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, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

ian group dedicated to the exploration of drug-induced experiences, notably with

hashish Hashish (; ), usually abbreviated as hash, is a Compression (physics), compressed form of resin (trichomes) derived from the cannabis flowers. European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, As a Psychoactive drug, psychoactive ...

.Levinthal, C. F. (2012). ''Drugs, behavior, and modern society''. (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson College Div. Members included

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo, vicomte Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romanticism, Romantic author, poet, essayist, playwright, journalist, human rights activist and politician. His most famous works are the novels ''The Hunchbac ...

Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas (born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas , was a French novelist and playwright. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the mos ...

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics ...

Gérard de Nerval Gérard de Nerval (; 22 May 1808 – 26 January 1855), the pen name of the French writer, poet, and translator Gérard Labrunie, was a French essayist, poet, translator, and travel writer. He was a major figure during the era of French romantici ...

and

Honoré de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( , more commonly ; ; born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence ''La Comédie humaine'', which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is ...

Background

The Club was started as a research experiment. Unknown members included Charles Baudelaire's muse and lover

Jeanne Duval Jeanne Duval (; -1870s) was a French-born actress and courtesan of French and Caribbean descent. She was a key muse and longtime, tumultuous partner of poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire, with whom she had an on-and-off-again relationship sp ...

(known as, Black Venus), the owner of the Hotel Lauzun (Pimodan) Jerome Pichon, Fernand Broissard who hosted the initial events in his room, and Louis-Remy Aubert Roche who worked with Jacques Joseph Moreau growing cannabis on the grounds of Bicetre Mental Asylum. 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, brought quantities of hashish home with them from

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...

's expedition to

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. The

French conquest of Algeria The French conquest of Algeria (; ) took place between 1830 and 1903. In 1827, an argument between Hussein Dey, the ruler of the Regency of Algiers, and the French consul (representative), consul escalated into a blockade, following which the Jul ...

of 1830 to 1847 further increased the popular consumption of hashish.

Members

* Dr. Jacques-Joseph Moreau *

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 people, French Romanticism, Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: ...

Occasional visitors included

Gustave Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , ; ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realis ...

and

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,

and

. 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 fo ...

. 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 Jacques-Joseph Moreau, who specialized in the sociological concept of

social alienation Social alienation is a person's feeling of disconnection from a group whether friends, family, or wider society with which the individual has an affiliation. Such alienation has been described as "a condition in social relationships reflected b ...

, studied the effects of regularly consuming hashish. Moreau studied this product according to his travels between 1837 and 1840 in

and

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

, and

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

. 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 Culture of France Cannabis in France