The Smoker Smoked: Baudelaire and drugs
- Art d'Histoire
- Jan 28
- 3 min read
In 1843, in the attic of a family flat belonging to his former school friend Louis Ménard, a 22-year-old Charles Baudelaire tasted his first "green spoonful." Contrary to the popular dark imagery of the smoke-filled opium den that would later characterize his reputation, his introduction to the world of artificial paradises was culinary, sugary, and deceptively innocent. He consumed a specific green spoonful of a substance known as dawamesk. This "strange jam," as it was called, was a complex mixture of fatty extract, sugar, and various herbs and spices designed to mask the bitterness of the hashish. The recipe included vanilla, cinnamon, pistachios, almonds, and musk. Baudelaire noted that in this new form, there was "nothing unpleasant" about the substance, which could be taken in heavy doses of fifteen, twenty, or even thirty grams, either dissolved in a cup of coffee or sandwiched between two slices of wafer.
Sitting Inside the Pipe
In his early years, he often found refuge in the studio of his friend, the painter Gustave Courbet, who gathered items of clothing to improvise a bed for him but had little patience for the abuse of opium that "took him away." Baudelaire described the onset of these hallucinations with a frightening, clinical precision in texts from 1860. The experience began with external objects taking on "monstrous appearances" and revealing themselves in shapes hitherto unknown.
As the intoxication took hold, the boundary between the user and the world dissolved completely. The poet described a state of total sensory confusion where "sounds have their own
colour" and "colours make music." In this delirium, musical notes transformed into numbers, forcing the mind to perform "astounding arithmetic calculations" with frightening rapidity. The loss of self was so profound that the subject-object relationship inverted entirely: "You are sitting down, smoking; you think you are sitting in your pipe, and it’s you that your pipe is smoking; it’s you that you are breathing out in the form of blue-tinged clouds."
The Blackboard of Shame, Courbet testifies
Despite referring to the vial of laudanum as an "old and terrible lover", Baudelaire’s ultimate philosophical judgment on these substances was severe. He concluded that man does not need to "sell his soul" to pharmacy or sorcery to win heaven. The insights gained were illusory; thoughts might appear draped in "magical faded finery," but they came "from earth rather than heaven."
The humiliating reality of this "enslaved intelligence" was brutally demonstrated by Courbet. Annoyed by the poet's state during a drunken evening where Baudelaire was throwing out obscure sentences and unfinished hemistiches, the painter took an oath to record the truth. He spent the night writing down every incoherent rambling the stupefied Baudelaire uttered on a large blackboard. When Baudelaire awoke, he was confronted by the "colossal figure" of the angry painter, chalk in hand, forcing him to read the undeniable evidence that his reasoning had become "merely a wreck."
This blog is based on the anthologies of primary sources edited by Art d'Histoire Academy.
Find the complete academic references in:
You can also consult our traditional videos in open access:
We believe in making academic art history accessible and reliable for all.
The Art d’Histoire Academy platform specialises in primary sources and digitised archives, covering French art history from 1850 to 1910.
It offers clear, structured, interactive videos, as well as a library of over a thousand articles that explain and contextualise primary sources.
Whether you are preparing for an exam, exhibition or publication, the Art d’Histoire Academy will support you.
