this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs,” Duke says. Gonzo hallucinate their way through Las Vegas, they decide that LSD is too much for the bustling and colorful city. In turn, his drug use only leads to the need for more drugs-“not all at once, but steadily, just enough to maintain focus.” Thompson recognizes that drugs are indeed a slippery slope.
Obviously, Duke knows that using drugs, and abusing ether specifically, is a bad idea he simply does it anyway. “There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge,” Duke says. As Duke packs his car for Las Vegas after spending nearly his entire salary advance on acid and ether, he claims that they are “extremely dangerous drugs.” Duke makes plain from the beginning that his drug use is ill-conceived however, Duke maintains that the only drug that really worries him is ether. Instead, he implies that drugs are hazardous and often unsafe. Through Duke’s drug-induced escapades, Thompson implies that Duke’s altered reality, no matter how awful, is preferable to the real-world experience of mainstream American society in the 1970s.ĭespite Duke’s massive stockpile of drugs, Thompson does not offer a wholesale endorsement of drug use.
Duke doesn’t see “the Drug Culture” as a problem to be fixed per se rather, he maintains that drug use is a natural response to American society and culture. Gonzo, and a huge bag of drugs, including “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.” While in Vegas, Duke is further tasked, ironically, with covering the National District Attorneys’ Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, where he finds countless Midwestern police lamenting “the Drug Culture” and falsely criminalizing drug users as violent, sex-crazed maniacs. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas mentions illegal drug use in some way, and when narrator and California journalist Raoul Duke is tasked with covering a local sporting event in Las Vegas, he takes with him his attorney, Dr.
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