Les Paradis artificiels

Baudelaire analyzes the motivation of the addict, and the individual psychedelic experience of the user.

Legacy

Baudelaire's descriptions of the hashish spell in Artificial Paradises foreshadowed other such work that emerged many decades later with intense scientific research into serotonergic psychedelics.

For example: Baudelaire's cycle of reflections on the drug by the subjects of his scholarship, inspired Walter Benjamin to engage in his own hashish and mescaline protocols later on.

A renaissance of interest in these early drug-experiments—inclusive of other more contemporary works by Aldous Huxley (Doors of Perception), Allen Ginsberg ("Lysergic Acid"), Aleister Crowley, Robert Graves, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass (formerly known as Richard Alpert), William S. Burroughs etc.--became an atmospheric element of the literature of the counter-culture during the 1960's in the European and American sphere.