Juan Thompson has written a memoir about his father and reveals how he was dangled as a baby in his arms - as his father shot his .44 Magnum

Drink- and drug-fueled 'gonzo' journalist Hunter S. Thompson shot himself to death 10 years ago while his son was in the next room

He was a gun-loving, hard-drinking 'outlaw journalist' with a taste for illegal substances.

Hunter S. Thompson reached the peak of his literary career in the mid-Seventies after his books, Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, were published to great success.

His writing broke from conventional reporting and straddled both fiction and non-fiction, a unique approach dubbed 'Gonzo journalism' which turned him into a counter-culture icon and won him legions of fans.

Fear and Loathing was adapted into a 1998 movie starring Johnny Depp as Hunter's surrogate writer persona, Raoul Duke.

And now, a decade after the writer committed suicide at his Colorado ranch, his only son, Juan Thompson, has written a memoir revealing the truth behind the myth of his brilliant but often troubled father.

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Favorite picture: Juan Thompson is held by his father as the gonzo journalist inspects a target he has fired at with his .44 Magnum.

No fear or loathing: Hunter S Thompson, his wife Sandy and son Juan at home at Owl Farm. In the background is the motorbike which Hunter would take Juan for rides on, a shared experience they bonded over

Happy family: Despite his hard-living, Thompson was a loving father - although his son came to fear the prospect of 'a beating'. His wife Sandy endured his drinking and affairs until Juan was a teenager

On the edge: Sometimes Hunter would crank up his Bultaco Matador trail motorcycle, I would climb on the back and hang on to him as tightly as I could, and we would race down the street'

Hunter, 67, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home on February 20, 2005, while Juan, his wife Jennifer and their seven-year-old son Will were in another room.

Juan's memoir, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson, published on January 5, aims to correct skewed public perceptions of a man whose life was often obscured by his outrageous behavior.

Juan insists that there was a side to his father beyond the wild and entertaining tales - a loving father and grandfather whose influence he feels to this day.

He told Daily Mail Online: 'The biggest misconception is that Hunter was a party animal, that what he was about was getting f***** up on whatever and just having a good time and flouting societal rules, not for any real purpose beyond breaking the rules.

'That's not at all what he was about. I've asked a lot of people why he was important to them and many of them have read his books, and have what I would consider, a proper appreciation for what he was doing.

'But I think there's a lot of people who don't know that much about him and they see this caricature which he helped to create.

'This image of him as a clown - an interesting clown - but a clown.'

Juan, now 51, had a complex relationship with his father – a man who he describes in turn as 'an alcoholic and drug fiend, a wild, angry, passionate, sometimes dangerous, charismatic, unpredictable, irresponsible, idealistic, sensitive man with a powerful and deeply rooted sense of justice'.

Unlike his father, Juan is an IT healthcare worker and happily married father of one.

Stories I Tell Myself begins with a little-known side of Hunter - a married father to a young son struggling to find a foothold in his career.

Juan Thompson was born in March 1964 to Hunter and his wife of one year, Sandra, known as Sandy.

At the time they were living in a shack without heating in northern California and Sandy worked as a secretary to boost Hunter's meager earnings.

Juan writes: 'For food, he would occasionally shoot a deer or an elk. My mother told me that for the duration of her pregnancy she lived on elk meat (especially elk liver), salad, and milk.'

But the writer seemed contented as a new dad as Juan notes from the number of family photographs that existed from the time - not all of them exactly from the average family album.

Along with snapshots of the family in the garden and swimming pool, Juan writes about his favorite picture as 'a photo of Hunter standing beside a large tree with a target nailed to it, a .44 Magnum pistol in one hand and a tiny me in his other arm, pointing with the barrel of the gun at the tight grouping of shots in the center of the target'.

Ranch life: In 1968 Hunter bought Owl Farm in Colorado - and soon afterwards built a playhouse for Juan. 'You wouldn't, I wouldn't, think of Hunter as a dad who built a playhouse for his son, but there he is.'

Shared time: Hunter S Thompson's love of guns saw him and his son spend time together shooting and cleaning guns. Juan cleaned the semi-automatic pistol the gonzo journalist used the next day to kill himself

Growing up gonzo: Hunter, Sandy and Juan on the front lawn of their house in California, before Thompson's spectacular success as a journalist allowed him to buy the ranch in Colorado where lived until his death

Tough: Sandy Thompson with Juan. She supported her husband during her pregnancy when times were hard and they ate elk which he had hunted

In 1968 Hunter bought Owl Farm, the Colorado ranch where he would stay for the rest of his life.

