You'll get drunk, stoned and high out of your mind just by reading Hunter S. Thompson's Daily Routine.
Hunter S. Thompson is to journalism what Ernest Hemingway is to the written novel: there is journalism before Hunter S. Thompson and then, there is journalism after him.
And, like Hemingway, Thompson’s reputation proceeded himself. This was in part because he himself was a larger-than-life character. But, also, because he had great difficulty separating himself from the larger-than-life character he portrayed in his writing.
You can see a glimpse of this character in a memoir that E. Jean Carroll wrote of the writer back in 1993.
Carroll outlines Thompson’s daily routine; a daily routine that’s so bizarre you’d think it’s fiction.
It just might be.
3:00 p.m. Rise
3:05 p.m. Chivas Regal with the morning papers, Dunhills (these are a brand of cigarette).
3:45 p.m. Cocaine
3:50 p.m. Another glass of Chivas, Dunhills
4:05 p.m. First cup of coffee, Dunhills
4:15 p.m. Cocaine
4:16 p.m. Orange juice, Dunhills
4:30 p.m. Cocaine
4:54 p.m. Cocaine
5:05 p.m. Cocaine
5:11 p.m. Coffee, Dunhills
5:30 p.m. More ice in the Chivas
5:45 p.m. Cocaine, etc., etc.
6:00 p.m. Grass to take the edge off the day
7:05 p.m. Woody Creek Tavern for lunch-Heineken, two margaritas, coleslaw, a taco salad, a double order of fried onion rings, carrot cake, ice cream, a bean fritter, Dunhills, another Heineken, Cocaine, and for the ride home, a snow cone (a glass of shredded ice over which is poured three or four jiggers of Chivas.)
9:00 p.m. Starts snorting cocaine seriously
10:00 p.m. Drops acid
11:00 p.m. Chartreuse (French herbal liquor), cocaine, grass
11:30 pm. Cocaine, etc, etc.
12:00 a.m. Midnight, Hunter S. Thompson is ready to write
12:05-6:00 a.m. Chartreuse, cocaine, grass, Chivas, coffee, Heineken, clove cigarettes, grapefruit, Dunhills, orange juice, gin, continuous pornographic movies.
6:00 a.m. The hot tub-champagne, Dove Bars, fettuccine Alfredo
8:00 a.m. Halcyon (sedative used to sleep)
8:20 a.m. Sleep
End.
In introducing the above catastrophe, E. Jean Carroll writes what you’re thinking now…
“
I have heard the biographers of Harry S. Truman, Catherine the Great, etc., etc., say they would give anything if their subjects were alive so they could ask them some questions. I, on the other hand, would give anything if my subject were dead. He should be. Look at his daily routine.
”
Carroll would get his wish about twelve years later and, to her surprise, it wouldn’t be at the hands of drugs and alcohol but at the hands of Thompson himself.
By Cole Schafer (but most E. Jean Carroll).
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