Drugs were consumed of well-known writers already at the end of the 19th Century and their effect in their works were artistically processed. So the works of Arthur Conan Doyle "The adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and Robert Louis Stevenson "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" have been affected by their personal experiences with the effects of cocaine.
Later above all French literates such as Charles Baudelaire "The Opium eater", "The artificial paradises" or "The flowers of Evil", Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud describe the effects of hashish and opiates. Center of the 20th cocaine became the preferential drug particularly in artist and literature circles again, the physician and writer Gottfried Benn in poems described the cocaine intoxication, the poet George Trakl died 1914 at overdose cocaine.
Still before the Second World War Klaus Mann processed his experiences with heroin, in particular his withdrawal experiences, in that 1939 appeared novel "the volcano, novel among emigrants". Likewise the writer Hans Fallada reported in his novels "Who once eats out of the tin bowl" and "The drinker" over his alcohol and opiate dependence and their consequences.
Also the American author William S. Burroughs described in his autobiographic novel "Junky" own experience with opiate withdrawal, in particular the agonies with the so-called "Cold turkey", i.e. to a withdrawal without medicines. Together with Jack Kerouac, who reported in his novel "On the road" drug experiences with journeys by America, Mexico, North Africa and Europe, and the 1969 with 47 years deceased poet Allan Ginsberg, who died to consequences of his alcohol and drug consumption, Burroughs became the founder of the American "Beat generation".
The German writer Ernst Juenger mentioned 1951 a self-attempt with LSD together with Albert Hoffmann, the discoverer of LSD, in the novel "The attendance on Godenholm" and in his book "Drugs and Ecstasy". The American writer Aldous Huxley described in his novel "The doors of perception" and in his novel " Sky and hell " his experiences with mescaline and other hallucinogenic drugs and their relations with religion. Also the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda coming from Peru and emigrated to Florida described in his 1968 appeared book "The Teachings of Don Juan" allegedly own experiences with hallucinogenic drugs such as peyote, night shade drugs and magic mushrooms (psilocybin) under guidance of an Indianan shaman.
