Beer and Loathing in Panama City

Granted, it is based on chemical reactions, but in reality (perception, after all, is reality—thank you, philosophy 101), it is only in retrospect that you understand that the risk lies more so in what type of experience you realize than in the simple act of taking [insert substance here]. It would be grossly naïve to pretend that college students do not occasionally experiment with mind altering substances, be it alcohol, legal or illegal drugs, the peak usage time of which arrives one fateful week in March.

This would be an appropriate place to plug in a disclaimer, before we continue with this conversation: the following paragraphs review a 23-year-old’s recount of his junior year spring break in Panama City, which by MTV’s power of marketing, encompasses all things dear to the typical college student: sex, drugs and alcohol. No, not all students have their priorities in that order—some even manage to keep them outside their top five.

Beer and Loathing in Panama City: A Bloodthirsty Spring Break Exodus, an obvious allusion to Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, begins innocently enough with the purchase of eight cases of Natty Light just before an 11 p.m. to 11 a.m. drive from Blacksburg, Va. to Panama City. From that point on, it’s a non-stop detailing (or as much detail as you can fit in 82 pages) of eight guys’ trip to Florida and each and every nip-slip, shaved eyebrow, Long Island and run-in with illegal immigrants throughout the seven-day stay.

There are times throughout the course of reading the novel that you realize you’ve unconsciously had a stupid grin plastered on your face for the past five minutes and there are times, albeit fewer, that you feel as tired of the novel as someone on the sixth day of a seven-day binge.

Author Keith Strausbaugh has a handful of insightful moments throughout the recollection. He brushes aside the façade of the glorified wet t-shirt contest and extols the actual depravity and perversion of the eventual manhandling of the participants, an act that in the real world would land someone a do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-$200 card to the sexual offenders registry. It’s these moments that transform the book from a Tucker Max post into an unflinching account of what many of us are getting ready to dive in to and the baggage it entails.

There are plenty of similarities between Beer and Fear: the loathing, the drugs, the police, even the similar writing style. The similarities, though, end there and the most telling sign is right on the front cover. Where Thompson’s had the subtitle of A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Strausbaugh’s is simply A Bloodthirsty Spring Break Exodus.

Disclaimer number two: I’m a big Hunter S. Thompson fan.

Where Fear uses the drug binge as a vehicle to explore the spiraling perversion of the american dream and effectively captures the zeitgeist of an aging generation, Beer treats the drugs, alcohol and sex as the issue itself instead of a symptom, during a generation still in the process of finding its identity.

No, it doesn’t preach down to the drinkers, the smokers and the, uh, lovers. It simply gives them a conscience.

While the novel certainly doesn’t belong in the same pantheon as the Fear and Loathing’s of the world, it is a worthwhile short read for anyone within the 18-24 demographic, if not for the reality check of a spring break trip, then at least for the bit about the homeless man’s pick-up lines. That was funny.