Cannabis for Creativity: An Exclusive 1840’s Hashish Club for Writers — PILGRIM SOUL

This group of French writers in the 1800s proved what cannabis can do — expand literary and creative brainpower.

Victor Hugo — Writer, author of Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and Cannabis User

In the 1840s, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Eugène Delacroix and Honoré de Balzac formed the Club des Hashischins to conduct monthly séances at the Hôtel de Lauzun in Paris and experiment with drugs. Soon after, Baudelaire wrote Les Paradis Artificiels (Artificial Paradises), his 1860 musings on hashish, a drug he referred to as “the playground of the seraphim” and “a little green sweetmeat.” What he describes are the phases of intoxication, and we can still find truth in connecting cannabis and creativity through his writing. (see Excerpt)

The Pilgrim Soul Creative Thinking Journal is Now Available

Sliding Doors

Charles Baudelaire got baked and wrote poetry and essays. Alexandre Dumas loved marijuana and wrote The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Victor Eugène Delacroix dabbed and lead the French Romantic school of art. Victor Hugo hit it hard and wrote Les Misérables…