Juan describes idyllic summers spent picnicking in the woods with his father and mother, Sandy, their friends and kids.

The secluded landscape was well-suited to his father's love of wild pranks and aptitude for explosions, bonfires and shooting practice.

Juan writes: 'Sometimes Hunter would crank up his Bultaco Matador trail motorcycle, I would climb on the back and hang on to him as tightly as I could, and we would race down the street.

'We never talked about it, it was just a quick motorcycle ride, but it was also a private adventure just between us. We didn't have that many of them, so those memories are precious.'

His son reveals a softer side to Hunter - including awkwardness with demonstrations of love and how he often tried to convey his feelings by giving his son thoughtful gifts.

In 1974, he went to Zaire for Rolling Stone magazine to cover the Rumble in the Jungle - the heavyweight championship boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Hunter missed the fight because he was drunk at his hotel, but he returned with a pair of souvenir gold boxing gloves for Juan, Ali being one of the few people that the journalist unreservedly admired.

Hunter rarely remembered birthdays or other special events but one Christmas he came home with a record player for his son.

Juan writes: 'I see now that the boxing gloves and the stereo were awkward tokens of love. Hunter wasn't much for demonstrations of love, at least not his love of family and friends (lovers were an entirely different matter), so he did it through gifts.'

The memoir also includes the more bizarre moments of Hunter and Sandy's unorthodox child-rearing.

Around a year after he was born, Hunter and Sandy took Juan to a party in the woods outside San Francisco thrown by Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and a prominent counter-culture figure.

Hunter thought it was a good idea to invite members of the Hells Angels to the party.

Juan writes: 'I can only imagine the scene: dozens, maybe hundreds of people in various stages of undress, stoned on pot, tripping on LSD, drunk on beer – maybe all three at once – wandering around in the forest while music blared from the house and the colored lights strung among the trees flashed.

'At one point during the party the Hells Angels gang-raped a woman in a small cabin, an event that haunted Hunter for a long time afterward.'

In the middle of the frenzied scene was baby Juan, fast asleep in one of the cabins.

Juan describes the episode as 'a situation that violates all my notions of safe and responsible parenting'.

Daily life with Hunter had its own unusual routine. A night-owl from childhood, Hunter would still be asleep when Juan returned home from school at 3pm. His son would tip-toe around the house so as not to wake him.

The writer would rise in time to watch Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News, the one channel the family's black-and-white TV set received.

Dressed in his robe, he would eat breakfast, 'always bacon and eggs, often with corned beef hash, and some toast with orange marmalade'.

Hunter would then shower and begin his day which often involved making the short drive into Aspen to see friends.

Together time: Juan Thompson (second from left) with his father in the Jerome Bar in Aspen. One night I discovered that drunk people drop money on the floor. I began crawling under the bar stools, picking up dimes, nickels, and quarters. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed this simple source of income earlier,' Juan writes

Father of the groom: When Juan told Hunter he was getting married to Jennifer 'he was ecstatic. He whooped, he smiled, he demanded champagne for a toast, he went searching for gifts to give us, finally settling on a mounted rattlesnake's head under glass'

Writing was done in the small hours when he returned home – and meeting deadlines was an erratic affair.

Juan told Daily Mail Online: 'Hunter's process seemed to be, at least what I remember, always at the last-minute and incredibly stressful. He put off major deadlines, he passed the deadlines.'

His son was determined to take a different approach and aimed to put 1,000 words on the page each day when writing his book. However some of his father's old writing habits had died hard.

Juan said: 'In many ways my life has been a reaction to his but towards the end [of the book], I was trying to fill in some gaps and to help I made a playlist of Hunter's favorite songs for when I was writing.

'It felt right. It was music he would play when he was working at night – Herbie Mann, the Allman brothers, the Rolling Stones. It was a bridge to there.'

Hunter was a literary star by the early Seventies and roamed Aspen like it was 'his private club', Juan recalls.

His father would take him along to 'headquarters' - the Hotel Jerome Bar in Aspen - and while Hunter held court among the crowd, his son worked out an ingenuous money-making scheme.

Juan writes: 'One night I discovered that drunk people drop money on the floor. I began crawling under the bar stools, picking up dimes, nickels, and quarters. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed this simple source of income earlier.'

