The
Other Side of the Wave:
How a euphoric journey turned savage
by
Kandice
Nicole Cox
What is a "savage journey to
the heart of the American Dream?" More important still, why is the journey
savage to a destination that was before sought on a euphoric high? To answer these questions raised by Hunter S.
Thompson in the journalistic novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas one
has to look at and understand the history of the Hippy movement of the West
Coast of the United States during the 1960s, the people involved and the drugs
that were in use, principally LSD, and compare it to the novel’s setting of the
post-hippy early seventies of the West Coast drug scene and the two main characters
and their use of these same drugs. The
changes that occurred from one era to another are substantial and turned a
hopeful search for the Great American Dream into a savage road that led to the
empty desert of a destroyed wasteland.
LSD, or technically Lysergic Acid
Diethylamide, was invented in 1938 by a Swedish chemist working for Sandoz
Chemical Works named Dr. Albert Hoffman. Many scientists around the world had been
trying to isolate the active ingredients in Ergot, a compound that was used to
induce childbirth by producing uterine contractions. This compound, when isolated, was named
lysergic acid. Hoffman began
experimenting with this core compound in an attempt to create a respiratory and
circulatory stimulant. In his experimentations he created LSD in 1938 but the
drug went untouched for the next five years.
In 1943, Hoffman began experimenting
again with LSD and an entry in his journal shows the first ever written LSD
experience. "Last Friday on the
16th of April I had to leave my work in the laboratory and go home because I
felt strangely restless and dizzy. I got
home, lay down and sank into a not unpleasant delirium which was characterized
by an extreme degree of fantasy (a kind of trance). I kept my eyes closed because I found the
daylight very unpleasant. Fantastic
visions of extraordinary vividness accompanied by a kaleidoscopic-like play of intense
coloration continuously swirled around my head. The condition lasted for about two hours"
(Leary, 279).
Shortly after this experience,
Hoffman began distributing the drug to psychiatrists around the world to experiment
on with their patients; animal studies were also being conducted at this time. By the early fifties, LSD was being used to
treat depression in America. However,
after much study and use the drug was said to be too unstable and prescriptions
of LSD for depression came to an end.
The LSD of the sixties, and which is
so often associated with the hippy movement, began when a Harvard professor and
researcher, Timothy Leary, began psychological experiments with Psilocybin mushrooms
and LSD. Leary believed that these two
hallucinogenic drugs were consciousness-expanding drugs and he had a quite
positive view of their use. Because of
his personal views on LSD, Harvard believed that he was no longer objective in
his research and dismissed him as a professor. Up to this point, Leary had used students and
jail inmates as subjects for his studies and the drug was becoming known among
those seeking drug use for pleasure.
Leary's dismissal from Harvard did
not stop him from proclaiming his belief that LSD and other hallucinogens were
a positive element. Leary began
preaching across the country the benefits of LSD. He told as many people as possible his beliefs
that LSD could provides a means to journey into your soul, and that with proper
use in a controlled environment, LSD could open clearer channels of
communication between people. To Leary,
LSD was a wonder drug. What Leary
professed to the people was that LSD could open the mind to a fuller potential.
He pointed to the facts that the human
only uses a small fraction of its brain and he argued that LSD opened up the
other parts of the brain for use, that LSD was a mind-expanding drug that could
lead to greater human understanding and developments and possibly bring about
societal change.
It was this rhetoric that so many
young people of the sixties latched onto. As a general rule, the mainstream masses of
the sixties and early seventies believed that drug use and LSD in particular
was a negative thing. But the youth that
were rapidly experiencing change from what their parents of the fifties knew
began to think: about social change and LSD, with its proclaimed ability to
open doors to new parts of the mind, was very complimentary to these desires
for newer better social conduct and standards that the would-be hippies were
wanting to create.
