fear and loathing in chicago

about ten minutes ago i finished "fear and loathing in las vegas," a chronicle of hunter s. thompson's drug-addled trip through and around vegas in search of "the american dream." it was a fast read and i had a hard time putting it down, but it left me feeling a bit empty in the end.
actually, i didn't (and still don't) know exactly how i feel about the book. there were a lot of funny parts and i definitely enjoyed thompson's signature "gonzo" style (i'm a huge fan of the "new journalism" phase, which includes tom wolfe and joan didion, two of my favorite authors), but i didn't find many redeeming qualities to make me go back and read it again.
the book follows thompson and his attorney (known as dr. gonzo) as they attempt to cover two events in las vegas but end up lost in a world of drugs and crazy happenings. they spend most of their time attempting to make it look like they are not on drugs, even though they are puking out the side of the car, strangling hotel maids and complaining about how the drugs make them want to die.
ha. funny.
somehow they manage to make it out of vegas alive, but the book ends with thompson stepping off the plane and immediately buying more drugs. that disappoints me, especially after this earlier rant about Timothy Leary and the drug culture of the 60s:

This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the people who took him too seriously...What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create...a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel.

so obviously thompson is just as jaded about the 60s as i am (a topic for another time), but he doesn't make it clear how he distinguishes himself from the hippies: both were looking to avoid the responsibility of living in the real world, and drugs were the perfect way to do just that.
i'm not saying that i would have preferred thompson to stay straight - god knows we would have completely missed his amazing contributions to the world of literature - i'm just saying it makes me sad that it took drugs to fuel such an incredible man. he was, after all, just searching for something real, something true.
and who in this crazy world isn't?