His next stop was a store down the block for an armful of Archie's comics.

The family moved temporarily to Washington DC in 1972 so Hunter could cover the Nixon/McGovern presidential campaigns for Rolling Stone magazine.

Juan was sent to an experimental 'Free School' - which had an even looser take on education than the alternative Aspen Community School his mother had enrolled him in back in Colorado.

LIFE OF AN OUTLAW: HOW HUNTER S. THOMPSON WENT FROM GENTEEL KENTUCKY TO TAKING ON NIXON Hunter Stockton Thompson was born on July 18, 1937, to a middle-class family in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Jack Robert Thompson, was a World War I veteran who worked in insurance and his mother, Virginia, was head librarian at Louisville Public Library. Hunter's father died when he was 14, leaving his mother to raise him and his two brothers amid financial struggles. Prevented from finishing high school after being charged as an accessory to a robbery when he was found in a car with the accused, he was sentenced to two months in jail and on getting out, he joined the Air Force. It was during his military service that Hunter got his first taste of journalism by becoming sports editor of the air base newspaper. His 1966 novel, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, was based on a year-long experience riding with the motorbike gang and cemented his reputation as a writer. 'I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.' In the late Sixties, Hunter used a portion of his Hell's Angels royalty check to put a down payment on Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colorado, which would become his home for the rest of his life. His career was on the ascent and in 1971, his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream was published. It was adapted into a movie in 1998 starring Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. Depp lived in Hunter's basement for four months as he prepared for the role and they formed a friendship which lasted until the end of the writer's life. Hunter's style became known as 'Gonzo journalism' and straddled both fiction and non-fiction writing. In 1972, he covered the Nixon/McGovern presidential campaigns for Rolling Stone magazine and became a vocal opponent of Nixon, describing him as 'that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character'. He became well-known for his wild antics with alcohol and drugs, once remarking: 'I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.' However his writing output dropped off as he indulged in his vices. In 1980, Hunter and Sandra Thompson divorced and he went on to have several relationships with women several decades younger than himself. In 2003, the 66-year-old writer married his literary assistant Anita Bejmuk, 30, and two years later, committed suicide. Four days before his death, he had written a note, which was later published by Rolling Stone. 'No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun - for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax - This won't hurt.' Advertisement

At the DC school, Juan recalls: 'It was operated out of a run-down, walk-up, second-story apartment in a grimy neighborhood of Washington. There were maybe ten other kids and between two and four teachers who were mostly young hippies with long hair, round John Lennon glasses, and big ideas about progressive education...

'Some days we made candles by melting wax in pots on the kitchen stove and pouring them into molds. One day we broke a three-foot hole in the drywall between a room and the hallway. I don't remember being reprimanded or scolded.'

In the mid-Seventies, Hunter and Sandy Thompson's marriage deteriorated with years of Hunter's volatile temper, drinking and mistresses taking their toll.

During their time in DC, the couple also suffered the loss of a baby girl who died in hospital around a day after she was born.

As he entered his teens, Juan became more and more afraid of his father's cruel outbursts and explosive anger.

'I was coming to fear him more and respect him less. His anger, quick to erupt and unpredictable, was a terrifying thing, and could be triggered by trivial provocations,' Juan writes.

When he had particularly enraged his father, Juan feared 'A Beating'.

He writes: 'Fully appreciating the power of the right word, he [Hunter] never called it a spanking or even a whipping. He always called it a Beating, with its implication of severe pain.'

In his early teens, Juan recalls being woken in the middle of the night by his parents screaming at each other.

Wedding day: Hunter, Deb Fuller, his longtime friend and assistant, Juan and Jennifer. The journalist was wearing his trademark Converse sneakers

Loving grandfather: He refused to be called grandpa and settled on Ace, but formed a close bond with Juan's son Will, spending time together on the Colorado farm

Missing presence: 'I'm not angry at Hunter very often about his suicide. I am angry, though, that he did not stay around for Will'

'The battles got longer and louder. Some nights there was a new sound, the smash of glass or ceramic shattering like a bomb.'

Hunter seemed aware of the effect that the crumbling home environment was having on his son.

To allow Juan an escape, Hunter organized for the 13-year-old to go sailing around the Bahamas with his friend, Jimmy Buffet, then a small-time musician.

