Hashish

“ To say nothing of the fact that the use of opium, wine, hashish, is coupled with certain accessories which cannot always be had, while one can always take tobacco and paper with one, and that the smoker of opium, the alcohol user, arouses horror, while the man that smokes tobacco presents nothing repulsive; the advantage of tobacco over other intoxicants is that, whereas the intoxication of opium, hashish, or wine is spread over all impressions and acts, received or produced during a sufficiently protracted period of time, the intoxication of tobacco may be directed to every separate occasion. ”

“ But would-be experimentalists in the effects of hashish would do well to remember that it may not be indulged in with impunity, and most authorities agree that the brain becomes eventually disordered with frequent indulgence in the drug even in India. It further becomes weakened and incapable of separating the true from the false; frequent intoxication leads to a condition of delirium, and usually of a dangerous nature; the moral nature becomes numbed, and the victim at last becomes unfit to pursue his ordinary avocation. ”

“ Of the ordinary physical effects of hashish, the first is a feeling of slight compression of the temporal bones and upper parts of the head. The respiration is gentle, the pulse is increased, and a gentle heat is felt all over the surface of the body. There is a sense of weight about the fore part of the arms, and an occasional slight involuntary motion, as if to seek relief from it. There is a feeling of discomfort about the extremities, creating a feeling of uneasiness, and if the dose has been too large the usual symptoms of poisoning by Indian hemp show themselves. ”

“ Not in taste, not in pleasure, not in dissipation, not in gayety, lies the explanation for the universal use of hashish, opium, wine, tobacco, but wholly in the necessity that men have for concealing from themselves the monitions of conscience. ”

“ It is comprehensible that if a man smokes opium, hashish, or drinks so much wine as to fall and lose his senses, the consequences of such a stupefying of himself may be very grave; but that a man should come under the exceedingly mild effects of alcoholic exhilaration or tobacco could never have any serious consequences. ”

“ The effects on individuals of opium and hashish, as described for us by them, are horrible; horrible for the drunkard are the consequences of the use of alcohol, as we well know; but incomparably more horrible for society in general are the consequences of taking brandy, wine, and tobacco, though the majority of men, and especially the so-called classes of our world, use them in moderation, and consider them harmless. ”

“ In one of His Tablets ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has stated concerning opium: "the user, the buyer and the seller are all deprived of the bounty and grace of God".
In yet another Tablet, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written:
Regarding hashish you have pointed out that some Persians have become habituated to its use. Gracious God! This is the worst of all intoxicants, and its prohibition is explicitly revealed. Its use causeth the disintegration of thought and the complete torpor of the soul. How could anyone seek the fruit of the infernal tree, and by partaking of it, be led to exemplify the qualities of a monster? ”

“ When you return to this mundane sphere from your visionary world, you would seem to leave a Neapolitan spring for a Lapland winter—to quit paradise for earth—heaven for hell! Taste the hashish, guest of mine—taste the hashish.” ”

“ In the first place, I am very familiar with the workings of this extraordinary drug, this drug which has had the chance effect of opening you up to the forces of another region; and, in the second, I have a firm belief in the reality of supersensuous occurrences as well as considerable knowledge of psychic processes acquired by long and painful experiment. The rest is, or should be, merely sympathetic treatment and practical application. The hashish has partially opened another world to you by increasing your rate of psychical vibration, and thus rendering you abnormally sensitive. ”

“ For the girl who had protected me from Hassim and had brought the hashish for me was the same girl I had seen in the skull-face dream.
Through the soddenness of my degradation the lure of her struck like a knife piercing my heart and strangely revived the memories of the days when I was a man like other men--not yet a sullen, cringing slave of dreams. Far and dim they were, shimmery islands in the mist of years--and what a dark sea lay between! ”

