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Death to the Weird 1
12:27
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More than a little delighted that my old buddy Lee Torrey, who I hadn't spoken to for at least a decade, found me through this little blog. Needless to say he's had his adventures in the meantime. Torrey was, of course, for those in the know, the legendary creator of the library classification system based on Roget's Thesaurus, which he invented and pioneered whilst working on the now equally legendary book 'An Index of Possibilities'. More of that anon. Turns out he has his own blog here but he was kind enough to allow me to repro on this site his excellent memories of the late, great Hunter S., who we all miss greatly in these benighted times. Lee writes like a dream, methinks, when he puts his mind to it. This piece reads fresh and original
When people ask me what Hunter Thompson was like I tell them he was just like the character in his books, and they smile and nod and leave me alone. I’m allergic to small talk, and despite my years at the National Enquirer, I really hate sharing gossip about celebrities. Besides, they say it’s not right to speak ill of the dead.
But that bastard Thompson nearly got me fired because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about our nocturnal activities. And he broke his solemn promise not to drag my good name into any of his wretched works of fiction. That’s right, fiction that he sold as journalism. So, yeah, let’s kick some dirt at the maniac’s ghost.
Thompson in Aspen in 1981
Let’s start in Palm Beach in 1983. Peter and Roxanne Pulitzer were having a messy public divorce and the national press corps was having fun in Florida covering the trial. Thompson was reporting the event for Rolling Stone, Reggie Potterton for Playboy, and I was covering it for the Enquirer. We didn’t mix well with the straight press, and so it was natural for the three of us to pool our resources.
A few weeks into this circus, in the middle of one night, Thompson calls me up and says he has an emergency. He’s always having emergencies and I told him to call 911. But he’s says he’s having a problem with the Pulitzer story and needs my help.
That woke me up. The secretive, reclusive, sociopathic egomaniac wants my help? This was totally uncharacteristic. Hunter was a solo operator. He was a lone wolf. He would never ask for help.
Thompson loved playing with fire.
So I go over to his low rent bungalow in West Palm, and find both the front and back doors are wide open, and the lights are off. So I turn on the lights and no one is home. The living room was littered with bottles and overloaded ashtrays and dead junk food. Remember the cheap hotel rooms where Nicholas Cage drank himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas? Just like that.
Eventually, Hunter ambles inside wearing only a bathrobe and dark aviator glasses, and of course his cigarette holder is clutched between his teeth. He was gripping a long black flashlight in one hand and a Colt 45 Combat Commander in the other. And there was a cut on his balding head that was leaking a little blood. He was mumbling more loudly than usual, and there was a hillbilly lope to his gait which gets really pronounced when he’s drunk.
This is all completely normal behavior for Thompson, and I did’t see any emergency that justifies getting me out of bed.
Certainly, there was no sense asking him why he was running around in the dark with a flashlight and handgun. I would never get a straight answer. He often reminded me of an autistic child who was off in his own world. A world, I suspect, that was populated by some pretty fearsome demons. Not that Hunter would ever show fear or turmoil or doubt, but he had a head full of trouble.
One nice thing about Hunter is that he could pull the big master switch in his brain and turn off the psychopath and turn on a personality that could communicate with the real world. His uncanny ability to shape shift his personality was a talent that let him make a living. And it kept him out of the slammer on many occasions. In fact, on rare days, he could be actually charming.
So he switches on an agreeable personality and pours us drinks and stuffs some typewritten sheets of paper in my hands. He asks me to read his first draft of the Pulitzer story.
And it’s garbage. Pulitzer is hardly mentioned. It is the unprintable ramblings of an intoxicated lunatic.
I didn’t know what to say or do because Thompson still had the gun in his hand. And he was waving it around and making incoherent noises.
It is fitting that Thompson died from a gun shot wound to the head. He was a gun nut. The most fun he had in Florida was going to the Everglades on the weekends and shooting up the tropical flora and fauna with exotic automatic weapons. Guns were exciting and wonderful toys to Hunter and he seemed oblivious to the danger they posed to himself and others, which is probably why he shot so many people. Yeah, accidentally.
So, while I sat on his bed, waiting to be shot, I re-read the Pulitzer piece, and it seemed better after I reordered some of the pages. And after a third reading, key lines were jumping out at me and I suddenly got it. The master craftsman had shifted the focus of the story away from the Pulitzer divorce trial and he had launched a howling indictment of Palm Beach society.