Juan writes: 'While working on this book I asked Jimmy how that trip came about. He said Hunter was worried about me.

'Hunter was concerned about the effect of the divorce on me, and thought that some time away from Aspen would be good for me. "I always thought it was out of a true sense of love that he made that decision to send you sailing with me," he told me.'

For several weeks in the fall of 1977, Juan acted as cabin boy on Buffet's yacht, with its 'omnipresent smell of powerful weed'. He did odd jobs and ran errands for crew and Jimmy's guests as they island-hopped through Caribbean.

Juan told Daily Mail Online: 'Buffet wasn't a big name then, he had his first radio single and was doing well but he wasn't anything like what he is today.

Someone once asked Hunter at a lecture how he would react if he found out his son had taken acid. He responded, 'I'd beat the s*** out of him.'

'He was just a really nice guy. I didn't really think of him as a famous musician - he was the captain.'

A year after his Bahamas adventure, Hunter and Sandy were in New York with Juan when they visited John Belushi.

Hanging out at the house was Bill Murray, who went on to star in the 1980 semi-autobiographical comedy about Hunter, Where the Buffalos Roam.

Juan told Daily Mail Online: 'When I met Bill Murray he was a guy sitting on the couch, kind of odd but interesting to talk to. It wasn't until a few years later I thought "oh, that's who that was".'

Back in Colorado, the relationship between Hunter and Sandy became even more fraught and their fights more intense until in 1978, she finally left the writer.

After a final dramatic showdown between the couple at Owl Farm, Sandy and Juan were escorted from the home by Colorado state troopers, while Hunter screamed threats and insults after them.

Juan lived with his mother and made regular visits to Owl Farm to see Hunter. He writes: 'Once we were separated, I longed to be with him, though once there, neither he nor I knew what to do.'

It was at this time, Hunter and Juan struck upon their mutual appreciation of guns.

Juan writes: 'One activity we did together was clean guns. He had many guns and he shot most of them frequently.

'Cleaning them was laborious but necessary. It became a bonding ritual between us that lasted up until the day of his death.'

Life with his mother was not without its bizarre moments. Sandy actively supported her son's experimentation with LSD and when he was 14, Juan took acid with her and a boyfriend at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Despite Hunter's own prolific and well-documented drug use, those rules did not apply to his son.

Juan recalls in the book: 'I also remember hearing that someone once asked Hunter at a lecture how he would react if he found out his son had taken acid. He responded, "I'd beat the s*** out of him."

Tortured process: Thompson would write in the early hours of the morning after returning from seeing his friends in Aspen. 'Hunter's process seemed to be, at least what I remember, always at the last-minute and incredibly stressful'

Bond: Johnny Depp spent four months living in Hunter S Thompson's basement before playing the journalist in the 1998 adaptation of Fear and Loathing. Depp paid for his funeral

'I did not talk to Hunter about my drug use then or in fact ever. And he never asked. He didn't want to know.'

Juan first read his father's work as a teenager and was left struggling to reconcile the author with the man he knew at home.

Juan writes: 'I read Hell's Angels in high school and I thought his description, at the end of the book, of driving the motorcycle down Highway 101 in the middle of the night was not only brilliantly written, but romantic, secret, and wonderful.

'I wanted that kind of life, and not only was Hunter writing about it, he was my father.'

But the pride for his 'outlaw journalist' father was conflicted with his personal experience. 'In private, though, when he let me down, I was ashamed of him and I was filled with bitterness.'

The relationship remained fractured and during college, Juan turned to Adult Children of Alcoholics, a sub-group of Al-Anon, to better understand his father's chronic drinking.

Juan wrote a letter to his father telling him he was an alcoholic and that he would no longer help him to drink.

One night when Will was asleep on the bed, without warning Hunter retired early, and when Jen and I went looking for him, we found him and Will sleeping together on his bed, curled up on their sides. It is an image I will not forget. How Hunter S Thompson became a loving grandfather

Hunter didn't take kindly to the letter and marked the pages in red pen with the words, 'Balls!'; 'Chickens***' and 'Evil Poppa'. Yet from that point, he no longer asked Juan to get him beer or ice for his whiskey.

Hunter appeared to mellow as years passed, as his old friend Jimmy Buffet once told Juan.

'As you got older, I truly believe you were an anchor for him. As his world seemed to get crazier the older he got, he really cherished you,' Buffet said.

