The Hashish Eater

Fitz Hugh Ludlow published this strange memoir in 1857, when he was barely out of college, modeling it on De Quincey’s confessions of an opium eater. It recounts his experiments with cannabis, then sold openly as a medicine, and the vivid, terrifying, and expansive visions it produced. Ludlow writes of time stretching, plain rooms swelling into cathedrals, and a mind that seemed to touch the infinite before turning on him as dependency set in. Part travelogue of inner space, part cautionary tale, the book became an early American document of drug experience and a favorite of later countercultural readers. Its ornate prose carries a real reckoning with pleasure, addiction, and the self. This free PDF and EPUB edition preserves a curious classic of nineteenth century writing.