Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

Part of my continuing series about my hero, Hunter S. Thompson. By the way, have you seen Rango yet?

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. 

If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up. 

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. 

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. 

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely -- at least, not all the time -- but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.

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. 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.

Hallucinations are bad enough. But after awhile you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip-the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.

I haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as a sitting at a desk writing, trying to imagine a story no matter how bizarre it is, or going out and getting into the weirdness of reality and doing a little time on the Proud Highway.

A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and Holy Ghost on drums.

Too strange to live, too rare to die!

We have bigger things to brood on and enormous reasons for wallowing in terminal craziness until we finally hit bottom.

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.

Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run...but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever that meant...

Hunter S. Thompson

I have a friend who IS Hunter S. Thompson. He's always wearing those iconic amber-colored sunglasses, has the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, writes profusely, is extremely neurotic, and can produce a wide variety of illegal substances from his immediate person at any time. That is definitely a compliment, because Hunter S. Thompson is awesome.

Hunter S. Thompson is most famous for the counterculture classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He created what he called Gonzo Journalism, which means that the reporter involves himself in whatever he's writing about, and therefore becomes the main character in his own first-hand account. He was open about his lifetime drug use, including substances like alcohol, cannabis, LSD, mescaline, and cocaine. He loved guns and hated any authority, but especially Richard Nixon. He disagreed with the lack of real convictions he saw in the Hippie culture.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was always in trouble as a kid, including being kicked out of a prestigious high school club because of his criminal record. His first experience with the criminal system came when he was implicated in a robbery, because he was in a car with the robber after the crime was committed. When he joined the military, he received an honorable discharge because of his inability to follow orders, and he was fired from Time Magazine for his insubordination as well. One of his first successful writing projects was a book about the Hell's Angels, who he lived with for almost a year before they decided that he was using them to make money and so he got a "stomping." He lived in New York, San Francisco, and finally settled in a secluded spot in Colorado, where he remained for the rest of his life. In New York, he made friends with famous Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. In Colorado, he ran for sheriff of his county, on the Freak Power ticket, whose platform included legalizing drugs and abolishing paved roads and tall buildings, and he almost won. His best friends included Bill Murray and Johnny Depp, who both played him in different movies. He died by suicide, probably as a result of his chronic medical conditions, and at his funeral had his ashes fired from a cannon.

To come: A selection of Hunter quotes, and a review of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, including a comparison of the movie vs. the book!

SOURCES:

Wikipedia

The Emperor Wears No Clothes

The legalization of hemp is generally viewed as a human rights issue, a constitutional issue, or a crime issue. Jack Herer presents it as an economic and environmental issue as well, in his history of hemp usage The Emperor Wears No Clothes. In it, he implores us to be like the innocent little boy from the fairy tale and expose the lies that the Drug War is built upon. In addition to supporting what I said here, he gives us lots of fun facts like:

• The word "Cannabis" has its roots in the world's first languages.
• The widespread use of hemp would solve many problems: it's more renewable than trees for paper, it lessens the need for petrochemicals as fuel, and it would provide jobs and preserve family farms.
• Before it was banned, cannabis was listed in marriage guides as an aphrodisiac.
• Ganja as a force for peace began as anti-communist propaganda. At first, weed was banned because of the supposed violence and disobedience it incited in racial minorities, but during the Red Scare it was treated as a communist plot to make us all indolent.
• Hemp seeds are one of the single most nutritious foods on the planet, and could be used like soy is now. Gruel is traditionally made from mashed-up hemp seeds.
• Chillums have their origin with Hindu priests.
• The fact that we have chemical receptors to which THC binds evidences an ancient symbiosis with this plant that humans have been using for 10,000 years.
• Temperance organizations, during the prohibition movement, recommended hashish as a substitute for the evil alcohol.
• Army tests administered over a span of two years show that soldiers who regularly smoke pot do not lose any performance or motivation.

Though this book was maybe a little dry, its nontraditional stance on the legalization of marijuana makes it an indispensable read.

The Doors of Perception

"Thus it came about that, one bright May morning, I swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescalin dissolved in half a glass of water and sat down to wait for the results." And so Adolus Huxley, the classic novelist, begins his essay about a memorable mescaline trip. Though the writing style might be considered dry, it's a really short (and interesting) read-- I have a copy in PDF format, and it's only 24 pages. I recommend picking it up, especially if you are interested in the philosophical.

The title of the pamphlet is derived from a quote by the visionary poet William Blake, because throughout his trip, Huxley feels as though his senses have been stripped clean of their biological imperative of survival, and are allowing him to perceive the world as it really is. "This is how one should always see," he repeats.

Huxley reports that despite physical lethargy because of the dissociation, he was able to think perfectly straight, and his new lenses made everything around him mind-blowingly beautiful. Though the things that he observes (including flowers, a chair, his pant-leg, and a Cezanne painting) aren't extraordinary, he describes beautifully what was on his mind during his trip, and the philosophy connected with his thoughts. What interested me more than the description of his experience was some of the interesting conclusions that he drew, and observations that he made.

One of the joys of hallucinogens, according to Huxley, is being able to celebrate the "biologically useless." So much of our everyday experience has no survival value whatsoever: the music playing from your iPod, the stories brought to you by TV and books, the various adornments of furniture and fashion, and more-- and yet our senses are still set to only perceive the world in a practical way. We only notice what's likely to kill us, or what we can put to use, or where we're walking to. Hallucinogens can help us modify our senses so that everything we see becomes artwork, and a philosophical adventure. Huxley supports the purely aesthetic element of how psychedelics change our viewpoint, and thinks it's a valuable addition to our everyday lives. I definitely agree with him on this count-- we are allowed to do so many other things purely for the sake of pleasure (like art) and hallucinogens are less dangerous than junk food. If we all thought about it that way, we'd drop acid like we go to the theatre. And wouldn't the world be so much better?

He advocates psychedelics as the drug of the future, and discourages the use of tobacco and alcohol. Because science can do so much nowadays, he says (and I paraphrase), he was waiting for the day that someone would synthesize a chemical that lasts for a more manageable amount of time, and that wouldn't produce bad trips. In terms of time, we do have a few lesser-known options like DMT or salvia, or very very high quantities or marijuana, but everything has the risk of a bad trip. It interests me that he thinks of bad trips as a function of the chemical, and not as a normal part of the experience. In my opinion, bad trips must be as natural as dreams-- every human experience, whether it's a drug or a dream or a person or a really cute puppy, can cause different emotional reactions in different users. Also, I think that part of the value of any experience, including a drug experience, lies in the tension and discomfort it creates. That's how you learn from anything, is overcoming the negativity. Now, I've never had a truly nightmarish bad trip, but hanging out in a park definitely becomes less relaxing when the dead leaves leftover after the snow melts transform into tiny shrunken skulls. Even so, I continue to do drugs because, like work and love, the setbacks are made up for my the advantages. And how creepy would it be if hallucinogens only made you happy? They would be extremely addicting. Psychedelics would cease to have a "Vision Quest" element, and merely be trippy sedatives.

Finally, he leaves us with a question: once psychedelics have led us to these sorts of marvelous insights, what do we do? How do we integrate these experiences into our everyday lives? Very good question, Aldous. Hang tight for when I address it in a later post!