Juan told Daily Mail Online that he has come to recognize some of his father's traits in himself.

'I certainly have an instinctive resistance to authority. Hunter was wired from birth that he could not, and would not, submit to authority.

'The longest he worked for a boss was at Time magazine in 1959 and he got fired. He had a couple of other short stints and he lasted like a month. He had to be on his own.

'I'm definitely much more moderate but there's a definite suspicion of authority.

'The tricky thing is to encourage my son to question authority and yet be judicious in your resistance because I would not encourage him to follow in Hunter's footsteps.'

Juan recalls in his memoir Hunter's reaction when he told him that he was getting married after meeting Jennifer in the early Nineties.

'He was ecstatic. He whooped, he smiled, he demanded champagne for a toast, he went searching for gifts to give us, finally settling on a mounted rattlesnake's head under glass.'

At Juan and Jennifer's wedding in August 1994, Hunter was the grinning, proud father-of-the-groom, decked out in a white tux with bow tie, the outfit completed with his Converse All-Stars and the ever-present cigarette.

The couple's son, Will, was born in 1998 and although Hunter at first found it hard to adjust to being thought of as a grandfather, he bonded with his grandson instantly during the first visit.

'While Will was sitting on his lap, playing with the typewriter, Hunter said "I recognize this boy",' Juan writes.

However being called grandpa was out of the question – instead Hunter adopted the name Ace.

Juan shared one moment tender moment between his grandson and grandfather during a visit to Owl Farm.

Classic: Hunter S Thompson's best-known book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was made into a movie with Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Torro in 1998

SPIRIT IN THE SKY: THE FUNERAL OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON In the 1970s, Hunter S. Thompson was already planning his funeral – and much like the man, himself, it was never going to be a restrained affair. He had envisioned his ashes being shot out of a cannon behind his home, Owl Farm, in Woody Creek, Colorado. Hunter had designed the cannon with his long-time artistic collaborator, Ralph Stedman. The tower was shaped in a double-thumbed clenched fist with four fingers holding a peyote button, a hallmark of Gonzo journalism. The writer had brought up his funeral wishes again on the night before he committed suicide. In his memoir of his father, his son Juan writes: 'Therefore, there was no question of how to proceed. A cannon would be built.' Fitting end: His ashes were in the fireworks The project was quietly financed by Johnny Depp, a longtime friend of Hunter who starred in film adaptations of his books, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and The Rum Diary. Juan views Depp's gift as a great tribute to his father. He told Daily Mail Online: 'I was so impressed with that first demonstration of [Johnny's] character. 'That celebration was just about Hunter and he did not want any recognition or attention from it. It was an act of generosity. 'The same thing with The Rum Diary [a 2011 movie starring Depp based on Hunter S. Thompson's book]. When he made that, it was a tribute.' On August 20, 2005, Hunter's ashes were fired from a cannon on top of a 153ft tower, close to Owl Farm, accompanied by fireworks and songs, Spirit In the Sky by Norman Greenbaum and Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man. Around 300 people attended the memorial along with Hunter's family and widow Anita, including actors Johnny Depp, Jack Nicholson, Billy Murray, Benicio del Toro, Senators John Kerry and George McGovern and musicians Lyle Lovett and John Oates. Advertisement

'One night when Will was asleep on the bed, without warning Hunter retired early, and when Jen and I went looking for him, we found him and Will sleeping together on his bed, curled up on their sides. It is an image I will not forget,' he writes.

He later remarks: 'I'm not angry at Hunter very often about his suicide. I am angry, though, that he did not stay around for Will.'

In 1999, Hunter had hip replacement surgery and four years later underwent an operation on his lower back.

His recovery was inhibited by his life-long alcoholism and drug use and these factors were key to his declining health – memories that his son found hardest to address in the book.

Juan told Daily Mail Online: 'What really struck me about the alcohol was it wasn't that he would drink and lose control and get violent or be the stereotype of a drunk. He didn't seem to ever get drunk.

'But the long-term effects over years and years of all that alcohol just started to break his body down. Part of that was the incontinence and that was hard to write about because that was deeply embarrassing for him.

'Were he alive, I would never talk about that because it would be humiliating. But I decided that it was important for people to know how alcohol had really affected him in the long run.

'I think it really was one of the factors in his decision to kill himself. His body was breaking down and it was irreversible. It was really affecting his ability to be independent.