Brilliant. The Pulitzer story was small potatoes. Who cared that Roxanne Pulitzer had sex with a trumpet and drank too many daiquiris. Certainly not the readers of Rolling Stone. But the Palm Beach society angle was good. F. Scott Fitzgerald good. He had stumbled upon a diamond as big as the Ritz. This was class warfare. He had discovered why they called the denizens of Palm Beach filthy rich.
And we started talking about this angle and he got excited and he put down the gun.
Soon it was sunrise. Hunter was not fond of early morning light and I managed to escape, exhausted and drunk, but not shot.
And so it went when Thompson got into your life. It was an unending series of close scrapes with disaster, but it was also like hanging out with an alien life form that did not understand, or care about, the customs and laws of pathetic Earthlings. While Hunter could mix with bikers, madmen and drunks, he also had a subtle aloofness. He enjoyed being different. He enjoyed being smarter than the rest of us.
He also liked being unpredictably aggressive. When David Letterman made the mistake of inviting Thompson on Late Night to promote the film Where the Buffalo Roam with Bill Murray, Thompson attempted to take over the show. I mean he physically tried to get Letterman out of his desk and take over the show. And there was a nasty rumor that he had brought an explosive device on the set. The good doctor of gonzo journalism was escorted off the set and his antics were edited from the segment.
After the broadcast I asked him what had happened and he denied bringing a bomb to the show, and he said he was just trying to give Letterman the same rough treatment that the TV comedian gave all his guests. Or whatever.
In a picture I have, at the film premier of Fear & Loathing, you can see Thompson holding a ripped bag of popcorn which he had been throwing at Johnny Depp. Yeah, Hunter could act like a two year old.
He had to be the center of attention. If there was another celebrity in the room on whom all the cameras were focused, he would do something like set the room on fire. Unless, of course, he wanted to be left alone. He’d rip your head off if you stumbled uninvited into his space. And forget about waking him up if he was late for an appointment.
Despite his violent mood swings and prickly personality, people everywhere adored him. On countless occasions on the street I saw all kinds of people approach him and ask for autographs. I was always amazed at the warmth the public had for a man with such an unwelcome reputation.
In fact, Thompson had groupies who would follow him from story to story. This puzzled him. He never could figure out how they knew what he was working on because not only was he obsessively secretive, but because he seldom knew himself what he was working on or where he might be tomorrow. Most of these groupies were young women who would do anything for some face time with the doctor.
Of course these deluded hormone-soaked creatures got the shock of their lives when they got up close and personal with Hunter, who was as liable to lash out and humiliate them as he was to bend them over. Which is not to say that he was a misogynist; he was more of a misanthrope. He really didn’t care for anyone getting too close or too personal.
I was happy to learn that he got married a few years ago, hoping that he had mellowed, and praying that Anita would live through the experience with her sanity intact. And I was not shocked to learn that he blew his brains out last week and left instructions to have his cremated remains shot out of the end of a canon. A perfect ending to a crazy life.
News reports say Anita was talking to him on the phone when he pulled the trigger. She later told reporters that he wanted to get out “while he was still on top of his game.”
He was pushing seventy and you can say he got out before his brains turned to mush. You can argue that the whole fear and loathing thing was getting old in the 21st Century, but in some ways, here in the brave new era of political correctness, we probably need Hunter Thompson more now than we did in the counterculture years.
We will always need blasphemous iconoclasts who are willing to tell anyone who’ll listen that your President is a liar and the government is not working in your best interest. The legend of Hunter Thompson is so shrouded in the trappings of his eccentric lifestyle that we tend to overlook his contributions. And there were many.
"America is just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."
- Hunter S. Thompson
Long before anyone had heard of Woodward and Bernstein, Thompson was telling us that Nixon was a crook. Long before most Americans knew where Iran was on the map, Thompson was warning us that Jimmy Carter was weak. He told us Reagan was senile before Alzheimer’s was a household word. And he’d been telling us Bush was not an honest man long before we invaded Iraq.
