hypodermics

[hb]

I am currently rereading COL49 and came upon a sentence early on which very
well         may explain TRP's take on drugs at the time....

        "...to this illusion of speed, freedom, wind in your hair,
         unreeling landscape - it wasn't.  What the road really was,
         she fancied, was this hypodermic needle, inserted somewhere
         ahead into the vein of a freeway, a vein nourishing the main-
         liner L.A., keeping it happy, coherent, protected from pain, 
         or whatever passes, with a city, for pain."

I find it very likely that TRP saw intravenous drugs (which many writers
were endorcing) as masks and "illusions" to freedom.  Short cuts.  A mirage
to what actually wasn't.   
hunh?

chef