Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (31 page)

He said a few things that I never really absorbed, but there was nothing he could have said, at that moment, as eloquent or as meaningful as that incredible smile on his face.

The most common known source of ibogaine is from the roots of Tabernanthe Iboga, a shrub indigenous to West Africa. As early as 1869, roots of T.I. were reported effective in combating sleep or fatigue and in maintaining alertness when ingested by African natives.
Extracts of T.I. are used by natives while stalking game; it enables them to remain motionless for as long as two days while retaining mental alertness. It has been used for centuries by natives of Africa, Asia, and South America in conjunction with fetishistic and mythical ceremonies. In 1905 the gross effects of chewing large quantities of T.I. roots were described . . . “Soon his nerves get tense in an extraordinary way; an epileptic-like madness comes over him, during which he becomes unconscious and pronounces words which are interpreted by the older members of the group as having a prophetic meaning and to prove that the fetish has entered him.”

At the turn of the century, iboga extracts were used as stimulants, aphrodisiacs, and inebriants. They have been available in European drugstores for over 30 years. Much of the research with ibogaine has been done with animals. In the cat, for example, 2–10 mg./kg. given intravenously caused marked excitation, dilated pupils, salivation, and tremors leading to a picture of rage. There was an alerting reaction, obvious apprehension and fear, and attempts to escape . . . In human studies, at a dose of 300 mg. given orally, the subject experiences visions, changes in perception of the environment, and delusions or alterations of thinking. Visual imagery became more vivid, with animals often appearing. Ibogaine produces a state of drowsiness in which the subject does not wish to move, open his eyes, or be aware of his environment. Since there appears to be an inverse relationship between the presence of physical symptoms and the richness of the psychological experience, the choice of environment is an important consideration. Many are disturbed by lights or noises . . . Dr. Claudio Naranjo, a psychotherapist, is responsible for most current knowledge regarding ibogaine effects in humans. He states: “I have been more impressed by the enduring effects resulting from ibogaine than by those from sessions conducted with any other drug.”

—from a study by PharmChem Laboratories, Palo Alto, California

Not much has been written about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the presidential campaign, but toward the end of the Wisconsin primary race—about a week before the vote—word leaked out that some
of Muskie’s top advisers had called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with “some kind of strange drug” that nobody in the press corps had ever heard of.

It had been common knowledge for many weeks that Humphrey was using an exotic brand of speed known as “Wallot” . . . and it had long been whispered that Muskie was into something very heavy, but it was hard to take the talk seriously until I heard about the appearance of a mysterious Brazilian doctor. That was the key.

I immediately recognized the Ibogaine Effect—from Muskie’s tearful breakdown on the flatbed truck in New Hampshire, the delusions and altered thinking that characterized his campaign in Florida; and finally the condition of “total rage” that gripped him in Wisconsin.

There was no doubt about it: the Man from Maine had turned to massive doses of ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was “when did he start?” But nobody could answer this one, and I was not able to press the candidate himself for an answer because I was permanently barred from the Muskie campaign after that incident on the Sunshine Special in Florida . . . and that scene makes far more sense now than it did at the time.

Muskie has always taken pride in his ability to deal with hecklers; he has often challenged them, calling them up to the stage in front of big crowds and then forcing the poor bastards to debate with him in a blaze of TV lights.

But there was none of that in Florida. When the Boohoo began grabbing at his legs and screaming for more gin, Big Ed went all to pieces . . . which gave rise to speculation, among reporters familiar with his campaign style in ’68 and ’70, that Muskie was not himself. It was noted, among other things, that he had developed a tendency to roll his eyes wildly during TV interviews, that his thought-patterns had become strangely fragmented, and that not even his closest advisers could predict when he might suddenly spiral off into babbling rages, or neo-comatose funks.

In retrospect, however, it is easy to see why Muskie fell apart on that caboose platform in the Miami train station. There he was—far gone in a bad ibogaine frenzy—suddenly shoved out in a rainstorm to face a sullen
crowd and some kind of snarling lunatic going for his legs while he tried to explain why he was “the only Democrat who can beat Nixon.”

