I worry about the health of Dr. Hunter Thompson. I think I am supposed to do that. He is the most creatively crazy and vulnerable of the New Journalists, seemingly, and scattered throughout his dispatches are alarming reports on his health. Nor are his sicknesses imaginary. In this, his latest book, he gives the opinion of a physician: "He'd never seen anybody with as bad a case of anxiety as I had. He said I was right on the verge of a complete mental, physical, and emotional collapse."

Why would he tell us this? What could this be but a cry for help? And what can we do to help him? It isn't as though he doesn't try to help himself. He isn't like George Orwell, for instance, who is said to have been fairly listless in fighting disease. Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled...