The Hasheesh Eater is an autobiographical book by Fitz Hugh Ludlow, first published in 1857. Fitz Hugh Ludlow Fitz Hugh Ludlow, sometimes seen as “Fitzhugh Ludlow,” (September 11, 1836 – September 12, 1870) was an American author, journalist, and explorer; best-known for his autobiographical book The Hasheesh Eater (1857). ... 1857 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...

The Hasheesh Eater describes Ludlow’s altered states of consciousness and philosophical flights of fancy while he was using a cannabis extract. It is Ludlow’s best-known book (only one other, The Heart of the Continent, has seen a new edition since the 19th Century). Binomial name Linnaeus Subspecies L. subsp. ...

The Hasheesh Eater is an uncomfortable book for many readers. People who have a knee-jerk reaction toward marijuana and are comfortable stereotyping its users as burnt-out hedonists will not enjoy Ludlow’s description of the cannabis user as one who is reaching for “the soul’s capacity for a broader being, deeper insight, grander views of Beauty, Truth and Good than she now gains through the chinks of her cell.”^{[1][citation needed]} Similarly, today’s marijuana enthusiasts will be put off by Ludlow’s final warning: “Ho there! pass by; I have tried this way; it leads at last into poisonous wildernesses.”^{[1][citation needed]} Cannabis, also known as marijuana[1] or ganja (Hindi: गांजा),[2] is a psychoactive product of the plant Cannabis sativa L. subsp. ... Amotivational syndrome is said to be an inability or an unwillingness to participate in normal social situations and activities, a chronic, persistent state of apathy caused by an external event, situation, substance, relationship, or other cause. ... This article does not cite any sources. ... Cannabis, also known as marijuana[1] or ganja (Hindi: गांजा),[2] is a psychoactive product of the plant Cannabis sativa L. subsp. ...

The Hasheesh Eater went through four editions in the late 1850s and early 1860s, each put out by Harper & Brothers. In 1903, another publishing house put a reprint of the original edition — and the last complete edition until 1970. As of 2006, two editions are in print, including an annotated hypertext CD-ROM version published in 2003. // Production of steel revolutionized by invention of the Bessemer process Benjamin Silliman fractionates petroleum by distillation for the first time First transatlantic telegraph cable laid First safety elevator installed by Elisha Otis Railroads begin to supplant canals in the United States as a primary means of transporting goods. ... // The First Transcontinental Railroad in the USA was built in the six year period between 1863 and 1869. ... Year 1903 (MCMIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2006 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The Importance of “The Hasheesh Eater”

It is Ludlow’s remarkable talent to be able to put words to experiences which seem quite beyond the grasp of language. If he resorted to allegory or hyperbole to extend his verbal reach, we should not be surprised. As he said once, “the entire truth of Nature cannot be copied” so “the artist must select between the major and minor facts of the outer world; that, before he executes, he must pronounce whether he will embody the essential effect, that which steals on the soul and possesses it without painful analysis, or the separate details which belong to the geometrician and destroy the effect.”^[2] That said, many of his passages which may have seemed like fantastic mythmaking to his contemporaries ring very true today with our slightly more advanced knowledge of the psychedelic state. Allegory of Music by Filippino Lippi. ... Not to be confused with Hyperbola. ... For psychedelics, see psychedelic drug. ...

For instance, Ludlow writes of one hallucination: “And now, with time, space expanded also… The whole atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces surrounding me on every side.”^[3]

It is precisely because Ludlow could not count on his readers having any experience with such profoundly altered states of consciousness that he goes to such incredible lengths to describe them. And it is in turn because of this lucky fact that his work is so important today. In his quest to convey the vast scope of his experiences to others, using only the fragile medium of language, he takes nothing for granted and leaves no turn unstoned.

The Effects of “The Hasheesh Eater”

Predictably, the popularity of The Hasheesh Eater led to interest in the drug it described. Not long after The Hasheesh Eater hit the shelves, the Gunjah Wallah Co. in New York began advertising “Hasheesh Candy” (possibly similar to the “dawamesk” used by the Club des Hachichins): The Club des Hashischins (sometimes also spelled Club des Hashishins or Club des Hachichin), was a Parisian group dedicated to the exploration of drug-induced experiences, notably with hashish. ...

The Arabian “Gunjh” of Enchantment confectionized. — A most pleasurable and harmless stimulant. — Cures Nervousness, Weakness, Melancholy, &c. Inspires all classes with new life and energy. A complete mental and physical invigorator.^[4] This article is about &c. ...