It is entirely conceivable—given the known effects of ibogaine—that Muskie’s brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations at the time; that he looked out at that crowd and saw gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.

We can only speculate on this, because those in a position to know have flatly refused to comment on rumors concerning the senator’s disastrous experiments with ibogaine. I tried to find the Brazilian doctor on election night in Milwaukee, but by the time the polls closed he was long gone. One of the hired bimbos in Muskie’s Holiday Inn headquarters said a man with fresh welts on his head had been dragged out the side door and put on a bus to Chicago, but we were never able to confirm this.

Humphrey’s addiction to Wallot has not stirred any controversy, so far. He has always campaigned like a rat in heat, and the only difference now is that he is able to do it eighteen hours a day instead of ten. The main change in his public style, since ’68, is that he no longer seems aware that his gibberish is not taken seriously by anyone except Labor Leaders and middle-class Blacks.

At least half the reporters assigned to the Humphrey campaign are convinced that he’s senile. When he ran for president four years ago he was a hack and a fool, but at least he was consistent.

Now he talks like an eighty-year-old woman who just discovered speed. He will call a press conference to announce that if elected he will “have all our boys out of Vietnam within ninety days”—then rush across town, weeping and jabbering the whole way, to appear on a network TV show and make a fist-shaking emotional appeal for every good American to stand behind the president and “applaud” his recent decision to resume heavy bombing in North Vietnam.

Humphrey will go into a Black neighborhood in Milwaukee and drench the streets with tears while deploring “the enduring tragedy” that life in Nixon’s America has visited on “these beautiful little children”—and then act hurt and dismayed when a reporter who covered his Florida
campaign reminds him that “In Miami you were talking just a shade to the Left of George Wallace and somewhere to the Right of Mussolini.”

Humphrey seems genuinely puzzled by the fast-rising tide of evidence that many once-sympathetic voters no longer believe anything he says. He can’t understand why people snicker when he talks about “the politics of joy” and “punishing welfare chiselers” in almost the same breath . . . and God only knows what must have gone through his head when he picked up the current issue of
Newsweek
and found Stewart Alsop quoting
Rolling Stone
to the effect that “Hubert Humphrey is a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese Current.”

Alsop made it clear that he was not pleased with that kind of language. He called it “brutal”—then wound up his column by dismissing the Humphrey candidacy in terms far more polite than mine, but no less final. Both Stewart and his demented brother, Joseph, have apparently concluded—along with almost all the other “prominent & influential” Gentleman Journalists in Washington—that the Democratic primaries have disintegrated into a series of meaningless brawls not worth covering. On the “opinion-shaping” level of the journalism Establishment in both Washington and New York, there is virtually unanimous agreement that Nixon’s opponent in ’72 will be Ted Kennedy.

McGovern’s solid victory in Wisconsin was dismissed, by most of the press wizards, as further evidence that the Democratic Party has been taken over by “extremists”: George McGovern on the Left and George Wallace on the Right, with a sudden dangerous vacuum in what is referred to on editorial pages as “the vital Center.”

The root of the problem, of course, is that most of the big-time Opinion Makers decided a long time ago—along with all those Democratic senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, and other party pros—that the candidate of the “vital Center” in ’72 would be none other than that fireball statesman from Maine, Ed Muskie. By the summer of ’71 the party bosses had convinced themselves that Ed Muskie was the “only Democrat with a chance of beating Nixon.”

This was bullshit, of course. Sending Muskie against Nixon would have been like sending a three-toed sloth out to seize turf from a wolverine. Big Ed was an adequate senator—or at least he’d seemed like one
until he started trying to explain his “mistake” on the war in Vietnam—but it was stone madness from the start to ever think about exposing him to the kind of bloodthirsty thugs that Nixon and John Mitchell would sic on him. They would have him screeching on his knees by sundown on Labor Day. If I were running a campaign against Muskie, I would arrange for some anonymous creep to buy time on national TV and announce that twenty-two years ago he and Ed spent a summer working as male whores at a Peg House somewhere in the North Woods.

