"I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he told Playboy. "So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody."
Instead, he said, the story drew raves and he was inundated with letters and phone calls from people calling it "a breakthrough in journalism," an experience he likened to "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids."
He went on to become a counter cultural hero with books and articles that skewered America's hypocrisy.
Hunter S. Thompson was an early companion in my journey into the "counter culture." I spent many an altered hour, laughing hysterically over Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or enjoying the irony and humor oozing out of his latest article in Rolling Stone. Completely bent, explosively opinionated, and always glancing askance at the world - I'll miss him.
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