John Hay, who would become a close confidant of President Lincoln and later U.S. Secretary of State, remembered Brown University as the place “where I used to eat Hasheesh and dream dreams.”^[5] And a classmate recalls that after reading Ludlow’s book, Hay “must needs experiment with hasheesh a little, and see if it was such a marvelous stimulant to the imagination as Fitzhugh Ludlow affirmed. ‘The night when Johnny Hay took hasheesh’ marked an epoch for the dwellers in Hope College.”^[6] John Milton Hay (October 8, 1838 – July 1, 1905) was an American statesman, diplomat, author, journalist, and private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln. ... For other uses, see Abraham Lincoln (disambiguation). ... Brown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island. ...

Within twenty-five years of the publication of The Hasheesh Eater, most major cities in the United States had private hashish parlors. And there was already controversy about the legality and morality of cannabis intoxication. In 1876, when tourists could stroll over to the Turkish exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and smoke hash pipes in a comfortable lounge, the Illustrated Police News would write about “The Secret Dissipation of New York Belles… a Hasheesh Hell on Fifth Avenue.”^[7] Year 1876 Pick up Sticks(MDCCCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official worlds fair in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. ...

The Rediscovery of “The Hasheesh Eater”

Ludlow’s writings crop up in a couple of places in pre-marijuana-prohibition 20th century America. The occultist Aleister Crowley found The Hasheesh Eater to be “tainted by admiration of de Quincey and the sentimentalists” but admired Ludlow’s “wonderful introspection” and printed significant excerpts from the book in his journal The Equinox. Using the pseudonym Oliver Haddo, Crowley also wrote at length about his own cannabis experiences, comparing and contrasting them to those of Ludlow. He “was struck by the circumstance that [Ludlow], obviously ignorant of Vedantist and Yogic doctrines, yet approximately expressed them, though in a degraded and distorted form.”^[8] Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947; the surname is pronounced // i. ... Thomas de Quincey (August 15, 1785 - December 8, 1859) was an English author and intellectual. ... This article is about the Hindu philosophy. ... For other uses, see Yoga (disambiguation). ...

After the prohibition of marijuana, the writings of Ludlow were interpreted by two camps. On the one hand, there were the prohibitionists, who pointed out Ludlow’s addiction to “hasheesh” and his horrifying hallucinations; on the other, those who believed that cannabis deserved a second chance and saw Ludlow as a literate chronicler of the mystical heights that could be reached using the drug.

In 1938, shortly after the federal government cracked down on marijuana, the prohibitionist warning was carried in the book Marihuana: America’s New Drug Problem. The book included several pages of excerpts from The Hasheesh Eater and noted that Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

It was Ludlow… who contributed the most remarkable description of the hashish effects. He not only described the acute hashish episode with great intensity and fidelity but recorded the development of an addiction and the subsequent struggle which resulted in his breaking the habit. As an autobiography of a drug addict it is, in several respects, superior to De Quincey's “Confessions”^[9]

In 1953, Union College selected the alumnus Fitz Hugh Ludlow as a “Union Worthy” and invited three academics to compose speeches for the occasion. Morris Bishop (who would later include his impressions in his book Eccentrics), criticized Ludlow’s later attempts at fiction, writing that his short stories “are today stale and meaningless… echoes of all the other magazine stories of his time, originating in literature, not in life, and conducted with no regard for truth and with little for verisimilitude.” In The Hasheesh Eater on the other hand: January 7 - President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. ... This article is about the Union College in New York. ... Morris Gilbert Bishop (1893-1973) was a Professor of Romance Literature, University Historian, and an alumnus of Cornell University. ...

is a sincerity, a reality, which he could not recapture when he tried to construct stories solely from his imagination… He finds lyric phrasing to convey the unearthly beauty of his visions, and the unearthly horror of the evil fantasia which succeeded his bliss. He is a drugged Dante in reverse, descending from the Paradiso to the Inferno. His descriptions, drawing from his subconscious a strange mingling of the sublime and the grotesque, often suggest the work of Dali and other surrealists. The writer’s passion gives his work an intensity which the reader recognizes and sympathetically feels. This is a very considerable literary achievement.^[10] Dante redirects here. ... Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), was a Spanish surrealist painter of Catalan descent born in Figueres, Catalonia (Spain). ... Max Ernst. ...

