Confessions of an English Hachish-Eater/Chapter 1
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH HACHISH EATER
I. The First Experiment.
THE tales which have been told by Alexandre Dumas the Elder, Théophile Gautier, Bayard Taylor, and others, of the extraordinary narcotic properties of hachish and the marvellous effects which it produces, led me some time ago to make experiments with the drug upon myself.
The active principle of hachish is, as most people are doubtless aware, contained in the resin of the common hemp-plant. The hemp grown in temperate climates supplies, however, but little resin; and this little is almost entirely devoid of narcotic properties. Knowing this, I took some pains to assure myself that the dried hemp from which I prepared my hachish came from India and was of recent growth. Having procured my raw material, I carefully picked out the flowering tops of a number of fine plants, and macerated them in spirit; pressing out, distilling, and evaporating the result to the consistency of bird-lime. I thus obtained a viscous dark-green mass, of a peculiar odour and bitter taste. This resinous extract is the foundation of bang, and is known in different parts of Asia as canop, churrus, chutsao, ganjah, gindshi, hachish, majum, malach, sjarank, and subjah, and in South Africa as dacha.
I dare say that English doctors are for the most part ready to confess that they know very little about the drug. They use it occasionally, perhaps, but they have not learnt to trust it and why? because the hemp-resin that is commonly obtainable in this country is very bad, or, at least, very variable in quality. The chemists who procure it forget to ask whence it comes, and, when they have once prepared it, either in the form of an extract or as a tincture, they keep it, possibly for years, upon their shelves, and seem to be meantime oblivious that all the virtues that it ever possessed are evaporating. By a few physicians the extractum cannabis Indice, of the British Pharmacopæia is prescribed in small doses for certain diseases of women, for rheumatism, and sometimes for one or two other maladies; but I believe I may safely say that in England it is seldom, if indeed ever, used purely as a narcotic. Yet nearly all books on Materia Medica agree that it is capable of exerting powerful and astonishing effects in that capacity. The truth is that medical men, unable in this country to procure trustworthy specimens of the drug, have been frightened by the uncertain and varying action of weak or stale samples, and have practically discarded Cannabis Indica for opium. So scarce, indeed, is real hachish in Europe that many writers upon the subject have been led to declare that the peculiar effects of the narcotic are only to be witnessed in Oriental countries, the fact being merely that the writers in question have not had opportunities of observing those effects because they have not been able to provide the exciting. cause. They have believed that they have been administering hachish, when they have only been administering so much impotent resin of hemp. I suppose that at no chemist's in London can potent hachish be obtained at this moment. He who wants it pure and good must get it, in one form or another, from the East. Dr. Christison, who once grew some hemp in Edinburgh for experimental purposes, says that his plants produced no appreciable amount of the narcotic principle and there is no doubt whatever that hachish owes its qualities to the locality and atmospheric conditions of its production. The best in the world comes from Nepaul, Herat, and Persia.
I once, in a letter to the St. James's Gazette, gave a brief account of hachish as I had found it: and immediately I was brought to book by a gentleman who wrote as follows to the Editor of that paper:—"Referring to the letter in your journal of this evening, I would point out that there is a most vivid description of the effects of the drug in the 'Pillars of Hercules.' I was intimately acquainted with the author, Mr. David Urquhart, and know him to have made repeated efforts to reproduce in England the effects experienced in the East with hachish; but in vain. He complained that, like the caravan tea of Russia, transport, water-carriage (with no matter what degree of circumspection, what amount of casing and covering) were fatal to the magic influence hachish exercises alike on Westerns and Orientals, when properly taken and of the proper kind. He was assisted in his experiments by the late Major Rolland, who had long Eastern experiences himself, and by several others on different occasions; but the result was invariably the same only a kind of abortive opium exaltation being attained—nothing in the least resembling the fantastic De Quincey condition described by your correspondent."
Certainly, as I have already said, there is a difficulty in obtaining potent hachish in England, but that difficulty is not now insuperable, whatever it may have been in 1848, when Mr. David Urquhart's book was published. More than five and thirty years have since then elapsed, and it should be remembered that hemp plants from Persia and other good districts can now reach us almost ere they have had time to fade. Steam and the Suez Canal have made the pleasures of hachish possible even to the dweller in smoky, unromantic London.
The name, hachish, is particularly interesting as having supplied us with the word assassin. Originally, as I suppose every one knows, an assassin, or as he is still called in Auvergne, an "assashin," simply meant an eater of hachish, and it only came to signify a murderer because hachish was administered by that fanatic brigand, the Old Man of the Mountains, to his followers in order to prime them for the execution of his orders. Doubtless one might do almost anything while under the drug's mysterious influence. It has never, however, incited me to mischief, and certainly not to bloodthirstiness. I have no ill word to speak of it. It has never given me a head-ache, or what the Germans picturesquely call a Katzenjammer: it has never upset my appetite or my digestion: and, although I cannot say that it has never temporarily interfered with my clearness of brain, I consider that I have been more than compensated by the delicious dreams which I owe to hachish for the short periods of muddle-headedness that may have resulted from the use of the drug.
