"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S Thompson

 The classic story of a drug-fuelled trip to Las Vegas. It starts: "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" 

HST was the proponent of 'Gonzo' journalism, described in wikipedia as "an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author is a protagonist," The writing is breathtakingly brilliant. This book reads like a combination of William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. It is one heck of a rush. HST and his Attorney, assisted by cannabis, mescaline, LSD, cocaine , "a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers" and tequila, rum, beer, ether and amyls, funded by a generous expense account and assorted credit cards, drive fast cars, trash hotel rooms and indulge in riotous behaviour (including infiltrating a national law enforcement drugs conference) in a Las Vegas that seems staid and outdated. 

It certainly didn't encourage me to take drugs. The acid trips were horrendous, the encounter with adrenochrome in which the narrator is, bit by bit, paralyzed, uncertain whether his breathing will stop but unable to do anything, not even to move his eyes, is terrifying, and the repeated episodes of the Big Spit (vomiting) were enough to put me off drugs for life. The book also depicts the squalor and desperation of the drug-addict's life. Not to mention the fact that he could have gone to prison for ten or more years for what was in his luggage, not to mention the repeated fraudulent use of credit cards.

But I am old and over-cautious. Isn't it odd that the older you get the more risk-averse you get. The young have so much to lose and I comparatively little but I am a bigger worrier than I was when I was young.

• "Luck is always important, especially in Las Vegas ... and ours was getting worse." (Ch 6)
• "Here there were more than a thousand top-level cops telling each other 'we must come to terms with the drug culture', but they had no idea where to start. They couldn't even find the goddam thing." (Ch 7)

Wow. March 2021; 202 pages

This review was written by 
the author of Motherdarling