Drugs and American Society Theme Analysis

Nearly every page of Hunter S. 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. 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, [and] 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. 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. 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.

Despite Duke’s massive stockpile of drugs, Thompson does not offer a wholesale endorsement of drug use. Instead, he implies that drugs are hazardous and often unsafe. 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. “There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge,” Duke says. Obviously, Duke knows that using drugs, and abusing ether specifically, is a bad idea; he simply does it anyway. 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. As Duke and Dr. Gonzo hallucinate their way through Las Vegas, they decide that LSD is too much for the bustling and colorful city. “No. this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs,” Duke says. “Reality itself is too twisted.” Their drug-induced delusions are heightened against the chaotic backdrop of Las Vegas, and while Duke and Gonzo are fully aware of this, they continue to eat acid by the sheet-full. Of course, Duke and Dr. Gonzo’s acid trips only worsen and even seem likely to kill them.

Duke argues that his foolish use of drugs is prompted by American society and culture, and that drugs offer him a means of coping. To Duke, and by extension the rest of American drug users, drugs temper the sting of reality. At the beginning of Thompson’s book, Duke explains “the socio-psychic factor,” or the idea that “every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. To relax, as it were, in the womb of the desert sun.” The complications and “weasels” that Duke mentions are references to American society, and drugs offer him a temporary escape from his painful reality.

Duke examines the national shift in American drug use from psychedelics in the 1960s to much harsher drugs in the 1970s, claiming that “the big market, these days, is in Downers. […] What sells today is whatever Fucks You Up—whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time.” Duke asserts that this shift is not unexpected or random but is linked to the country’s political climate. “‘Consciousness Expansion’ went out with LBJ…and it is worth noting, historically,” says Duke, “that downers came in with Nixon.” The election of a violent and corrupt president has led to America’s worsening drug epidemic, and Duke openly draws attention to this. According to Duke, “the Drug Culture” has “turned, with a vengeance, to skin-popping and even mainlining…and for every ex-speed freak who drifted, for relief, into smack, there are 200 kids who go straight to the needle off Seconal. They never even bother to try speed.” Thompson does not ignore or deny the mounting drug crisis in America, but in this vein, the crisis is less a self-indulgent habit and more a necessary evil to cope with the terrible state of American society.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas takes place during “this foul year of Our Lord, 1971,” which Duke describes as the “doomstruck era of Nixon.” Despite running for president on a platform of peace and change, Nixon has dragged the nation further into the violence of the Vietnam War, and things on the home front are not much better. The American counterculture and the civil rights movement combined were not enough to combat racism and sexism in American society, and because of these grim realities, Duke argues, America is “wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style.” In the end, Thompson acknowledges the seriousness of the drug problem in American society and posits that the violent and corrupt American government, along with the widespread injustices of traditional American culture, are largely to blame. Instead of fixing “the Drug Culture” directly, Thompson implies that once American society and politics are fixed, drug use will cease to be such a detrimental problem. Of course, it seems unlikely that America will ever be completely fixed in the way Duke imagines, and as such, Thompson suggests that “the Drug Culture” is here to stay.