But Thompson was more than a political prophet. He tore down the façade of objective journalism by showing that a reporter is always part of the story, and that an observer always disturbs what he is observing. Thompson was always telling us that there is no such thing as “fair and balanced.” He knew that his drug-addled perspective on our society was just as skewed as – and just as valid as – the family value howlings of Bill O’Reilly.
Even loaded to the gills with alcohol, it takes actual courage to put your name on a story in a national publication and call the President of the United States a liar. Years before anyone else had a clue.
So an era has passed. A great American is gone. A warrior has fallen.
Which one of you will pick up his sword?
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2. |
Death to the Weird 2
11:05
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Sections
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Economic Policy
The surprising disappearance of flakka, the synthetic drug that pushed South Florida to the brink
By Todd C. Frankel
April 4, 2016
POMPANO BEACH, FLA. – Lt. Ozzy Tianga jumped in his unmarked cruiser and headed out to his favorite place to find flakka addicts. He hadn’t visited in a while. But as he drove down Dixie Highway one recent weekday, Tianga turned to fishing to explain the spot’s reliability:
This was his “honey hole.”
Last summer, Tianga made frequent trips to this flakka hot spot as media from around the world descended on South Florida to document the synthetic stimulant’s devastating effects. Flakka addicts were everywhere. Running into traffic. Zoned-out on curbs. Sometimes naked. Sometimes in the grips of a drug-fueled psychosis.
Similar scenes unfolded across Broward County, the drug’s ground zero in the United States. The public was alarmed. Tianga of the county sheriff’s office was, too. He had never seen a drug hit so hard, so fast.
But now, as Tianga pulled up, his honey hole was quiet.
“This is incredible. I can’t find even one person,” the lieutenant said, scanning the gas station lot that once served as a den for flakka deals. He kept searching, driving past an alley where users gathered. He pointed to the electrical boxes that addicts liked to hide behind. He cruised for several blocks.
“I can’t believe this,” Tianga said.
You can't find flakka easily in South Florida these days. (Broward County Sheriff's Office via AP)
In just a few months, and with little attention, flakka has disappeared from South Florida.
Experts say drug epidemics almost never burn out like this. Look at the current distress in vast swaths of the country over heroin and its synthetic cousin fentanyl. What happened in Florida, experts say, was the result of unprecedented coordination among local groups to fight flakka’s demand and — most importantly — the unusual willingness of the Chinese government to halt flakka’s production. Florida officials early on blamed overseas labs for supplying the drug flooding American shores.
The result was a rare reprieve in the fight against synthetic drugs.
But even today, few people realize the depth of the flakka crisis in Broward County, a beach-lined locale with 1.8 million residents and familiarity with drug crazes of the past.
Flakka was different. Emergency services in Broward were strained by the strange and often violent reactions of flakka users. Police regularly needed four and five officers to subdue a single agitated person. Local emergency rooms were overwhelmed by the number of flakka-induced delirium cases. Traditional drug treatment programs had to be retooled. This escalated for months as addicts sought out flakka’s potent high at just $5 a hit.
“At the height of the flakka craze, you were almost praying for crack cocaine to come back,” recalled Don Maines, a drug treatment counselor with the sheriff’s office.
Jim Hall, an epidemiologist at Nova Southeastern University, had never heard of flakka until police in the county seat of Fort Lauderdale reported seeing a few cases in late 2014. And even as its popularity soared, the drug remained centered on South Florida. It popped up sporadically across the country. But no one had any experience with flakka.
“First thing we had to do was figure out how to spell it,” Hall said.
Flakka’s chemical name is alpha-PVP. And it was stronger than similar headline-grabbing synthetic drugs such as molly, K2 or bath salts. Flakka was almost too good at its job. The chemical attached itself to brain pathways with such ferocity that slight changes in purity or dose resulted in bizarre, sometimes deadly reactions.
A series of videos made flakka famous. In Fort Lauderdale, a security camera captured a man high on flakka trying to kick in the doors of police headquarters, thinking he was being chased by wild dogs. Another impaled his leg on a steel fence as he tried to flee his hallucinations outside the police station. There was the naked man who ran through traffic, known as the Broward Boulevard streaker. Plus, the naked man who got stuck atop an open drawbridge.