I need not give any detailed account of my earliest experiments with the extract which I prepared for myself. Alexandre Dumas, in Monte Cristo represents his hero as unconcernedly giving a man half a teaspoonful, or thereabouts, of hachish. Had I taken as much, I fancy that I should have suffered for my rashness. Fortunately for myself, I was cautious, and began by taking a very little. Day by day I increased the quantity, but I experienced no effects, in spite of the fact that Dr. O'Shaughnessy, who introduced the drug into England, declares that in India natives are powerfully influenced by a half-grain dose. Late one afternoon, however, I swallowed six grains, dissolved in a spoonful of brandy. My pulse at the time was beating steadily at the rate of 62 strokes a minute, and I had eaten nothing for five hours. Half an hour later I dined; and afterwards, foregoing my usual cup of coffee, I settled myself into a comfortable armchair by the fireside and lighted a cigar. I was not drowsy, but felt lazy and disinclined to move; and this tendency was speedily increased by an agreeable sensation of warmth that pervaded my whole body. A friend who was with me informed me, however, that my actual temperature was normal, and that my pulse was but very slightly accelerated. Presently a curious torpor began to take possession of my extremities. My feet and hands successively "went to sleep" for a few moments, and, when they awoke again, tingled as if they had been frost-bitten and were rapidly regaining their natural condition. The frequent recurrence of these sensations concentrated my attention upon myself; and little by little I fell into complete silence, and then lay back in my chair. Although I did not lose consciousness for more than three or four seconds at a time, consecutive thought now became irksome, if not impossible; and I involuntarily surrendered myself to the dreaminess that came over me.
The drug was doing its work at last.
It is fabled of Gontram the Good, of Burgundy, that his soul, while he slept, once left his body and penetrated into the bowels of Mont Trésor, where it beheld a magnificent vision of hidden wealth. My mind too seemed to quit my body and travel into a fairyland. It visited the strand of a calm and moonlit sea, in whose waters beautiful women bathed, laughing. Thence it was transported to the sward of a forest glade full of the music of birds that flitted hither and thither. Again, with equal suddenness, it was carried upwards through the crisp air of night to a mountain peak, whence all around was visible in the starlight; and I felt myself alone in a world of ice-fields and avalanches. But no vision lasted for long. It changed with the rapidity of the pattern in a revolving kaleidoscope; and so entranced was I by what I seemed to behold, that my friend had to raise his voice ere he could temporarily arouse me to a sense of reality.
Whenever he shouted into my ear I answered languidly; but even as I replied—(these details my companion furnishes)—my attention wandered off, and my half-finished sentence ended in irrelevant or incoherent nonsense. I had not the strength of will to tear myself away from my dreaming. And no wonder, seeing what dreams were mine! I seemed to be as much at home in water and air as on the earth.
After flying through space towards a star, and noticing as I approached it its increasing magnitude and brightness, I fell seaward; and, plunging beneath the waves, found myself in a glorious cavern, through whose rosy vault echoed the tones of a mighty organ. It must have been at this time that I staggered to the piano which stood in the corner of the room. Under ordinary circumstances I am a poor player; yet I have a good ear and improvise with tolerable facility. My friend, therefore, expected to hear what he had often heard before from me a trivial air, perhaps, and some vulgar variations upon it; and he was accordingly astonished when I began a wild melody like some of the quaint creations of Saint-Saëns, and played it (so my friend says) with brilliancy. For myself, I remember nothing of my performance.
My adventure with the piano seems to have turned the current of my ideas. I was led back to my chair by the fire; and henceforward my visions, instead of being sublime, became ridiculous. I imagined that everything around me was animated and that I was, in addition, surrounded by many absurd and animated things that had no existence save in my imagination. Life appeared to be a grand joke, and the mere delight of existence made me laugh boisterously. I could not help laughing: everything was so irresistibly comic. Now a brace of hook-nosed cronies came forward and danced a fantastic dance on the hearth-rug at my feet, making meanwhile the most extraordinary grimaces: and now a duck, with a bill at least a yard long, waddled up, and bursting into a broad and miraculous grin, congratulated me upon the comicality of life. The clock smiled, the chairs moved, the coals in the grate were little giggling imps. Yet I felt perfectly at ease, and watched the transformations without any sensations of surprise, much less of terror.
Then succeeded the third stage of the influence of the hachish. Numbness seemed to steal over me. I imagined that my legs turned to lead; and the idea grew until I became wholly metallic—a living machine, an engine through whose valves the steam hissed and whistled, threatening the speedy disruption of the whole affair. While in this state I could not move; and yet when my friend aroused me I could still give broken and wandering replies to his questions. Even this qualified measure of consciousness deserted me in time, however; and I went to sleep. An hour later, or about four and a quarter hours after having swallowed the hachish, I awoke, dazed and dreamy; but a draught of cold water immediately brought me to myself, and in ten minutes more the influence of the drug had entirely evaporated. What is more, I had a furious appetite and at midnight I ate a great supper. I had no headache, no lassitude, and no nervousness; and when, in the small hours, I turned into bed; I slept soundly, dreamlessly and naturally, and rose next morning none the worse for my experiment. My pulse-beats, it is true, had at one time during the evening risen to one hundred and ten per minute, but they had soon again become normal, and I had no further feverish symptoms.
Is it astonishing that I took hachish again and again? I think not. Who in my position would not have done as I did? But my methods improved. I procured some of that sweet Turkish confection known as Rahat Lakoum, and used it as a medium wherein to take the bitter drug that carried me to Elysium whenever I would.
