Photo credit: Dadgrass
Psychoactive drugs are ubiquitous in every society, whether ancient or modern, and can be found in their medicines, their ceremonies, and their art. Today, cannabis is the drug (aside from alcohol) most commonly referenced in films or music and writing—and literature is crucial to the history of cannabis in modern art.
In 1821, the English writer Thomas De Quincey published an autobiographical account of his addiction to laudanum, a liquid tincture containing powdered opium, titled Confessions of an English Opium Eater. De Quincey frames the book as a didactic narrative intended to caution European readers against the implicit dangers of opium and its attendant hellish delirium and physiological addiction.
As he writes, “the moral of my narrative is addressed to the opium eater . . . [i]f he is taught to fear and tremble, enough has been effected.” Confessions of an English Opium Eater later became the Victorian equivalent of a best-seller.
While it is unknown exactly how effective a deterrent De Quincey’s narrative was for opium addiction, it was critically praised for its lush, baroque prose in the visions of opiate heaven and hell that he describes. Other texts had certainly mentioned drugs before, such as the enigmatic soma of ancient Hindu texts and the unidentified substances in Shakespeare’s work. But Confessions of an English Opium Eater marked the genesis of modern drug literature, which would use the burgeoning modern novel form—as well as poetry—to catalog the inner-experience of drugs.
Cannabis and the Early Addiction Narrative: The Hasheesh Eater
Since De Quincey, there have been literary confessional auto-narratives on psychedelics, opiates, stimulants, and nearly every other synthesizable drug or psychoactive plant material. Each substance has its own dedicated narratives, but cannabis has a particular modern literary lineage, especially in the United States.
In 1857, the American writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow published The Hasheesh Eater, which largely follows the archetype provided by Confessions of an English Opium Eater. It is an addiction narrative detailing the author’s tumultuous experiences with what he calls hasheesh, a concentrated form of cannabis known today as hash—which, at that time, was newly introduced to the Western World from the East.
Like De Quincey, Ludlow’s prose centers on the visionary experience of a drug with the same underlying insistence on preventing others from using the substance. Ludlow admonishes the reader to recognize that “the soul withers … beneath the dominance of any sensual indulgence.”
Despite seeking to warn potential users of the supposedly addictive and hyper-hallucinogenic properties of hasheesh, describing hellish visions and calling it an “accursed drug,” Ludlow’s book prompted increased public interest in its use. Shortly after his book’s publication, an influx of candies and other commodities were marketed as containing hasheesh. At least some of this newfound appeal is attributable to Ludlow’s book and its psychedelically celestial passages.
At the beginning of the book, before Ludlow is in the thralls of his addiction, he recounts the visionary heavens of hasheesh: “Unimaginable hours intoxicated the sense with airy ballet-dances of a divine gracefulness, rose-wreathed upon a stage of roses, and flooded with the blush of a rosy atmosphere.”
At one point, he even claims that, after consuming hasheesh, “My powers became superhuman; my knowledge covered the universe; my scope of sight was infinite.”
Due to these exuberant (and likely hyperbolic) descriptions of the effects of hasheesh, cannabis became more popular among Americans and likely led to a deeper attraction to the plant as a literary subject.
“Tea” and the Beats
Almost a century after the publication of The Hasheesh Eater, the proto-hippie literary movement called the Beat Generation would return cannabis to literature, using it as both a topical cultural reference and inspiration throughout their work.
The Beat Generation was a group of American writers whose most prolific literary output was at its height from the 1950s to mid-1960s, although many beat writers would continue publishing significant work for the remainder of the 20th century. For the Beats, cannabis offered a non-utilitarian “kick” that did not capitulate to the Western mid-20th-century ideals of materialism and social homogeneity.
A poet, Allen Ginsberg, and two novelists, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, were the three primary figures of the Beat Generation. All three writers frequently referenced cannabis in their work—which, particularly in the writings published in the 1950s, was referred to as “tea.”
In his novel On the Road, Kerouac writes about smoking “sticks of tea.” In Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical book, Junky, he details selling cannabis and complains about “tea heads” who wanted to “sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars’ worth of weed.”
Burroughs later observes, in 1953 before official medical research, that “tea” was not addictive (unlike his drug of choice at the time, heroin) and that “tea heads,” even when in jail for extended periods, did not experience withdrawal symptoms.
Unlike Ludlow, the Beats fully embraced cannabis as a psychoactive countercultural tool, emblematic of their repudiation of conformism. They accepted the heavens of cannabis and outright rejected the hells that Ludlow reported.
Allen Ginsberg and the “Teahead joyride”
In his seminal, generation-defining poem, Howl, first published in 1958, Ginsberg mentions cannabis multiple times. He relies on his long, free-verse lines and free-associated collage of images, referencing friends who “got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,” and others enjoying the “teahead joyride.”
Ginsberg was the most vocal of the three major Beat figures on drug-related issues and revered cannabis as a psycho-spiritual plant. In 1965, he wrote a two-part sprawling essay in The Atlantic on cannabis, noting that the first half was “written while the author was smoking marihuana.” In a prophetically incisive section, he declared that cannabis laws suppressed civil rights in America and that a “cancerous” bureaucracy had developed to enforce those laws.
Ginsberg also praises cannabis as “a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural perceptions . . . most of the major (best and most famous too) poets, painters, musicians, cineastes, sculptors, actors, singers and publishers in America and England have been smoking for years and years.”
Surveying American literature affirms Ginsberg’s claim on cannabis and art: Writers from Ludlow in the 19th century to 20th-century writers like the Beats, the critic and novelist Susan Sontag, and even the highly anthologized writer Maya Angelou all used and referenced cannabis in their work.
That emerging openness in the late 20th century mirrors an even more consequential change. In less than two centuries, the cultural tenor of cannabis has shifted from an addictive, hallucinogenic horror drug, to being sold openly in 24 states in America. From hasheesh being treated as an opium-like substance and tea covertly consumed by those at the margins of society, to cannabis—with product labels in glass jars—for purchase in state-licensed dispensaries.
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