Quotes from Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist (1968-1976)”

Quotes on Drug Use:

“All these veteran heads keep telling me to get off the speed because it’s dangerous, but every time I have something to say to them late at night they’re passed out. And I’m sitting up alone with the music and my own raw nerves hearing Balin or Butterfield yelling in every corner of my head and feeling the sounds run up my spine like the skin of my own back was stretched across a drumhead and some burning-eyed freak with the Great American knot swelling up in his head was using my shoulder blades for a set of kettledrums.”

“Speed freaks are unpredictable when the great whistle blows. And boozers are worse. But put it all together with maybe sixty-six milligrams and nine jolts of gin on ice and maybe two joints…and you get the kind of desperate loser who used to crawl into the woods on the edge of Kesey’s La Honda compound and drop some acid for no reason except that the only part of his body that would still work was his mouth and his swallowing muscle. And the ears, the goddamn ears, which never quit…the terrible consistency of the music mocked the failures of the flesh. That too-bright hour when you know it’s time for breakfast except that only the pure grass masters are hungry and you want to come alive again because it’s a new, sunshiny day, but the goddamn speed is doubling back on you now, and although you’re not going down, you can’t go up either, but just Out, and stupid. An electric eel with a blown fuse. Nada…So maybe the heads are right. Forswear that alcohol and no more speed…just wail on the weed and go under with a smile…There is something perverse and even suicidal about speed. Like The Devil and Daniel Webster. Buy high and sell low…ignoring that inevitable day when there’s no more high except maybe a final freak-out with cocaine and then down the tube. A burned out case, drunk and brain-crippled, a bad example for Youth. The walking, babbling dead…And why not. Speed is like sandpaper on the nerves. When all the normal energy is down to dead ash and even the adrenaline starts to vaporize in the dull heat of the fatigue…there’s a rare kind of brightness, a weird and giddy sensitivity that registers every sound and smile and stoplight as if every moment might be the next to last, memories carved with a chisel…”

“INSTRUCTIONS FOR READING GONZO JOURNALISM:

-Half-pint, 10-inch hypo-needle

-Fill this full of rum, tequila or Wild Turkey and shoot the entire contents straight into the stomach, through the navel. This will induce a fantastic rush- much like a Ò¾ hour amyl high- plenty of time to read the whole saga

-The mind and body must be subjected to extreme stimulus, by means of drugs and music”

“A mixture of oregano, banana and dried cloves” (an excuse for marijuana smell) – Oscar Acosta

“I just read today in the Underground Press that frequent inhalation of marijuana smoke prevents rot and heals cavities, in addition to making the teeth sparkle and the soul smile.”

“You could do almost anything else- punch Nixon in the face while slobberingly drunk at a TV press conference, abuse small children behind bushes in public parks- …but man, once your byline became associated with ‘dope,’ you’d be doomed.”

“I blew a huge hole in my living room floor with a 19 gauge shotgun load- a hideous accident caused by a mixture of gunpowder and LSD.”

“That’s the trouble with acid: you can never be sure you’re hallucinating.”

“One of the central tenets of my concept of chemical “speed” is that it is not energy in itself, but merely enables the brain & the body to tap latent natural energy resources, which amounts to willfully trading- on a two or three to one basis, time Now for time Later.”


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