“ My next experiment, he went on, was made with hashish, Cannabis Indica, which I prepared and took according to the directions of another adept, who had found that the drug produced a kind of demoniac and incessant laughter, hearty, Gargantuan laughter, and the foreshortening of time and space. He could span the distance between London and Paris in a few seconds. Furniture and statues assumed a comic attitude; they seemed to move about and become familiar with him. ”

“ He hadn't hashish, he cried, he didn't know what hashish was, he hardly knew what a room was or a house. But we got in and saw the company. There is really nothing to say when one comes to the point. They were just smoking. And at the moment they don't even smoke, for my one and only Den has been suppressed by the police—just as his old ladies must by now have suppressed my Missionary at Lahore. ”

“ The analysis of hashish is medically very well done in the "Artificial Paradises," and science is able to cull from them certain information; for Baudelaire prided himself on his accuracy, and on no consideration whatever would he slur over the least technical ornamentation of this habit in which he had himself indulged. He specifies perfectly the real character of the hallucinations produced by hashish, which of itself creates nothing, simply developing the particular disposition of the individual, exaggerating it to the very last degree. ”

“ One of the first appreciable effects of the Hashish, as of other Intoxicating agents, is the gradual weakening of that power of Volitionally controlling and directing the current of thought, the possession of which characterizes the vigorous mind. The individual feels himself incapable of fixing his attention upon any subject ”

“ The Hashishin performed their murderous feats under the influence of hashish, or Indian hemp; and during the state of ecstasy so induced, according to Deeping, they acquired powers almost superhuman. I read how they could scale sheer precipices, pass fearlessly along narrow ledges which would scarce afford foothold for a rat, cast themselves from great heights unscathed, and track one marked for death in such a manner as to remain unseen not only by the victim but by others about him. At this point of my studies I started, in a sudden nervous panic, and laid my hand upon my revolver. ”

“ Cannabis sativa produces an intoxicant that in Turkey is known as hadschy, in Arabia and India as hashish, and to the Hottentots as dacha, and serves as a drunkard's food in other lands. The fruit of the juniper produces gin, and the fermented juice of the grape, or malt liquors, in all civilized countries are the favorite intoxicants, their origin being lost in antiquity. ”

“ An addict is able to review his entire past life or plan an elaborate crime between two heartbeats. So I collected a small supply of the stuff."
"But hashish in large doses is deadly, and I've heard that users of it sooner or later develop homicidal mania—run amuck as they say in India."
"True enough," admitted the chemist, "but Andrev, the Russian, you know, recently worked out a formula to neutralize the deadly effects of the drug but retain its time-expanding effect for medical purposes. I've added that to the pure drug. ”

“ Aside from the effect of the climate, much of their indolence and indifference is due to their smoking of hemp, a narcotic drug, similar to the hashish of eastern countries. This they grow, and it is a common practice for the older, and for even young boys, to smoke it. It seems to sap their very life and take away all the ambition to better their condition. ”

“ The method of using it in India is chiefly for smoking in combination with tobacco. For this purpose, a plug of tobacco is first placed at the bottom of the bowl of the pipe, on the top a small piece of hashish, and over this a piece of glowing charcoal. Another way is to knead the drug with the tobacco by the thumb of one hand working in the palm of the other, till they are thoroughly incorporated. Simple infusions of the leaves and flowering tops are also much used for drinking purposes by old and young in India, the alcoholic form being a most active and dangerous intoxicant. ”

“ Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time. ”

“ His dealings with you alone have puzzled all the scientific world, for none of them has been able to explain how he could remove the hashish craving, stimulate you with a drug so infinitely more powerful, and then produce another drug which entirely effaced the effects of the other. ”

“ That there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal moments, that they really contained the highest synthesis of life, he could not doubt, nor even admit the possibility of doubt. He felt that they were not analogous to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to intoxication by hashish, opium or wine. Of that he could judge, when the attack was over. These instants were characterized—to define it in a word—by an intense quickening of the sense of personality. Since, in the last conscious moment preceding the attack, he could say to himself, with full understanding of his words: ”

