Sartre’s mescaline trip produced lasting hallucinations of lobsters and staring facades

Evidence

The results were dramatic. While Huxley’s drug adventure would be mystical and ecstatic, and one of Dr. Lagache’s assistants had enjoyed prancing through imaginary meadows with exotic dancers, Sartre’s brain threw up a hellish crew of snakes, fish, vultures, toads, beetles and crustaceans. Worse, they refused to go away afterwards. For months, lobster-like beings followed him just out of his field of vision, and the facades of houses on the street stared at him with human eyes. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 332

Categorization

• SHARE: The lobster hallucination detail is just the kind of striking biographical tidbit worth sending to someone who enjoys philosophy trivia.
• XREF: connects to: Sartre’s Nausea centers on a root’s opaque being overwhelming consciousness — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 83; Sartre’s nausea insight came from mescaline-tinged visions of contingency — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 333; Sartre deliberately manufactured nausea to study it philosophically — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 347

Broader Connections

• Sartre’s nausea insight came from mescaline-tinged visions of contingency #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 333
• Sartre deliberately manufactured nausea to study it philosophically #complicates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 347