The Hasheesh Eater
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The Hasheesh Eater describes Ludlow’s altered states of consciousness and philosophical flights of fancy while he was using a cannabis extract. It is Ludlow’s best-known book (only one other, The Heart of the Continent, has seen a new edition since the 19th Century).
The Hasheesh Eater is an uncomfortable book for many readers. People who have a knee-jerk reaction toward marijuana and are comfortable stereotyping its users as burnt-out hedonists will not enjoy Ludlow’s description of the cannabis user as one who is reaching for “the soul’s capacity for a broader being, deeper insight, grander views of Beauty, Truth and Good than she now gains through the chinks of her cell. Similarly, today’s marijuana enthusiasts will be put off by Ludlow’s final warning: “Ho there! pass by; I have tried this way; it leads at last into poisonous wildernesses.”
The Hasheesh Eater went through four editions in the late 1850s and early 1860s, each put out by Harper & Brothers. In 1903, another publishing house put a reprint of the original edition — and the last complete edition until 1970. As of 2006, two editions are in print, including an annotated hypertext CD-ROM version published in 2003.