Getting naked was a distinguishing feature of flakka. The drug caused a user’s body temperature to soar – 104 and 105 degrees was not uncommon. Some users complained it felt like their body was on fire. The resulting hyperthermia contributed to the 63 flakka-related deaths that Broward County reported by the end of 2015.
Many flakka users suffered hallucinations and agitation. Last summer, county hospitals were admitting, on average, 12 new cases of flakka-related excited delirium every day. Other drugs rarely cause psychosis, experts said. But with flakka, it approached routine.
“We were in an emergency scenario,” said Hall, the epidemiologist.
Police had to change tactics. Two deputies usually responded to a “signal 57” -- a drug call. But flakka users could exhibit adrenaline-fueled, superhuman strength. In Broward County, the sheriff’s office started sending at least four deputies to every flakka call. They treated it like a bank robbery, Tianga said. All hands on deck.
Tasers didn’t always work on flakka users. And talking them down never did. Deputies had to wrestle users to the ground, punching them to gain control, Tianga said. The official protocol was to attack and attack hard. It looked brutal. And in a post-Ferguson, Mo., world, where police use-of-force is scrutinized, Tianga knew the scenes could be interpreted as his deputies going too far.
“We were always one incident away from making national news,” Tianga said.
But, he said, “there was no one to turn to for advice.”
So he started visiting churches on Sundays to explain to people why deputies needed to be so rough. They weren’t taking people to jail, he told them. They were taking them to the hospital. And no one went willingly, even though they were often near death. Tianga started calling the incidents “awful but lawful.”
In March 2015, as flakka use soared, the United Way of Broward County organized the Flakka Action Team. It was the first time the social services agency had formed a group for a particular drug. The task force contained members of local law enforcement, substance abuse counselors and other professionals. The group developed a plan to educate the community, to teach police how to respond and to figure out how to stop flakka production.
“I never knew you could collaborate your efforts with the United Way,” Tianga said.
Heather Davidson, a United Way prevention specialist, said task force members plastered the county with anti-flakka posters with the slogan “Lose your mind. Lose your life.” They held community forums. They educated officials at schools, jails and homeless shelters. They staged anti-flakka marches.
Traditional drug treatment didn’t work with flakka. Chronic users struggled with concentration, one of several lingering side effects. Even filling out paperwork was a challenge. They suffered from paranoia and insomnia. Some were light sensitive, so therapy sessions took place in the dark.
“With crack cocaine, we know how to deal with that,” Davidson said. “What we were seeing with flakka was unique.”
Then the taskforce began pressuring Chinese authorities. It was an open secret that you could place an online order for flakka from a Chinese manufacturer and have it delivered to your door. A kilogram of flakka sold for $1,500 online. That was worth $50,000 on the street. And flakka was just one of hundreds of lab-made substances so new that governments did not have time to identify and ban them.
Hall, at Nova Southeastern University, made sure to bring up the China connection in media interviews last summer. He hammered away at the issue.
Their cause won support from the U.S. Department of Treasury when, in mid-October, the agency imposed Kingpin Act sanctions on one alleged synthetic drug producer in China named Bo Peng. The Drug Enforcement Administration also arrested 151 people in a nation-wide synthetic drug investigation, although most of the focus was on the cannabinoids often called synthetic marijuana.
Then, in November, Florida law enforcement officials, including Tianga and local DEA agents, visited China to directly plead their case to the government there. When they returned, China announced that back on Oct. 1 it had banned 116 different synthetic drugs, including fentanyl and flakka.
The combined efforts turned the tide. Hospitals in Broward County went from seeing 306 flakka cases in October to 187 cases in November. The next month, it was just 54. Drug treatment admissions for flakka plummeted. The last death from flakka was in December. Calls to police about the drug have disappeared, too.
“There’s a drought on,” Davidson of the United Way said. “There’s no more flakka.”
In February, the Flakka Action Team even dropped “flakka” from its name. The task force now focuses on a range of drug problems.
In Tianga’s office, the sheriff’s lieutenant keeps several framed newspaper front pages from last summer detailing flakka’s power. One of the “Lose your mind. Lose your life.” posters that were plastered across the county covers one office wall.
They look like artifacts from a different time.
For Tianga, they are reminders of just how bad it got and how they still beat it.
“I’d like to think we’ve developed a new model for dealing with epidemics,” he said.
And the veteran officer knew the next one was coming.
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