“ At the end of the passage we came upon human life. A family was asleep by the light of a lamp—not suspiciously asleep, but reasonably disturbed by our irruption. The civil father was ordered to arise and carry the lamp about, and by its light we found a hollow reed, at which the police sniffed heavily. Traces of hashish adhered to it, they pronounced. ”

“ Industries: banking, food processing, textiles, cement, oil refining, chemicals, jewelry, some metal fabricating
Agriculture: principal products - citrus fruits, vegetables, potatoes, olives, tobacco, hemp (hashish) , sheep, goats; not self-sufficient in grain
Illicit drugs: illicit producer of hashish and heroin for the international drug trade; hashish production is shipped to Western Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America; increasingly a key locus of cocaine processing and trafficking ”

“ Hashish is the resinous exudate of the cannabis or hemp plant (Cannabis sativa) .
Heroin is a semisynthetic derivative of morphine.
Mandrax is a synthetic chemical depressant, the same as, or similar to Quaalude.
Marijuana is the dried leaves of the cannabis or hemp plant (Cannabis sativa) .
Narcotics are drugs that relieve pain, often induce sleep, and refer to opium, opium derivatives, and synthetic substitutes. Natural narcotics include opium (paregoric, parepectolin) , morphine (MS-Contin, Roxanol) , codeine (Tylenol with codeine, Empirin with codeine, Robitussan AC) , and thebaine. ”

“ Tobacco is the great luxury of the men of all classes in Egypt, who begin and end the day with it, and generally smoke all day with little intermission. Many women, also, especially among the rich, adopt the habit. The smoking of hashish, though illegal, is indulged in by considerable numbers of people. Men who can afford to keep a horse, mule or ass are very seldom seen to walk. ”

“ The oldest Italian and French authors commonly write Assassini, sometimes Heissessini, and Assissini; Joinville wrote it Haussaci. On these grounds, M. de Sacy doubts not, that the Arabic which has served as the type, was Haschisch (Hashish) , signifying herb, in general, and in one particular meaning, hemp. Now, because the Arabs have long known how to prepare a beverage from hemp, which intoxicates and maddens like opium ”

“ Alcohol and methyl alcohol are intoxicants; ether, chloroform, and chloral are anæsthetics, and yet no two are possessed of the same qualities. Is there any good reason to doubt that combinations of the elements as yet hidden from man can not cause hallucinations that combine and intensify the most virulent of narcotics, intoxicants, and anæsthetics, and pall the effects of hashish or of opium? ”

“ It is a mixture of excellent opium, which I fetched myself from Canton in order to have it pure, and the best hashish which grows in the east that is, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. These two ingredients are mixed in equal proportions, and formed into pills, taken when required. ”

“ It is the nervous system that is affected, no other part of the body being acted upon; hashish thus materially differing from opium, whose power is marked upon the muscular and digestive systems, retarding the action of the organs, and leaving them in a complete state of inaction. ”

“ I suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this, Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish? Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp—that is, converted temporarily into a maniac—would have been evident to any medical man who had heard his statement and noted the distressing after-effects which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning. ”

“ Then their pursuer must take e'en greater risks and make crueller marches that the Law may be upheld. The one thing in the Law's favour is that hashish smells abominably—worse than a heated camel—so, when they range alongside, no time is lost in listening to lies. ”

“ See Data codes
I Illicit drugs
This entry gives information on the five categories of illicit drugs - narcotics, stimulants, depressants (sedatives) , hallucinogens, and cannabis. These categories include many drugs legally produced and prescribed by doctors as well as those illegally produced and sold outside of medical channels. Cannabis (Cannabis sativa) is the common hemp plant, which provides hallucinogens with some sedative properties, and includes marijuana (pot, Acapulco gold, grass, reefer) , tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, Marinol) , hashish (hash) , and hashish oil (hash oil) . ”