bizarre club of which I was a member recently held its monthly sittings where I was to attend for the first time." While he is often cited as the founder of the club, in the article Gautier says he was attending their séances for the first time that evening and made clear that others were sharing a familiar experience with him. The club members often consumed '' Dawamesc'', a greenish paste made from cannabis resin mixed with fat, honey, and pistachios. During this period

, who specialized in the sociological concept of social alienation, studied the effects of regularly consuming hashish. Moreau studied this product according to his travels between 1837 and 1840 in

and Syria, and

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

. Back in France, he continued to experiment on himself and published an 1845 book entitled ''Hashish and mental alienation'' in which he establishes an equivalence between dream, hallucination, and hashish delirium. This book was the first written by a scientist about a drug. Gautier and Baudelaire eventually stopped attending the sessions. Gautier writes: "After a dozen experiments, we gave up forever this intoxicating drug, not that it hurt us physically, but the true writer needs only his natural dreams, and he does not like his thought to be influenced by any agent."

References

{{Coord, 48.8517, N, 2.3592, E, source:wikidata, display=title Cannabis culture French culture Cannabis in France