Banks described this as ''not cut-your-wrists stuff, far worse than that'', but there are still lots of good jokes in it. Also I'm convinced that the main character, Cameron Colley, is basically Hunter Thompson, whom he calls St. Hunter. Colley, like Thompson, has a vastly drug-ridden lifestyle, but unlike Thompson (so far), it does eventually kill him. It's also a kind of wish-fulfilling rant. As Ko-Ko says in ''The Mikado'', To let the punishment fit the crime. 

this was written at the time of reading. HST died in 2005 but even then it wasn't the drugs.