Robert DeRopp, in the 1957 book Drugs and the Mind, was perhaps the first to express skepticism at Ludlow’s “addiction” story, noting that “[n]o one seriously interested in the effects of drugs on the mind should fail to read Ludlow’s book,” but accusing Ludlow of a “hypertrophy of the imagination and an excessive dependence on the works of De Quincey” (although he also found The Hasheesh Eater to be “more lively and more colorful reading than… the grossly overrated confessions of that ‘English opium-eater.’”). DeRopp suspected that “in many places scientific impartiality has been sacrificed in the interests of literary effect.”^[11] Robert S. de Ropp (1913-1987) was a prominent author in the general fields of the realization of human potentials, the search for spiritual enlightenment, etc. ... Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1957 Gregorian calendar). ...

At this point we are at the dawn of the resurgence of marijuana in the United States and the emergence of psychedelics in the English-speaking world. Researchers, like pioneering mescaline researcher Heinrich Klüver, looked to Ludlow’s seminal writings on the psychedelic experience for insight on the new drugs that were being discovered and synthesized. Mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class. ... Heinrich Kluver (May 25, 1897 - February 8, 1979) was a notable figure in the fields of animal behavior and Gestalt psychology, largely credited with introducing the latter to the United States in the early twentieth century. ...

In 1960, The Hasty Papers: A One-Shot Review, a beat literature journal, devoted most of its pages to reprinting the first edition of The Hasheesh Eater in its entirety, and David Ebin’s book The Drug Experience included three chapters from The Hasheesh Eater. In 1966, excerpts were published in The Marijuana Papers edited by David Solomon. In 1970, a reprint of the 1857 edition was put out by Gregg Press, and the Berkeley Barb reprinted several chapters. Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Beats redirects here. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... David Solomon is a film producer, director and writer best known for directing Buffy the Vampire Slayer during 2002 and 2003. ... Year 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1857 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...

By this time Ludlow had been rediscovered, both by mainstream researchers into drugs and addiction, and by the growing drug-savvy counterculture. Oriana J. Kalant, in 1971 in The International Journal of the Addictions found The Hasheesh Eater to be a remarkable description of the effects of cannabis: Year 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1971 Gregorian calendar, known as the year of cyclohexanol. ...

…it is evident that Ludlow recognized, with remarkable insight, most of the characteristic subjective effects of cannabis. He also noted, and interpreted essentially correctly, such pharmacological points as the relation of dose to effect, inter- and intra-individual variations in response, and the influence of set and setting. Most importantly, perhaps, he recorded the development of his dependence on cannabis more comprehensively and astutely than anyone to date. The initial motives — including features of his own personality and temperament — the constant rationalization, compulsive use despite obvious untoward effects, the progression to a state of almost continuous intoxication, the inability to reduce his dose gradually, and the intense craving and depression after abrupt withdrawal, all are clearly described. Ludlow recognized also the lack of physical symptoms during withdrawal, and the difference from opium withdrawal in this respect.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can also identify in Ludlow’s account a number of other features consistent with present knowledge, but which even scientists of his day could not possibly have known. For example, the initial change in tolerance, the continuum between euphoria and hallucinations, the differentiation between the hallucinatory process and the affective reactions to it, the relation between spontaneous and drug-induced perceptual changes, the similarity between the effects of cannabis and those of other hallucinogens, the attempts at drug substitution therapy (opium, tobacco), and the role of psychotherapy and abreactive writing, are all in keeping with contemporary thought. These points permit the modern reader to feel even greater confidence in the extraordinary accuracy and perceptiveness of Ludlow’s record.^[12]

The mid 1970s saw two new editions of The Hasheesh Eater in print, one by San Francisco’s City Lights Books, and a well-annotated and illustrated version edited by Michael Horowitz and released by Level Press. By the late 1970s, you could even find the face of Fitz Hugh Ludlow on a T-shirt, thanks to his alma mater Union College, which had thrown a “Fitzhugh Ludlow Day” celebration in 1979. This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... City Lights Bookstore, 2007 Co-founded in 1953 by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishers is a landmark independent bookstore and a small press publisher that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. ... Michael Horowitz is an American author. ... Also: 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. ...

More recently, Ludlow has been introduced to a new generation of psychedelics users through Terence McKenna, who read chapters from The Hasheesh Eater for a set of tapes (“Victorian Tales of Cannabis”) put out by Sound Photosynthesis, and who regularly praised Ludlow in his books, saying that Ludlow “began a tradition of pharmo-picaresque literature that would find later practitioners in William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson.… Part genius, part madman, Ludlow lies halfway between Captain Ahab and P.T. Barnum, a kind of Mark Twain on hashish. There is a wonderful charm to his free-spirited, pseudoscientific openness as he makes his way into the shifting dunescapes of the world of hashish.”^[13] For the Canadian writer, actor, producer & director, see Terence McKenna (film producer). ... William S. Burroughs. ... Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. ... Moby-Dick book cover Moby-Dick - the official title of the first edition - is a novel by Herman Melville. ... Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891), American showman who is best remembered for his entertaining hoaxes and for founding the circus that eventually became Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. ... Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humanist,[2] humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. ...