Nothing else would be necessary.

The idea that George McGovern has the Democratic nomination locked up by mid-April will not be an easy thing for most people to accept—especially since it comes from Frank Mankiewicz, the tall and natty “political director” for McGovern’s campaign.

Total candor with the press—or anyone else, for that matter—is not one of the traits most presidential candidates find entirely desirable in their key staff people. Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business . . . and the main function of any candidate’s press secretary is to make sure the press gets nothing but Upbeat news. There is no point, after all, in calling a press conference to announce that nobody on the staff will be paid this month because three or four of your largest financial backers just called to say they are pulling out and abandoning all hope of victory.

When something like this happens, you quickly lock all the doors and send your press secretary out to start whispering, off the record, that your opponent’s California campaign coordinator just called to ask for a job.

This kind of devious bullshit is standard procedure in most campaigns. Everybody is presumed to understand it—even the reporters who can’t keep a straight face while they’re jotting it all down for page one of the early edition: “Sen. Mace Denies Pullout Rumors; Predicts Total Victory in All States.”

The best example of this kind of coverage in the current campaign has been the stuff coming out of the Muskie camp. In recent weeks the truth has been so painful that some journalists have gone out of their way to give the poor bastards a break and not flay them in print any more than absolutely necessary.

One of the only humorous moments in the Florida primary campaign,
for instance, came when one of Muskie’s state campaign managers, Chris Hart, showed up at a meeting with representatives of the other candidates to explain why Big Ed was refusing to take part in a TV debate. “My instructions,” he said, “are that the senator should never again be put in a situation where he has to think quickly.”

By nightfall of that day every journalist in Miami was laughing at Hart’s blunder, but
nobody
published it; and none of the TV reporters ever mentioned it on the air. I didn’t even use it myself, for some reason, although I heard about it in Washington while I was packing to go back to Florida.

I remember thinking that I should call Hart and ask him if he actually said a thing like that, but when I got there I didn’t feel up to it. Muskie was obviously in deep trouble, and Hart had been pretty decent to me when I’d showed up at headquarters to sign up for that awful trip on the Sunshine Special . . . so I figured what the hell? Let it rest.

The other press people might have had different reasons for not using Hart’s quote, but I can’t say for sure because I never asked. Looking back on it, I think it must have been so obvious that the Muskie campaign was doomed that nobody felt mean enough to torment the survivors over something that no longer seemed important.

Muskie is finished. His only hope now is to do something like take a long vacation in New Zealand until July and get the ibogaine out of his system so he can show up in Miami and pray for a deadlocked convention. At that point, he can offer himself up for sacrifice as a “compromise candidate,” make a deal with George Wallace for the VP slot, then confront the convention with a Muskie-Wallace “unity ticket.”

Which might make the nut. If nothing else, it would command a lot of support from people like me who feel that the only way to save the Democratic Party is to destroy it. I have tried to explain this to George McGovern, but it’s not one of the subjects he really enjoys talking about. McGovern is very nervous about the possibility of boxing himself into the role of a McCarthy-type “spoiler” candidate, which he was beginning to look like until he somehow won a big chunk of the hard-hat vote in New Hampshire and sensed the first strange seed of a coalition that might make him a serious challenger instead of just another martyr.

There was only a hint of it in New Hampshire, but in Wisconsin it
came together with a decisiveness that nobody could quite understand in the alcoholic chaos of election night . . .

The only glaring weakness in McGovern’s sweep was his failure to break Humphrey’s grip on the Black wards in Milwaukee—where The Hube had campaigned avidly, greeting all comers with the Revolutionary Drug Brothers handshake. It was like Nixon flashing the peace sign, or Agnew chanting “Right on!” at a minstrel show.