Taking Baudelaire's now famous title as its own, this anthology reveals the diverse roles mind-altering drugs have played throughout history. It brings together a multiplicity of voices to explore the presence - both secret and public - of drugs in the overlapping dialogues of science and religion, pleasure and madness, individualism and social control. From Apuleius' Golden Ass to Hunter S. Thompson's frenzied Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, via Sartre's nightmarish experiences with mescaline and Walter Benjamin's ecstatic wanderings on hashish, Artificial Paradises is packed full of the weird, the wonderful and the shocking.