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Hunter S Thompson and opiates

J

jeffsleep

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We all recognize him(or most anyway) for his unreal literary ability, eccentric behaviour, and mostly his love of intoxication, that being said, while he seems to mention everything from pot to ether to lsd, mescaline, cocaine, along with variety of pharmaceuticals, i can seem to find absolutely nothing on the doctors feelings about things like morphine, heroin,dilaudid,etc. anyone have a quote, an interview, anything where he may have mentioned a taste for opioids?
 
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When it comes to pharmaceuticals he was more of a speed freak. I’ve read quite a bit of his work and he never goes in-depth about opiates. When his attorney is freaking out in the hotel room, on acid, he tells him to shoot some smack or do whatever he needs to calm down. He also hangs out of the car and yells at the straight couple that he wants to sell them pure smack. That is one of the few instances I remember, I wish his books were fresher in my mind.
 
i've got to imagine he just didn't like them. i've read thousands of pages of his writing and really can't remember a single mention of opiates except the Fear and Loathing quotes above.
 
From the movie (its been too long since ive read the book to remember) he smokes something out of a lightbulb on the couch in the hotel room, then lays back. I always assumed this was heroin, but i dont think it was mentioned.
 
daysonatrain said:
From the movie (its been too long since ive read the book to remember) he smokes something out of a lightbulb on the couch in the hotel room, then lays back. I always assumed this was heroin, but i dont think it was mentioned.
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I don't know anyone who smokes heroin out of a lighbulb.. I always thought he was smoking (meth)amphetamine, or possibly DMT.
 
^Was smoking speed common back in the 60's? Just wondering because I seem to recall reading somewhere that smoking meth didn't really catch on 'til the 80's and prior to that it was mainly injected, insufflated, or ingested.
 
I think I read somewhere that it was DMT. I havnt seen the movie in a while. But I know he loved the uppers he would binge on speed for days to meet deadlines.
 
well, did some more reading, and ya he mentions basically nothing about opiates.. in fear and loathing his lawyer mentions after the whole scene with the underage girl cristina ricci plays, that they "should get some fuckin opium." other than that i agree with the idea that he was too manic a personality to sit around and nod out, he'd get bored of it quick, and probably did.
 
did further reading, through out the original written version of fear and loathing in las vegas he mentions smoking opium more than once specifically before he and his lawyer are leaving to the vegas anti-drug convention. in the film johnny depp is smoking a pipe, they don't say anything that would allude to it's being filled with opium but the books goes into more specific detail. they also talk more about having and selling heroin. no true lover of euphoria could have made it through the 60's and 70's without smoking some opium at the absolute least.. so cheap and available...
 
I'm sure he did them from time to time and he probably enjoyed them for what they do, but as has been stated in this thread it just doesn't seem in his personality that he would get 'into' them beyond utilizing for times when they were appropriate.
 
In The kitchen readings he does opium when he's in Vietnam I think and it don't go to well.

Will write what's in the book.

Hunter Thompson was invited upstairs with the fellas. Later Loren Jenkins was told Hunter had two or three pipes, a large dose.
The gang returned downstairs, and Loren joined them for dinner. It was a fairly large group. Well into the meal, Hunter excused himself and headed to the men's room. The doors to the bathrooms were separated from the dining room by only a large bamboo screen, which Hunter disappeared behind. Minutes later blood-curdling scream were heard coming from that direction. Every head in the dining room snapped around. "LOREN, LOREN, HELP!".
As Loren sprang to his feet, Hunter came crashing through the screen, sprawling onto the dining room floor. He was hyperventilating, panicked; they almost called a doctor. Hunter's drug Achilles' heel had been discovered. The next day he admitted to Jenkins that he actually done opium once before, with the same effect.

Page 46 The kitchen readings.

Awesome book.
 
vortex30 said:
I'm sure he did them from time to time and he probably enjoyed them for what they do, but as has been stated in this thread it just doesn't seem in his personality that he would get 'into' them beyond utilizing for times when they were appropriate.
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ya i agree. he was almost constantly moving. I can't really imagine him taking any sort of downer on a regular basis, not exclusively anyway.perhaps comming down after days of amphetamines or something...I was just interested as to the answers i'de get. i'm a fan of thompson but i'de be lying if i said i've extensively read his work.
 
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I'm almost positive he was smoking opium. The whole relaxation aspect of the scene along with him drifting into past memories sounds a lot like opium tales I've read and heard. The book was back before the days of people smoking black tar or crystal. Other than opium, DMT is a good guess. If they had had crystalline mescaline that would've been a good guess too, but they had pellets.
 
peacelovedope said:
^Was smoking speed common back in the 60's? Just wondering because I seem to recall reading somewhere that smoking meth didn't really catch on 'til the 80's and prior to that it was mainly injected, insufflated, or ingested.
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You've got that right. No one smoked crank rocks (ice/shard) until people had got accustomed to smoking crack rocks. It seems people may have preferred shooting DMT as well according to H.S.T. For example, I'll quote from Hell's Angels after Thompson talks about the weak benzedrine tabs at Bass Lake, p.213, "Most (Angels) try to stick with limited combinations - such as beer, pot and Seconal; or gin, beer and bennies; or wine and LSD. But a few will go the whole route and on top of everything else shoot some methydrine* or DMT and turn into total zombies for hours at a time."
*I assume he's referring to Methedrine ampules.
 
he used to spend time with william burroughs so i'm sure they partook in whatever unreal dope burroughs most likely had access to
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I doubt Burrough's dope was any more unreal than anyone elses. At least unless he started getting a personal hookup from someone important or somewhere production takes place at some stage in his life. In Junkie he's just a bottom tier street addict or a low level dealer for the entire book, and iirc. from a documentary, in later decades when he'd gathered a bit of a following he was surrounded or approached by admirers who I suppose could supply him, but none of them were drug barons or anything, mostly just kids who liked his books. And again, iirc, he was on methadone up until he died, so he obviously wasn't drowning in china white or anything.

Just because a guy writes about a drug doesn't mean he has any better access to it than anyone else.
 
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