Club des hashishins freddiefreak norway2000 arkiv

The French empire in North Africa had at least as much effect on European cannabis use as the British empire in India.
A certain style of drug use, the Wasted Artist role, as established by the laudanum swigging
Coleridge and De Quincey early in the century, was revived by Dr Jean Moreau in Paris after
1845. The doctor, who experimented with hashish to treat insanity, founded the Club des
Hashishins with the writer Theophile Gautier, for non-medical experiments. Some of the
members were quite keen on a little delirium. Gautier was a hack with brilliant friends, an 'art
for arts sake' romantic with a taste for macabre fantasy who encouraged the Symbolist poets.
Rimbaud and Verlaine shared his drugs. Baudelaire dedicated "Fleur du Mal" to him, and wrote
an essay that explained their attitudes: "On Hashish and Wine as a means of expanding
individuality." They created strange, sensuous art, struck foreign poses based on their beliefs
about the romantic East, scandalised bourgeois society

Marijuana - The First Twelve Thousand Years