"Talented Young Collegians" with "Dangerous Books": College Students' Use of Opium and Hashish in 19th-Century America

Many American college students experimented with hashish and opium in the nineteenth century, when there were no legal restrictions on the drugs. Users sought more “excitement” than tobacco provided and wanted to experience the drugs’ effects on their imaginations. Most use was inspired by memoirs of drug use that depicted fantastic visions and intense pains. Some students shied away. The drugs’ “social meanings” had not yet formed, and users’ experiences varied widely.

Memoirs of drug use inspired experimentation. In 1821’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Thomas De Quincey recalled beginning his use while a student at Oxford. And in 1857’s The Hasheesh Eater, Fitz Hugh Ludlow chronicled his habit, which began when he attended Union College. Both described the drugs’ “pleasures” and “pains,” and many college students ignored the risks. According to a Yale student in 1851, “the natural bias of the youthful mind” was “to seek the pleasure and hazard the danger.” He wished that De Quincey had not made opium use so appealing, since readers might follow his “ruinous course.” Others also dwelled on the dangers. By the 1850s, the number of Amherst students who had taken a pledge “against the use of ardent spirits, opium, and tobacco” was greater than the number of Amherst alumni overall.

Users’ experiences varied, but the lives of many were unmarred by their drug use, partly due to their class status and the drugs’ legality. Future Nobel laureate Jane Addams tried opium after reading Confessions in the 1870s, while attending Illinois’ Rockford College. She hoped she would attain a “sympathetic understanding of all human experience” but experienced no “mental reorientation.” John Hay used hashish at Brown after reading The Hasheesh Eater. The future secretary of state later referred to Brown as a place “where I used to eat Hasheesh and dream dreams.”