Digested classics: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

We were somewhere on the edge of the desert when the drugs took hold. The sky was full of screaming bats and my attorney, the Samoan, was pouring beer on his chest. I hit the brakes on the Great Red Shark. "You drive," I said. No point mentioning the bats. The bastard would see them soon enough.

There was still 100 miles to go and we had to get to Vegas by 4pm to claim our press suite for the Mint 400. A New York magazine had taken care of the reservations and the editor had given me $300 in expenses which I'd already spent on two bags of grass, five sheets of acid, 75 hits of mescaline, a salt-shaker of cocaine, a galaxy of uppers, downers and screamers and a bottle of ether in LA before we left.

It was the Samoan that saw the hitchhiker and said: "Let's give this Okie a lift." The kid got in and started talking. "What's the story?" he asked. I took a half dozen tabs mixed with a few black bombers and shot a gram of scag into my eyeball.

"What's the motherfuckin' story?" I laughed. "There is no motherfuckin' story. We are the fuckin' story. This is gonzo, pal. We're chasing the American dream. Right to the motherfuckin' end of the rainbow."

The kid looked freaked and we dumped him on the edge of Vegas. The Samoan pulled out a .357 Magnum and put it to my head. "As your attorney, I strongly advise you to drive to the hotel at top speed," he yelled, pumping 27 amyls and a quart of tequila into his aorta. "And don't even think of trying to outdo me on the narcs again."

"What are your names?" the clerk inquired, as the Great Red Shark skidded to a halt by the front reception after smashing through the hotel's plate glass doors.

"What's it matter?" I cried. "Call me Mr Thompson. Call me Raoul Duke. Call me Dr Gonzo. Just give me the goddam room."

We went upstairs and threw the bag full of drugs on the bed. I eyed up the Samoan, before pulling out a blade and chopping my arm off and ramming some mescaline and ether into the stump. "I warned you," my attorney said, amputating his leg and plunging a speedball into his femoral artery. We'd already been awake for three days, and hours and hours of catatonic despair lay ahead.

"We ain't gonna make the dune race," the Samoan said, "ain't got the Vincent Black Shadow and no one can see shit in that dustbowl anyway."

The snakes were freaking me out. But not as much as the polar bears or the girls doing their Friends of Debbie Reynolds impressions by the slots. Maybe I needed to go easy on the psychedelics. I called Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg but they were too whacked out to answer, so I took a fist full of downers.

"Don't wimp out on me," the Samoan yelled, turning "Sympathy for the Devil" up to 11 on the radio and ripping open my guts to pump out the barbs. "This is serious countercultural satire. This is the 70s, man. The hippies have flaked and the reactionaries have won. There ain't no reality more twisted than Nixon's American dream. So don't get real, get surreal. I'll see you when I've sodomised a teenager."

My head started spinning and vomit seeped from my neck through a hole in the windpipe. I was fucked. The magazine was gonna kill me for not finding out who won the motherfuckin' race, the hotel was gonna have my ass for credit card fraud and the police were gonna bust me. I had to do a runner. I chopped off my head, blew a couple of quarts of nitrous oxide into my lungs and headed for the lobby.

"There's a telegram for you, Dr Gonzo," the clerk said.

It was from the attorney. We had a new story. A story about a story. A story about a story about us covering the district attorney's narcotics convention at the Moonlight Hotel. Unlimited money. A brand new Caddy, the White Whale.

"So you made it?" said the Samoan, slicing open a live hobo and removing his adrenal gland. "Fancy some adrenochrome?" Another five months of being insane. What the fuck. Why not? I took out the .357 Magnum and blew away an iguana before blowing a hole in my arm. "Best way in," I laughed.

This gonzo shit was wearing thin. Sure, we went to the DA's convention and found they knew jack shit about drugs. Everyone knows marijuana's just for stoner losers. Sure, we got the locals a bit pissed at us on the freeway. Sure, we kited some cheques and did more drugs. Sure, we fooled the chambermaid into thinking we were undercover cops. What better cover was there than a pair of drug fiends? Sure, I bought an ape. But it was all getting a bit tired, a bit predictable. I tried writing in a new format.

Duke: We're looking for the American dream.

Waitress: It's down by the Old Psychiatrists' Club.

That didn't work either. The only people left reading were a few old Rolling Stone heads that still thought that sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll were gonna change the world. I had to get out of Vegas. I chopped off my remaining limbs, grinding the last of the drugs into the open wounds, bounced my torso into the front seat of the White Whale and raced a DC8 down the runway.

• John Crace's Digested Reads are in G2 on Tuesdays.