"If Nixon's resignation proves the system works, you have to wonder how well it might have worked if we'd had a really sophisticated criminal in the White House instead of a used-car salesman."
 
 

 
PLAYBOY: What do you like best?
THOMPSON: Probably mescaline and mushrooms: That's a genuine high. It's not just an up -- you know, like speed, which is really just a motor high. When you get into psychedelics like mescaline and mushrooms, it's a very clear kind of high, an interior high. But really, when you're dealing with psychedelics, there's only one king drug, when you get down to it, and that's acid. About twice a year you should blow your fucking tubes out with a tremendous hit of really good acid. Take 72 hours and just go completely amuck, break it all down.

PLAYBOY: When did you take your first acid trip?
THOMPSON: It was while I was working on the Hell's Angels book. Ken Kesey wanted to meet some of the Angels, so I introduced him and he invited them all down to his place in La Honda. It was a horrible, momentous meeting and I thought I'd better be there to see what happened when all this incredible chemistry came together. And, sure as shit, the Angels rolled in -- about 40 or 50 bikes -- and Kesey and the other people were offering them acid. And I thought, "Great creeping Jesus, what's going to happen now?"

PLAYBOY: Had the Angels ever been into acid before that?
THOMPSON: No. That was the most frightening thing about it. Here were all these vicious bikers full of wine and bennies, and Kesey's people immediately started giving them LSD. They didn't know what kind of violent crowd they were dealing with. I was sure it was going to be a terrible blood, rape and pillage scene, that the Angels would tear the place apart. And I stood there, thinking, "Jesus, I'm responsible for this, I'm the one who did it." I watched those lunatics gobbling the acid and I thought, "Shit, if it's gonna get this heavy I want to be as fucked up as possible." So I went to one of Kesey's friends and I said, "Let me have some of that shit; we're heading into a very serious night. Perhaps even ugly." So I took what he said was about 800 micrograms, which almost blew my head off at the time...but in a very fine way. It was nice. Surprised me, really. I'd heard all these stories when I lived in Big Sur a couple of years before from this psychiatrist who'd taken the stuff and wound up running naked through the streets of Palo Alto, screaming that he wanted to be punished for his crimes. He didn't know what his crimes were and nobody else did, either, so they took him away and he spent a long time in a loony bin somewhere, and I thought, "That's not what I need." Because if a guy who seems levelheaded like that is going to flip out and tear off his clothes and beg the citizens to punish him, what the hell might I do?