After journalist Raoul Duke is hired by Sports Illustrated to cover the Mint 400, “the richest off-the-road race for motorcycles and dune-buggies in the history of organized sport,” he gathers his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, a huge Chevy convertible called the Great Red Shark, and a massive bag of drugs, and heads out to Las Vegas. Duke and Gonzo plan to “relax, as it were, in the womb of the desert sun,” and search for the American Dream along the way. Duke and Gonzo begin to sample their stash 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, [and] laughers,” long before they arrive in Vegas, and by the time they reach Barstow, California, they are already hallucinating. They arrive at their hotel in the grips of a full-blown acid trip, where Duke is barely able to check in amidst the reptilian people and blood-soaked carpet. Once Duke’s hallucinations calm, Gonzo and Duke head to the Mint Gun Club, the site of the Mint 400, to do some early research and look around.
The Gun Club has not cancelled target practice on account of the race and countless shots ring out as the racers gather to register. The race doesn’t begin until the morning but plenty of spectators are already milling about the grounds. Duke approaches the registration table and is met by a humorless man with a gun. Duke looks around and realizes that several spectators are carrying guns, and he begins to grow nervous. “We’re the only people here without guns,” Duke says to Gonzo as they make a hasty retreat. They spend the night out in the casinos and return to the club early the next morning. After Duke and Gonzo kill time in the bar, the racers begin to take off; however, after two hundred bikes race into the desert, visibility quickly becomes poor. Duke takes a press vehicle around the track and sees very little, except for a large group of menacing nationalists with a machine-gun, so he decides to return to the bar and “drink heavily.”
Duke and Gonzo decide to go the Desert Inn to see the Debbie Reynolds/Harry James show but are quickly kicked out because of their rowdy behavior. They take some mescaline and inhale some ether, and then head to Circus-Circus. When they get to the casino, it’s a complete zoo. Trapeze acts fly high above their heads and the gaming floor is littered with colorful attractions as well. The casino’s bar is on a spinning carousel, and Duke and Gonzo go around and around as they sip their beers. The lights and constant movement begin to get to Gonzo, and he starts to feel “the Fear,” the dreaded state of a trip gone bad. “Nonsense,” says Duke. He believes they have found “the main nerve” of the American Dream, and he isn’t ready to give up.
That night, Duke finds Gonzo soaking in the bathtub and listening to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” after having eaten an entire sheet of blotter acid. Gonzo is clearly on the edge of a raging acid trip, and he wants Duke to throw the radio into the tub at the height of the song so he can get “Higher!” Duke finally manages to talk some sense into Gonzo, and Gonzo soon slips into a drug-induced “catatonic despair.” Duke’s own relationship with psychedelic drugs began back in the 1960s in San Francisco, “a very special time and place to be part of.” During the late ‘60s, an entire generation of young people “came to a head in a long fine flash,” and while it might not have meant anything, for a while there was a “sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil.” Duke remembers the “wave” of the ‘60s counterculture fondly, but inevitably “the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
The next day, Duke and Gonzo are reminded of the massive room service bill they have accumulated. They have no way to pay it, and Gonzo quickly flies back to Los Angeles leaving Duke with the bill. Duke decides it is best to flee and “slip the noose,” so he hops in the Great Red Shark and heads back to L.A. Duke makes it to a desert town named Baker when he grows paranoid and begins to break down. He has been taking plenty of drugs even in Gonzo’s absence, and it is beginning to look like he will never make it home. He calls Gonzo, who tells him to go back to Vegas—Duke has been given an assignment to cover the National Conference of District Attorneys’ seminar on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and there is a room reserved for him at the Flamingo and a white Cadillac at the airport. Gonzo is on his way back as well, so Duke decides to head back to Vegas. “Register at the Flamingo and have the White Caddy sent over at once. Do it right,” Duke thinks, “remember Horatio Alger.”
By the time Duke gets to the Flamingo after picking up the Caddy, he finds Gonzo already checked in with Lucy, a strange girl of “indeterminate age.” Lucy is a runaway from Montana, and Gonzo has foolishly given her acid on the plane. Duke convinces Gonzo to send Lucy to a different hotel, and then they return to their dwindling bag of drugs. Gonzo has brought a bottle of adrenochrome from L.A., and Duke spends the rest of the night in drugged stupor. The next day, Duke and Gonzo attend the District Attorneys’ drug conference, where they end up in a room with 1,500 law enforcement officials. The “drug experts” are painfully ill-informed about drug use and users, and they falsely criminalize “the Drug Culture” as crazed sex maniacs. Duke and Gonzo have a “headful of mescaline,” but it makes little difference. These “poor bastards didn’t know mescaline from macaroni,” Duke says right before they abruptly walk out.
Duke and Gonzo spend the rest of the day in a haze of drugs and end up in a diner in North Vegas. There, Duke and Gonzo tell the cook, Lou, about their plan to find the American Dream. “Is that the old Psychiatrist’s Club?” Lou asks, referring to a Vegas disco. The club, according to Lou, is violent and full of drugs, and currently closed for remodeling. Later, Duke and Gonzo go to the club to find it has burned to the ground. The next morning, Gonzo flies back to L.A. and Duke is left with another ridiculous hotel bill. The white Caddy is trashed, and Duke is nearly out of money. Duke will slip this bill as well, but first he returns to Circus-Circus where he meets his friend, Bruce. Sitting at the revolving bar, Duke explains to Bruce that he has found the American Dream at Circus-Circus. As a child, the casino owner had always wanted to join the circus. “Now the bastard has his own circus, and a license to steal, too,” Bruce says. “It is pure Horatio Alger,” Duke says and then leaves Vegas feeling “totally confident.”
