How did Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and 20th‑century psychiatry shape modern adrenochrome myths?
Executive summary
The modern adrenochrome myth is a two‑strand story: mid‑20th‑century psychiatric speculation that linked an oxidation product of adrenaline to psychosis, and Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo fiction in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that dramatized and violently reimagined that science; together those threads were later recycled into internet blood‑harvesting conspiracies such as QAnon [1] [2] [3].
1. The scientific kernel: an old psychiatric hypothesis that didn’t stick
In the 1950s Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond proposed what became known as the “adrenochrome hypothesis,” arguing that oxidation products of adrenaline might play a role in schizophrenia and that vitamins could counteract this process; their early experiments included self‑testing but were later judged methodologically weak and failed to produce confirmatory evidence in follow‑ups [1] [2] [4].
2. Literary scent: how adrenochrome entered literary and popular culture before Thompson
References to adrenochrome appear intermittently in mid‑century literature—Aldous Huxley discussed it in The Doors of Perception and Anthony Burgess made a passing nod in A Clockwork Orange—so the compound already had a faint cultural aura as a dubious psychoactive before Thompson amplified it [5] [3].
3. Fear and Loathing: fiction that reads like a how‑to in the public imagination
Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas famously depicts adrenochrome as a hyper‑potent psychedelic “there’s only one source for this stuff…the adrenaline glands from a living human body,” a line that blends invention and sensationalism and which Thompson and director Terry Gilliam later acknowledged was a fictional exaggeration [2] [6] [7].
4. Literary violence turned into conspiratorial literalism
Thompson’s deliberately grotesque, implicitly violent image—that the drug must be harvested from a living adrenal gland—was treated by many readers as plausible detail, not satire, and that literalization seeded an image of blood harvesting that would be exploitable by later conspiracy framings [8] [7].
5. From medical oddity and gonzo fiction to online blood libel
The modern adrenochrome blood‑harvesting myth marries the flimsy psychiatric hypothesis and Thompson’s lurid fiction to pre‑existing motifs like blood libel; the conspiracy transformed a minor biochemical fact—that adrenochrome is an oxidation product of adrenaline—into an apocalyptic narrative that elites harvest child blood for youth or psychedelic effect [1] [3] [9].
6. Platforms, memetics, and the politics of outrage that amplified the myth
Internet subcultures and conspiratorial networks—4chan, QAnon and related social channels—repurposed Thompson’s imagery and mid‑century speculation into viral claims during the 2010s and especially around 2020, framing celebrity photos and pandemic paranoia as “evidence” and tying the trope to broader antisemitic and elite‑control narratives [10] [3] [9].
7. Why the myth persists despite weak science and authorial retraction
Persistence rests on a trio of forces: Thompson’s vivid language that many read literally (even as Gilliam and Thompson later said it was made up), the human tendency to turn technical ambiguity into dramatic evil, and online incentives—engagement, notoriety, political weaponization—that reward sensational claims regardless of scientific rebuttal [6] [7] [3].
8. Competing readings and hidden agendas to watch for
Scholars and debunkers stress that adrenochrome is a real but chemically mundane oxidation product with no proven psychedelic or age‑reversing properties and that the psychiatric work supporting it was discredited [1] [2], while proponents of conspiracies selectively cite Thompson’s fiction as literal reportage and exploit longstanding blood‑libel motifs for political ends—an agenda that blends moral panic, anti‑elite targeting, and at times antisemitic tropes [9] [10].