Sports reporter Duke "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold... the sky was full of what looked like huge bats... We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, 5 sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, also a quart of tequila... a pint of raw ether, two dozen amyls... once you get locked into a serious drug collection the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me is the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge." (0:01)
Radio reporter: "A house subcommittee report said that illegal drugs killed 160 American GIs last year... Drugs are..."
Duke's attorney friend Gonzo: "One toke man, one toke over the line... one toke..."
Duke holds a roach clip: "One toke you poor fool..." (0:03)
Duke asks the hitchhiker, "How about some ether?" (0:05)
Gonzo tells Duke, "... you'll need the cocaine." (0:07)
Duke: "Getting hold of the drugs... had been no problem..." (0:08)
Duke: "Then we ate some mesc and went swimming." (0:10)
Duke gives Gonzo amyl, then uses some himself. (0:11)
Duke tells Gonzo, "You're a... narcotics agent."
Gonzo passes Duke a blotter: "Here's your half of the sunshine acid." Duke eats it.
Gonzo licks something off of a briefcase. (0:13)
Duke sees a parking attendants face distort. Carpet designs distort, but he cannot "ignore this terrible drug." The casino Clerk's face distorts then turns into a moray eel. Duke hallucinates blood spreading over the floor. People turn into fearsome creatures. He sees the photographer as a soldier. (0:15)
Duke: "Stoned, ripped, twisted." (0:27)
Duke sniffs amyl. (0:30)
Gonzo and Duke inhale ether through a patch of cloth.
Duke: "Devil ether. It makes you behave like a village drunkard... Ether is the perfect drug for Las Vegas... nobody should be asked to handle this trip... The ether was wearing off. The acid was long gone. The mescaline was... strong. Good mescaline comes on slow."
Duke tells Gonzo, "You'll be straight in a few hours." (0:32)
Duke: "This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs..." (0:39)
Duke snorts cocaine from the tip of a knife. (0:40)
Duke: "One of the things you learn after years of dealing with drug people is that you can turn you back on a person but never turn your back on a drunk... Was I just roaming around in a drug frenzy of some kind...?" (0:44)
Duke asks Gonzo, "Did you eat all this acid?"
"You better pray to God there's some Thorazine in that basket..." (0:46)
Duke tells Gonzo, "I wouldn't dare go to sleep with you wandering around with a head full of acid..."
"... smoke some grass..." (0:51)
Duke: "The acid had shifted gears on him... four hours or so of catatonic despair."
Duke smokes something in a light bulb pipe: "My attorney had never been able to accept the notion often espoused by former drug abusers that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them." (0:52)
Duke: "The great San Francisco acid... victim of the drug explosion..." He sees Hunter S. Thompson sitting at a table. Duke tears a blotter in half: "I decided to eat only half of the acid at first."
"All this white stuff on my sleeve is LSD." (0:53)
Duke: "There was madness in every direction..."
"Maybe I'd planned it all along, subconsciously waiting for the right moment." (0:56)
Duke "Panic. It crept up my spine like first rising vibes of an acid frenzy... completely twisted on drugs..." (0:58)
Duke: "Mad waves of paranoia, madness."
"A normal speeder will panic..." (1:08)
Gonzo tells Duke by telephone, "Sound a little paranoid." (1:07)
Sign by highway: "DON'T GAMBLE with MARIJUANA" with cards, one of which has a picture of a Cannabis leaf.
Duke drives under a banner: "THE DISTRICT ATTORNEYS CONFERENCE ON NARCOTICS AND DANGEROUS DRUGS"
Duke: "I felt the drug culture should be represented as well."
X-ray view of drugs inside Duke's briefcase. (1:08)
Duke: "Finding my attorney on acid..."
Referring to Gonzo's artist friend Lucy: "You can keep her loaded... drug convention."
"Keep her full of acid..."
"In a few hours she'll probably be sane enough to... full of liquor and LSD..." (1:14)
Gonzo: "... mescaline."
Duke lights a bong. (1:19)
Speaker: "I welcome... convention on narcotics and dangerous drugs..." (1:19)
Speaker L Ron Bumquist addresses the audience: "... attempt to imagine what it is like inside of the possessed mind of the addict. For example, a dope fiend refers to the reefer bud as a roach..."
He holds a bag containing a roach.
"... states of being in the Cannabis or marijuana society."
A member of the audience asks, "Dr. Bumquist, do you think the anthropologist Margaret Mead's strange behavior of late could be explained by a private marijuana addiction?"
Bumquist: "... if Margaret Mead at her age smoked grass, she'd have one hell of a trip." (1:20)
Movie title: "The sinister menace of Narcotics"
Narrator: "Know your dope fiend... suspected marijuana addict..." (1:22)
Duke imagines Lucy testifying in a surrealistic court: "Those two men... gave me the LSD..."
"LSD" (1:24)
Gonzo tells Duke, "As your attorney I advise you to take a hit..."
"That stuff makes pure mescaline seem like ginger beer, man. Adrenochrome."
Duke: "Adrenochrome?"
Duke drips some onto his tongue: "What a terrible thing to lay on somebody with a head full of acid."
Duke takes more.
Gonzo: "We need some opium."
Duke: "I think there's only one source for this stuff, the adrenaline gland... from a living human body."
Gonzo: "He said it would take me higher than I'd ever been... pure adrenochrome or maybe just a fresh adrenaline gland..."
Duke: "The first wave felt like a combination of mescaline and Methedrine."
Gonzo gives Duke a snort of cocaine on the tip of his knife then puts more in Duke's mouth.
Gonzo: "Crazy."
Duke hallucinates. (1:25)
Duke: "What kind of... psychotic would play that song... There was evidence in this room of excessive consumption of almost every type of drug... What kind of addict would... Would the presence of junkies account for all these uneaten French fries?... your normal... junky... bad flashbacks."
Duke: "The... dope ring."
Maid Alice: "I don't know anything about no dope."
"I hate dope." (1:33)
Duke: "Madness." (1:38)
Duke snorts cocaine from his hand. (1:44)
Duke: "That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three bucks a hit... What Leary took down with him... fallacy of the acid culture..." (1:50)