'I think that's really important for people to know because one of the big questions has always been, why did he kill himself?

'Well he drank for 55 years and alcohol is a pretty serious poison when you drink it in large quantities every day.'

Juan recalls the night before his father took his own life. The father and son were in the kitchen, quietly involved in a familiar routine - Juan cleaning Hunter's guns and he inspecting each glistening part, before giving a grunt of approval.

'It's strange and sad that that which took him away from us that weekend was also one of the threads binding us,' Juan writes.

As Juan methodically wiped down gun parts with swabs dipped in solvent, Hunter handed his son a .45 semiautomatic pistol to be cleaned.

Hunter S. Thompson shot himself with the gun in his writing chair the following afternoon, seconds after Juan had left the room.

Hunter's wife of two years, Anita, had been on a call to the writer at the time but later said that she mistook the cocking of the gun for his typewriter keys and hung up.

A month later, Hunter's close family and friends held a private ceremony to mark his death at one of his old haunts, the Hotel Jerome.

The writer was then honored with a larger memorial six months later near his Woody Creek home.

The funeral, which involved Hunter's ashes being shot out of a cannon, was quietly paid for by his friend, Johnny Depp.

Juan has not stepped inside his father's home since then – although he has stayed with his family in another cabin on the land.

He said: 'It's the nature of Hunter's will which gave his widow Anita not ownership but the rights to live in Hunter's house for her lifetime. It's her residence not a shared residence that I can go into when I want.

'I don't really want to go back into the house. I went in about six months after his death, right around the time of the big funeral, and what struck me, almost physically, was his absence.

'It felt cold and empty because he wasn't there and going back in there now, it would just be sad.

'It wouldn't help me to reconnect with him, it would just reinforce his absence. Unintentionally, I feel that by writing this book, I connected to him in a way that means I don't need to be near the house and touch his things and try to connect with him through his possessions.

Juan's mother Sandy has yet to read the memoir.

'She's a bit apprehensive but we have a good relationship and we have talked about the childhood stuff, when it was abusive. She's glad I am including that because I was hesitant to talk about things that would have been humiliating to him when he was alive.

'She trusts me to do right by her and that I won't say anything hurtful. We also talked about her alcoholism back then and she had acknowledged it, so that's not going to be issue.

'There's some apprehension over what might be coming on the next page but I think she'll be happy with it.'

His son Will, now 17, has also yet to read the book.

Juan said: 'I don't want to speak for him but he is learning more about Hunter, the writer and public figure, and reading some of his books.

It wasn't that he would drink and lose control and get violent or be the stereotype of a drunk. He didn't seem to ever get drunk. But the long-term effects over years and years of all that alcohol just started to break his body down. Part of that was the incontinence and that was hard to write about because that was deeply embarrassing for him.

'The Hunter he knew was his grandfather when he was very young. He's really reluctant to acknowledge this public figure as his grandfather, he doesn't want that kind of attention.

'But he's coming to reconcile that and to understand him as a writer, and understand that he's my grandfather and I am proud of these aspects. Not go out there and make a big deal about it - but not hide it either.'

Juan added: 'I didn't want him to read my book until it was finished but I got copies last week and I gave him one. He tells me he's interested in reading it but like my mom, he's apprehensive.

'For me, it's a way to tell him a lot about me and my childhood and about Hunter that would be very hard to talk about otherwise.

'I'm very much looking forward to hearing what he thinks about it when he's ready to read it.'

In Stories I Tell Myself, Juan frequently distances himself from Hunter in his own approach to raising his son.

'There are stories that were he alive, I would be extremely reluctant to write about,' he said.

'Since he was dead, I had the freedom to decide because he's not going to suffer the consequences and have to deal with the impact.

'More importantly I kept thinking, what would Hunter want me to do? He would want me to tell the truth.'

But in the years that have passed since his death, Juan has reflected on what his father would have hoped for him.

'After so many years of worrying about what he wanted, what he thought, what he would approve of, when I was writing this book, I really got it. He really just wanted me to be happy and function.

'He didn't care what that looked like. If being a stockbroker was my thing, I think he would have been totally fine with that.

'That sounds so corny and clichéd but he wanted me to be happy because I'm his son and he loved me.

'He did not do that perfectly and he made a lot of mistakes as a father but I know that's what he wanted. And what every son wants is to know that.'

Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson by Juan Thompson is published by Knopf on January 5, priced $26.95