Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson had a lot of cool quotes. Although he was quite the handful, HST has been one of my favorite people for some time. His ability to grab life and just do it causes an admiration. More people should have some of this gusto. It can bring upon some interesting adventures.

This quote comes from Thompson’s book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (published in 1971). The full quote: “No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

According to the Urban Dictionary, it simply means: Creating and being involved in a situation that may get you in way over your head but deciding that turning back would be a rather uninteresting option.

I pair the phrase, “Buy the Ticket; Take the Ride,” with the notion that there are some journeys we just need to take. Some journeys are with ourselves; some with others. Either way, it seems the outcome can be forever or it can go down in flames but, in the end, we come out a different person — either a lot different or a little different. With love, the internal warnings, the red flags, the concerns never weigh the same as the dopamine rushes, the love-bombing or the bond.