The Angels insist there are no dope addicts in the club, and by legal or medical definitions this is true. Addicts are focused; the physical need for whatever they’re hooked on forces them to be selective. But the Angels have no focus at all. They gobble drugs like victims of famine turned loose on a rare smorgasbord. They use anything available, and if the result is a screaming delirium then so be it.
They smoke marijuana so openly that it’s hard to understand why they’re not all in jail for it. California’s marijuana laws are among the most primitive manifestations of American politics. Two convictions for possession of a single joint — or even a tenth of one — will send a person to prison for a minimum of two years. A third conviction for possession means a minimum five years. The sentences are fixed by law, regardless of any circumstances a judge might find to be mitigating.
Except for the risk, the marijuana situation in California is a lot like the booze situation in the 1920’s. Pot is everywhere; thousands of people smoke it as often as they take aspirins. But the fact of illegality has bred a cultishness, a pot underground whose partisans are forced to skulk around like spies, convening in dark rooms to pass their criminal pleasure from hand to nervous hand. Many get high from the sheer risk. Few people can turn on without making a very spooky ordeal of it, but among those who do are the Hell’s Angels — who have done it for so long and so often that they no longer confuse the mystique with the real effects. Marijuana seems to relax them, but not much else. They refer to it as weed or dope, shunning such hipster terminology as grass and pot. Most just take it for granted, as they do beer and wine. If the stuff is available they’ll smoke it, but they rarely spend money for it. When they have to pay for kicks, they prefer something with more velocity.
At Bass Lake it was pills. Soon after dark on Saturday, I was standing with a group of Angels by the bonfire, talking about the Laconia riot, when somebody appeared with a big plastic bag and began passing out handfuls of whatever it contained. When my turn came I held out my hand and received about thirty small white pills. For a moment the talk ceased, while the outlaws gulped down their rations, chasing the pills with beer. I asked what they were and somebody beside me said, Cartwheels, man. Bennies. Eat some, they’ll keep you going. I asked him what they were in milligrams, but he didn’t know. Just take about ten, he advised. And if that don’t work, take more.
I nodded and ate two. They looked to be about five milligrams each, which is enough Benzedrine to keep most people awake and jabbering for several hours. Ten pills, or fifty milligrams, will send anybody but a pill freak to the hospital with symptoms of acute delirium tremens. Later several Angels assured me that their bennies were indeed fives — at least that’s what they were paying for. They never quoted their wholesale price, but they once offered to give me a break on as many as I wanted at the rate of $53 a thousand, or about twice what the same pills would cost me in a drugstore, with a prescription. It turned out that they were not even fives, but more like ones. When I realized that the first two were having no effect, I took several more, and then more. By dawn I had eaten twelve — which, if they’d been honest, would have caused me to gnaw down trees like a beaver. As it was, they only helped me to stay on my feet about four hours longer than I would have otherwise. The next day I told the outlaws they were being cheated, but they shrugged it off. We got no choice, said one. If you buy stuff on the black market you gotta take whatever you get. Who gives a damn anyway? If they’re weak all you gotta do is take more. We’re not gonna run out. Bennies ( cartwheels or whites ) are basic to the outlaw diet — like weed, beer and wine. But when they talk about getting wasted, the action moves onto another level. The next step up the scale is Seconal ( reds or red devils ), a barbiturate normally used as a sedative, or tranquilizer. They also take Amytal ( blue heaven ), Nembutal ( yellow jackets ) and Tuinal. But they prefer the reds — which they take along with beer and bennies to keep from getting sleepy. The combination brews up some hellish effects. Barbiturates and alcohol can be a fatal mixture, but the outlaws combine enough stimulants with their depressants to at least stay alive, if not rational.