In Artificial Paradises, Baudelaire writes about hashish: “Enthusiasts who wanted to procure the magical delights of this substance at any price continued to look for hashish that crossed the Mediterranean—that is, hashish made from Indian or Egyptian hemp” (15). Only hashish from the “Orient,” that is, most of Asia and North Africa, is intoxicating enough for Baudelaire, who finds freedom in the loosening of physical and mental boundaries produced by hashish. In Confessions of an English Opium Eater, De Quincey describes the equally pleasant feelings that opium created in him. Ultimately, however, Baudelaire's use of the substance goes too far and ultimately destroys him. De Quincey develops alarming nightmares about the frightening Orient and he too succumbs to drugs. The men's accounts of their drug use both involve the concept of the "border" between sober and intoxicated, European and Eastern. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The origin of psychoactive substances was central to European consumers, especially upper-class and educated ones. Baudelaire writes that hashish “possesses such extraordinary powers of intoxication that for some years it has attracted the attention of scholars and men of French society. It is more or less appreciated depending on its different regional origins” (36). The potency of oriental hash almost seems to come from the strangeness of the land in which it is grown, as if there is something innately intoxicating in the oriental soil, water, air, or other inputs of the cultivation process, which cannot be scientifically proven. replicated. There is no other way to explain how French society, which in Baudelaire's eyes was at the pinnacle of global scientific and cultural progress, could fail in all national attempts to cultivate strong hashish. Baudelaire establishes a clear contrast between Europeans and Orientals. De Quincey does the same when describing his nightmares about the Orient. He writes that he is “terrified by the ways of life, the customs, and the barrier of utter loathing and lack of sympathy, placed between us by feelings deeper than I can parse. I would rather live with madmen or brute animals” (81). Comparing the Malay who arrives at his cottage to the English servant who opens the door, De Quincey comments that “there seemed to be an impassable gulf between any communication of ideas” (62). The incredible power of these psychoactive substances therefore lies in their ability to bridge that "impassable abyss". The only common language that De Quincey and the Malays share is the gift of opium that De Quincey offers them. It seems that Baudelaire and De Quincey must constantly declare the existence of a fundamental barrier between European and Oriental, because crossing that seemingly impassable border is a justification for the powerful and otherworldly effects of psychoactive substances. Baudelaire one of the key effects of hashish intoxication is its ability to play with conventional boundaries. In addition to rigid cultural and national borders, these substances can also cross the border that in sober life seems even more impenetrable, that between the external world and the internal sense of self and body. Baudelaire states that under the effect of hashish “you forget your existence, to the point of confusing the objects of your senses with the objects of the real world” (51). He writes about becoming a tree, or a bird, or evaporating into nothingness. For Baudelaire this romantic fantasy seems to be a positive experience. The transcending power of hashish fits well with the allure of irrationality that characterizes the movementromantic of Baudelaire's time. There is liberation in being able to see the world in a way that is not governed by the confines of sober experience. Hashish can allow the mind to reach new ways of processing in an attempt to discover new truths about experience that are unattainable through rational thought. What Baudelaire describes as liberation, however, lies alarmingly close to what De Quincey describes as tyranny and oppression. There is an infinitely thin line between freedom and slavery, between intoxicating and toxic, and according to De Quincey, crossing that line is maddeningly inevitable. The border crossed by the use of opium that disturbs De Quincey is that between waking life and dreaming. De Quincey never seems to fully wake up when he starts having nightmares. These nightmares are filled with his anxious concept of what he imagines as the overwhelming horrors of the East, an amalgamation of Egyptian, Chinese, Indonesian, and Indian beasts, plants, gods, pyramids, coffins, furniture, and people. De Quincey writes that “a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and dream states of the brain” (75). His visions “were dragged by the fierce chemistry of my dreams, into an unbearable splendor that tormented my heart” (75). While it horrifies him when figures like Malay seem to haunt his dreams, even more terrifying is that his dreams come to haunt his waking life. That sacred boundary that had been so determinedly drawn from the beginning by Baudelaire and De Quincey to separate the European experience from the Eastern world was now crossed by something more than the simple pleasure of opium. It is acceptable when the barrier is overcome by psychoactive substances. Indeed, the powerful and pleasurable high from hashish or opium appears to come from substances that have crossed that barrier. However, when something else that Europeans associate with the East enters European life, be it the plague or the labyrinthine visions of De Quincey, the violation of the border is not only unacceptable, but is threatening and even potentially fatal. De Quincey imagines the East as extremely aggressive. He seems to experience the visions passively, whipped from terror to terror. Even inanimate objects pose a threat as tables and sofas transform into ferocious crocodiles. In his dreams and waking hours, opium made him, he writes, “helpless as a child” (74). The Oriental aggression revealed in his dreams reveals something larger about the fascination with Orientalism that pervaded European society in the nineteenth century. By declaring a certain notion of the “other” and erecting an impassable boundary between European society and the Eastern world, Europeans were able to project many of their less-than-admirable traits into the East and thus apparently rid themselves of these defects, because anything Eastern is not European by definition. In the 19th century it was undoubtedly the Europeans who were the aggressors, not the Orientals. The Europeans, it seems, had no problem breaching the East-West border, as long as it was on their terms. European colonial desires were immense. In the nineteenth century there were three Anglo-Burmese Wars, two Anglo-Afghan Wars, two Opium Wars, and two Anglo-Sikh Wars, all involving British forces invading and vying for control in Asia. Imagining the Eastern world as the aggressor helped justify the invasion because it could be seen as “fighting them on their land so we don't have to fight them on ours,” a rhetoric so powerful that it persists to the present day. The problem for De Quincey is that this projection of aggression towards the East has been so inculcated in his imagination that when he falls into the opium-induced state, half..