Clare J. Burnett

Marcus Clarke’s “Cannabis Indica” and Altered States of Consciousness in 19th-Century Australian Mass Media

Journal of Australian studies April 3, 2026 Clare J. Burnett

Marcus Clarke's 1868 short story 'Cannabis Indica' is one of the first fictional portrayals of altered consciousness and drug use by an Australian author. The story gothicises the experience of hashish, adapting colonial understandings of the drug's oriental origins and its link to medical perceptions of insanity. Clarke's tale engages in a literary experiment exploring colonial consciousness and the duality of rational versus irrational thought, scientific versus fantastical thinking, and being both a colonial and part of the empire.