He was always stuffing something into his mouth

Paul Theroux has a lengthy, colorful recollection of his friend, Hunter S. Thompson, in the Guardian: "He was always stuffing something into his mouth, and his chainsmoking wasn't even half of it. I wonder if I ever saw him sober? He wasn't an alcoholic, but he was certainly a drunkard; and though he could be compulsive, I don't think he was a drug addict—not an obsessed and needy user of addictive drugs, at any rate, but what is generally known as a stoner and a sniffer. An addict is helpless, but drug-taking was for him a decision. Not shy but strangely timid (he never travelled alone, he was innocent of the practical details of travel), Hunter at his most extroverted could be almost psychotic. He was deaf and distracted in the way serious drug takers become, even when they are sober, either shouting or whispering. I have no idea how he managed to write a word, but he wrote a dozen memorable books. He hardly slept, and he kept the strangest hours. Any friend of Hunter's can recount the phone ringing at 3am and the low conspiratorial growl, 'It's 'Unner!'"