On Wine and Hashish explores Baudelaire’s notions of the artificial paradises available to all drinkers and drug takers. This cornerstone of the literature of intoxication is in equal parts a celebration of the human capacity to escape the immediacy of the world as it is, and a warning against indulging the escapist impulse. On Wine and Hashish draws on its author’s experiences as a member of the famous ‘Club des hachichins’ in Paris, and elaborates themes raised in his famous prose poem collection, Le Spleen de Paris, in which drunkenness – as provided by wine, poetry, or virtue – is celebrated in remarkable style. Baudelaire claims that wine and hashish bring about a flight away from narrative time, initiating a relationship with the unknown: the ambivalence of memory, and a dangerous timelessness.

Inebriating in its anecdotal detail and thought-provoking in its depiction of the phoney exotica of excess, On Wine and Hashish illuminates Baudelaire’s own uncertain attitude to addiction.