BACK COVER #
The Hasheesh Eater is the first full-length study of the psychological states and physiological effects of psychoactive drug use in American literature. Written by a 20-year-old college student, this De Quincey-inspired memoir steeped in mysticism caused a sensation when it was published in 1857. Since that time it has been generally ignored and forgotten, except by a few pioneers of marijuana research, writers like Aleister Crowley, and the poets of the Beat Generation.BLURBS #
"If Fitz Hugh Ludlow, author of The Hasheesh Eater, comes your way, treat him well."-- Mark Twain (1864)
"He passed through sensations of dual existence, delirium, the power of a giant or a god, infinities of space and time, unutterable calm."
-- Van Wyck Brooks, The Times of Melville & Whitman
"One of the best reports extant because of its scope and keen observations, and because it relates the subjective effects of cannabis...It is the subjective, introspective, and articulate creative writers--such as Ludlow, Baudelaire, and Huxley, who can best communicate such experiences."
-- O. J. Kalant, The Times of Melville & Whitman