Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fourth Estate

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by ‘Raoul Duke’ first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, issue 95, November 11, 1971, and issue 96, November 25, 1971.

First published in Great Britain by Paladin 1972

Copyright © Estate of Hunter S. Thompson 1971

Illustration copyright © Ralph Steadman 1971

PS section copyright © Travis Elborough 2005

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Hunter S. Thompson, asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007204496

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007596713

Version: 2019–07–16

To Bob Geiger,

for reasons that need

not be explained here

—and to Bob Dylan,

for Mister Tambourine Man

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

—DR. JOHNSON

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

PART ONE

2. The Seizure of $300 from a Pig Woman in Beverly Hills

3. Strange Medicine on the Desert … a Crisis of Confidence

4. Hideous Music and the Sound of Many Shotguns … Rude Vibes on a Saturday Evening in Vegas

5. Covering the Story … A Glimpse of the Press in Action … Ugliness & Failure

6. A Night on the Town … Confrontation at the Desert Inn … Drug Frenzy at the Circus-Circus

7. Paranoid Terror … and the Awful Specter of Sodomy … A Flashing of Knives and Green Water

8. “Genius ’Round the World Stands Hand in Hand, and One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle ’Round”

9. No Sympathy for the Devil … Newsmen Tortured? … Flight into Madness

10. Western Union Intervenes: A Warning from Mr. Heem … New Assignment from the Sports Desk and a Savage Invitation from the Police

11. Aaawww, Mama, Can This Really Be the End? … Down and Out in Vegas, with Amphetamine Psychosis Again?

12. Hellish Speed … Grappling with the California Highway Patrol … Mano a Mano on Highway 61

PART TWO

2. Another Day, Another Convertible … & Another Hotel Full of Cops

3. Savage Lucy … ‘Teeth like Baseballs, Eyes like Jellied Fire’

4. No Refuge for Degenerates … Reflections an a Murderous Junkie

5. A Terrible Experience with Extremely Dangerous Drugs

6. Getting Down to Business … Opening Day at the Drug Convention

7. If You Don’t Know, Come to Learn … If You Know, Come to Teach

8. Back Door Beauty … & Finally a Bit of Serious Drag Racing on the Strip

9. Breakdown on Paradise Blvd.

10. Heavy Duty at the Airport … Ugly Peruvian Flashback … ‘No! It’s Too Late! Don’t Try It!’

11. Fraud? Larceny? Rape? … A Brutal Connection with the Alice from Linen Service

12. Return to the Circus-Circus … Looking for the Ape … to Hell with the American Dream

13. End of the Road … Death of the Whale … Soaking Sweats in the Airport

14. Farewell to Vegas … ‘God’s Mercy on You Swine!’

Keep Reading

Notes

P.S. Ideas, interviews & features …

About the Author

About the Book

Read On

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. …” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. “What the hell are you yelling about?” he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn to drive.” I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. They would be tough miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out. Press registration for the fabulous Mint 400 was already underway, and we had to get there by four to claim our sound-proof suite. A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had taken care of the reservations, along with this huge red Chevy convertible we’d just rented off a lot on the Sunset Strip … and I was, after all, a professional journalist; so I had an obligation to cover the story , for good or ill.

The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers … and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Los Angeles County—from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had sampled almost everything else, and now—yes, it was time for a long snort of ether. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible, slobbering sort of spastic stupor. The only way to keep alert on ether is to do up a lot of amyls—not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain the focus at ninety miles an hour through Barstow.