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Ludlow, Fitz Hugh “The Visionary” The Hasheesh Eater 1857
2. ^ Ludlow, Fitz Hugh “Harriet Hosmer’s Zenobia” The Atlantic Monthly Feb. 1865, p. 249, col. 1
3. ^ Ludlow, Fitz Hugh “The Night Entrance” The Hasheesh Eater 1857
4. ^ ad reproduced on page 201 of the Level Press edition of The Hasheesh Eater (edited by Horowitz, M., Level Press: San Francsico, 1975)
5. ^ in The Life and Letters of John Hay (William Roscoe Thayer, 1916) the quote is given but not referenced to a specific letter. John Hay’s A Poet in Exile: The Early Letters of John Hay (ed. Caroline Ticknor, 1910, p.22-23) contains the complete letter to the poet Nora Perry dated 2 January 1859, in which he says “The city of Wayland… is shrined in my memory as a far-off mystical Eden where the women were lovely and spirituelle, and the men were jolly and brave; where I used to haunt the rooms of the Athenæum, made holy by the presence of the royal dead; where I used to pay furtive visits to Forbes’ forbidden mysteries (peace to its ashes!), where I used to eat Hasheesh and dream dreams.”
6. ^ Thayer, William Roscoe The Life and Letters of John Hay v. 1, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916, p. 47; see also Thayer, William RoscoeAmerican Statesman: John Hay Vol. 1 (1908) p. 47. The quote comes from Rev. J. H. Gilmore: “On one occasion, at least, his enthusiasm for literature was carried to excess. ‘The Hasheesh Eater’ had recently appeared (1857) and Johnny must needs experiment with hasheesh a little, and see if it was such a marvelous stimulant to the imagination as Fitzhugh Ludlow affirmed. ‘The night when Johnny Hay took hasheesh’ marked an epoch for the dwellers in Hope College. It’s fifty-six years ago; but I remember it well.”
7. ^ Illustrated Police News 2 December 1876
8. ^ Haddo, Oliver (pseud. for Crowley, Aleister) “The Psychology of Hashish” The Equinox 2, Sept. 1910
9. ^ Walton, Robert P. Marihuana: America’s New Drug Problem Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1976 (originally published in 1938)
10. ^ Bishop, Morris “Fitz Hugh Ludlow” Union Worthies 8, Union College, 1953
11. ^ DeRopp, Robert S. Drugs and the Mind New York: Dell 1976 (originally published in 1957)
12. ^ Kalant, O.J. “Ludlow on Cannabis” The International Journal of the Addictions 6(2) June 1971, pp. 309-322
13. ^ McKenna, Terence Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge New York: Bantam, 1992, pp. 163-164: “After Bayard Taylor the next great commentator on the phenomenon of hashish was the irrepressible Fitz Hugh Ludlow. This little-known bon vivant of nineteenth-century literature began a tradition of pharmo-picaresque literature that would find later practitioners in William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson… There is in Ludlow’s cannabis reportage a wonderful distillation of all that was zany in the Yankee transcendentalist approach. Ludlow creates a literary persona not unlike the poet John Shade in Nabokov’s Pale Fire, a character who allows us to see deeper into his predicament than he can see himself. Part genius, part madman, Ludlow lies halfway between Captain Ahab and P.T. Barnum, a kind of Mark Twain on hashish. There is a wonderful charm to his free-spirited, pseudoscientific openness as he makes his way into the shifting dunescapes of the world of hashish.”

Nora Perry (formerly Nora Gardner) is a former English female badminton player. ... Bayard Taylor (James) (January 11, 1825 – December 19, 1878) U.S. writer, was born at Kennett Square in Chester County, Pennsylvania. ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (February 5, 1914) — August 2, 1997; pronounced ), more commonly known as William S. Burroughs, was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer. ... Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author. ... Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced ) (April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899, Saint Petersburg – July 2, 1977, Montreux) was a Russian-American, Academy Award nominated author. ... Moby-Dick book cover Moby-Dick - the official title of the first edition - is a novel by Herman Melville. ... Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891), American showman who is best remembered for his entertaining hoaxes and for founding the circus that eventually became Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. ... Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humanist,[2] humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. ...

External links

• The Annotated Hasheesh Eater (ISBN 1434809862)
• “Hasheesh and Hasheesh Eaters” — a review from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, April 1858
• A review from The Knickerbocker February, 1858
• Online version