Leading this wave of the future was
Ken Kesey. Kesey had been a graduate student in 1959 that participated in a
government drug research that included LSD. In a few weeks, Kesey ingested constant and
large doses of LSD as well as other hallucinogens and out of this experience he
produced his greatest novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This book and his experience with these drugs
were his first attempt to break the conformity of American society and change
the society in drastic measures. An open
critic of the American society, Kesey created the Merry Pranksters, a group of
friends and associates who experimented heavily with LSD and many other drugs
and who began the hippy movement of America as they loaded themselves on a bus
and set out across America to find the American Dream. This group of Pranksters included many
important figures of the sixties and seventies, but important to note is that
Hunter S. Thompson was known among the Pranksters, and in fact, introduced
Kesey to the Hell's Angels in 1965. While
Thompson may not have ridden the bus with the Merry Pranksters, he was
certainly an apt witness as they crossed the country in search of what they
wouldn't find.
The Pranksters journey ended when
they finally visited the founding father of the LSD movement Timothy Leary. As the bus rolled up the drive to the Castalia
foundation, the institute founded by Leary to support and promote LSD and other
hallucinogens, they did not receive the greeting they had expected. Instead of communal companionship they hoped
would be offered, Leary was polite and talked with them on the bus for a few
minutes, but he showed no desire to extend the invitation or greetings any
further than that. The Merry Pranksters
turned and headed home with a let down in the pursuit of the American Dream.
In Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas, subtitled, "A savage journey to the heart of the American
Dream," Thompson picks up where the hippies left off. His two main characters, the reporter Raoul
Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo, are left over members of the great sixties LSD
trip of Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and their ideas that there was a place
and a reason to search for the American Dream. In this journalistic novel, Duke and Gonzo are
striving to find that American Dream that the Pranksters set out to find. In a very similar manner, they literally take
to the road on a drive across states to find the dream. But unlike the Pranksters, there is no bus
full of eager people to travel with them and share the experience. Gone are the idealistic young people around
them with high hopes and the excitement that follows large groups of like minded
people with a mission. In stark contrast
are the two men, older than the Pranksters, with potbellies and receding
hairlines. Their destination is not
"across America" but to Las Vegas, which in itself is widely
recognized as the city of lost fortunes and dreams. And their drug use is not to find
enlightenment or even for "good times." It is instead harsh and ugly. The drugs they take, including LSD, seem to
make them veer back and forth between violence and paranoia. These men are not like the Merry Pranksters
but in fact stand on an opposite shore than those of the idealistic hippies.
In Fear and Loathing, Duke
sets up this contrast immediately when in chapter two he states the reason for
his trip to Las Vegas with the accompaniment of the drugs was a journalistic
business trip for a news story covering the Mint 400 Race but also, "There
was a socio-psychic factor. 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 (Thompson, 12)." This is clearly not the idealistic road trip
of the Pranksters and the drugs are not defined as mind expanding but as
heinous. Instead, Duke seems to be on
the other side of the spectrum than the ideas of the Pranksters. While they were trying to find a new way for
society and a sort of Utopia, Duke is saying that his trip with drugs was a
necessary reprieve from societal demands. He is trying to escape society, but not to
change it. He merely is trying to survive
society.
One of the most important points in
the novel is Duke's reminiscing about the late sixties, the hippy movement and
San Francisco. He chronicles the change
that was in the era and the momentum that was behind the hippy movement, but he
also questions the lasting ability of the mindset of this movement. He says, "San Francisco in the middle
sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run.. .. (Thompson,
66)." He then relates the hippy
movement with a wave of change that was great and important but in the end not
successful as he stands on the other side of the end of an era. There is a paragraph in chapter eight that is
the heart of the dilemma and placement of Duke and drugs in the novel. He says of the sixties, "There was a
fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we
were winning. ... and that, I think was
the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean in military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail.
There was no point in fighting - on
our side or theirs. We had all the
momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave (Thompson,
68)." But the crucial change that
occurred that placed Duke on the other side of that wave is proved when he
follows this with, "So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a
steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can
almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke
and rolled back (Thompson, 68)."
This paragraph clearly defines two
sides of a movement. In Fear and
Loathing, Duke is on the receding line of that wave. The side he is on is that one that when the
positive movement he experienced broke and "rolled back" all it left
in its path for those involved was blank desolation of a lost dream. This is why the drug use, relationships, and
''journey to the heart of the American Dream' is now savage. What once was a euphoric trip full of hope and
promise of a utopian version of the American Dream has become a vicious journey
full of monsters and dust and fear and loathing as two men try to continue life
on the other side of the hippy movement.
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