The Club des Haschischins: a forerunner of recreational cannabis use in France

Legend or reality: the word «assassin» is reputed to have originally meant «hashish consumer» or haschischin. The resinous substance is said to alter the senses before killing beggars and other lords.

The Club des Haschischins is not a gang of murderers, but rather members of the Haute. The Club was founded in 1844 by psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours. This doctor was the first to scientifically analyze the psychotropic effects of hashish. He travels to Egypt, Syria, Iran and India. He studied the ancestral cultivation of cannabis in these countries, where it grows naturally.

Dr. Moreau tests the new substance himself and soon reports its intoxicating effects. He experiences a mixture of euphoria, hallucinations and incoherence, with a sudden flood of ideas. And he soon realizes that experimenting on himself with a drug whose nature is to distort sensations is not enough. He needs guinea pigs.

To better understand the effects of cannabis, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours decided to bring it back to France. Based at the Hôtel du Pimodan at 17 quai d'Anjou in Paris (now the Hôtel de Lauzun), he surrounded himself with artists eager for new sensations, including the writer Théophile Gautier. The doctor's aim was to compare alienation, madness and dreams.

Dr. Moreau's volunteer guinea pigs ingest cannabis in the form of a sweetened jam. Dawamesk, a sugar mill very close to the Moroccan mahjoun. Club members describe a greenish substance, a mixture of hashish, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pistachio, sugar, orange juice and butter.

They also consumed it directly with a pipe or mixed with tobacco. Even then, Dr. Moreau noted that the effects differed according to the method of ingestion, and were rarely the same for different patients. He concluded that the effects, ranging from hallucinations to deep sleep and laughter, depended on the individual's mental and physical condition.

Naturally, the artistic sphere was quick to share this new drug from the Orient. For history's sake, other scholars joined Dr. Moreau's tests, including Balzac, Delacroix, Alexandre Dumas and Baudelaire.

Here are a few quotes from literati after a stint at the Club des haschischins:

Théophile Gautier What strangely convulsed faces! What eyes flashing and sparkling with sarcasm under their bird membrane« in The hash club

Charles Baudelaire The best thing is that the result varies within the same individual. Sometimes it will be immoderate and irresistible gaiety, sometimes a feeling of well-being and fullness of life, at other times an equivocal, dreamy sleep« in Artificial paradises

However, the two writers mentioned above stopped frequenting the Club because they felt that writers didn't need substance to dream.

Doctor Moreau will defend his theses in his book Hashish, dreams and alienation. Ihe would be confronted by numerous detractors, to whom he replied: «Personal experience is the criterion of truth. I dispute anyone's right to speak of the effects of hashish, if he speaks in his own name, and if he has not been able to appreciate them through sufficiently repeated use».

Thank you, Doc, for that ever-relevant phrase.

Théo Caillart

Bonus : Read Le Club des Haschischins by Théophile Gautier