Hunter S. Thompson dead of suicide

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=ajQRdP9rsrX4&refer=top_world_news

They aren't saying how he did it.

Damn.

EDIT: They released that he shot himself.

That's incredibly fucked up.

God damnit.

:'(

This is really sad. One of my friends saw him at a supermarket once and spoke with him a bit, I guess he was a pretty approachable guy. And certainly one that had my respect.

Oh my goodness.

So what did he do?

Damn. First celebrity death to make me feel genuinely sad in a very long time.

Janderson said:

So what did he do?

He was an uber-paranoid sports journalist that wrote a bunch of books about his life and various adventures while he did copious amounts of drugs. Popularized by the movie 'fear and loathing in las vegas' based on the HST book of the same name.

He's also the guy represented as "Duke" in Doonesbury, which he always hated. Kind of curious whether Trudeau kills him off in tribute.

Yeah, this is real shitty. Most people don't know who the hell he is, but his books were great.

If he was using drugs like the journalist in Fear and lothing, I'm not the slightest bit surprised he did kill himself.

R.I.P. most excellent dude.

Uncle 80 said:

If he was using drugs like the journalist in Fear and lothing, I'm not the slightest bit surprised he did kill himself.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a quasi-fictional piece he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, which then got published as a book. He IS the main character in that story, though the amount of drugs involved when it actually happened is questionable. Johnny Depp had the opportunity to spend a few months hanging out with him and getting his mannerisms down. I think he did a particularly excellent job with the voice.

Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro are also working on a movie version of his very early novel The Rum Diary, which should be interesting to see.

Mancubus II said:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a quasi-fictional piece he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, which then got published as a book. He IS the main character in that story, though the amount of drugs involved when it actually happened is questionable. Johnny Depp had the opportunity to spend a few months hanging out with him and getting his mannerisms down. I think he did a particularly excellent job with the voice.

Well, of course it is a fictional story. However, he seems to have a fairly good idea what the different drugs involved in the story does to one's head; and even if you don't do a kind of drug more than a handful of times, the side-effects, concerning the abusers mental state, can still be devastating. And Johnny Depp is known to be one of the biggest coke-heads in the movie industry. Methamphetamines, LSD and cocaine rank highly among the most dangerous drugs you can get your hands on, after heroin and cigarettes, of course.

haha LSD isn't very dangerous, it isn't even addictive. meth is kind of dangerous but not really, i've never known anyone to maintain an addiction to it for any long period of time. crack is far worse than cocaine since it's basically designed to go straight to your head as quickly as possible. and heroin is far more dangerous than anything you listed.

sargebaldy said:

meth is kind of dangerous but not really, i've never known anyone to maintain an addiction to it for any long period of time.

Meth addiction is a bit less severe than most think. It is FAR more psychological than physical. If you can remove yourself from the dealers and other users, quitting use isn't very difficult. I've seen it done several times before, including firsthand.

Yeah, it's meth creation that can be dangerous :P

Basically the drugs he was taken were the ones most in the counterculture took, i.e. mescaline, shrooms, LSD, basically hallucinogens, and the aim wasn't for just getting fucked up like people do today but to be able to look at the world from another perspective and learn from the experience. I don't see how that would at all relate to his suicide, especially considering the lack of long-term effects of those drugs. It was more probably to do with the overcommercialization of the things of his youth, which is one thing he actively spoke out about, and just the fact he was in his 60s and realized his best days were behind him.

This is sad. A tragic end, much like that of his friend "Dr. Gonzo" (look that up sometime). It's a little odd that this is the second underground writer that spoke against the current administration that has died of suicide in the past 6 months (forget the name of the last guy). Hmm...

heh, there's a conspiracy theory i think i'll leave alone. it's more likely bush drove him to despair with his re-election than physically had him killed :P

Mancubus II said:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a quasi-fictional piece he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, which then got published as a book. He IS the main character in that story, though the amount of drugs involved when it actually happened is questionable. Johnny Depp had the opportunity to spend a few months hanging out with him and getting his mannerisms down. I think he did a particularly excellent job with the voice.

No shit, I went and bought Paul Oakenfold's Bunkka album (only because the only other one his albums I had heard was the Swordfish soundtrack) and on track six Thompson comes in and starts rambling, and I knew it was him only because of Johnny Depp's impression of him. The thing is I bought that album the day he died, and that was the first time I had ever heard his voice. the second recording of him I heard almost immediately after was at: http://www.indybay.org/uploads/hunter_thompson_aug29_2002.mp3
where he discusses how he felt about the way the mainstream media and the Bush administration handled September 11th, 2001. If you are interested in listening to it, I must warn you that it is almost 38 minutes long.
From what I understood the book was based on his experiences for the most part, so it may not be as fictitious as you may think. Who knows.