The Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library is a library of psychoactive drug

Psychoactive drug

A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...

-related literature created in 1970 by Michael Horowitz

Michael Horowitz

*For the British poet, see Michael Horovitz.*For the U.S. electrical engineer see Michael J. HorowitzMichael Horowitz is an American author and archivist in San Francisco....

, Cynthia Palmer, William Dailey, and Robert Barker, who merged their private libraries. It is the largest such library in the world and was based in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

; the Ludlow Library is now part of the Ludlow Santo Domingo Library sarl, in Geneva, Switzerland. It is named for Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Fitz Hugh Ludlow, sometimes seen as “Fitzhugh Ludlow,” was an American author, journalist, and explorer; best-known for his autobiographical book The Hasheesh Eater ....

, author of the first full-length work of drug literature written by an American, The Hasheesh Eater

The Hasheesh Eater

The Hasheesh Eater is an autobiographical book by Fitz Hugh Ludlow describing the author's altered states of consciousness and philosophical flights of fancy while he was using a cannabis extract....

, (1857).

During the 1970s the library grew rapidly and operated out of San Francisco as an international resource for psychoactive drug research, and for the study of psychoactive drug use in contemporary and historical societies. The Ludlow Library flourished during a period of perhaps the most intense media interest ever focused on the personal, social, scientific and political aspects of drug experience.

The library was curated by Michael Aldrich

Michael Aldrich

—Michael Aldrich is an English inventor, innovator and entrepreneur. In 1979 he invented online shopping to enable online transaction processing between consumers and businesses, or between one business and another, a technique known later as e-commerce...

, holder of the first Ph.D. ever granted from an American University in the history of cannabis, and included on its board of advisors a number of eminent researches and writers, including Chauncey Leake, Richard Evans Schultes

Richard Evans Schultes

Richard Evans Schultes may be considered the father of modern ethnobotany, for his studies of indigenous peoples' uses of plants, including especially entheogenic or hallucinogenic plants , for his lifelong collaborations with chemists, and...

, Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann was a Swiss scientist known best for being the first person to synthesize, ingest and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide . He authored more than 100 scientific articles and a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child...

, Alexander Shulgin

Alexander Shulgin

Alexander "Sasha" Theodore Shulgin is an American pharmacologist, chemist, artist, and drug developer.Shulgin is credited with the popularization of MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially for psychopharmaceutical use and the treatment of depression and...

, Andrew Weil

Andrew Weil

Andrew Thomas Weil is an American author and physician, who established the field of integrative medicine which attempts to integrate alternative and conventional medicine. Weil is the author of several best-selling books and operates a website and monthly newsletter promoting general health and...

, Oscar Janiger

Oscar Janiger

Oscar Janiger was a University of California Irvine Psychiatrist who was best known for his LSD research, which lasted from 1954 to 1962....

, Ralph Metzner

Ralph Metzner

Ralph Metzner Ph.D. , is an American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert . Dr...

, Laura Huxley

Laura Huxley

Laura Huxley was a musician, author, psychological counselor and lecturer.-Life and work:...

, Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

 and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...

.

External links

• sales page for the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library
• The Fitz Hugh Ludlow hypertext collection (not connected with the FHL Memorial Library but has similar material)