It is it no way an accurate trip report. Some people have said in the book it reads like a DMT trip.

And it's decades past "public knowledge" because it's based on a book from the 1970s. I read the book way before the movie came out. It's not a realistic novel and I always read it adrenochrome as a metaphor. The book and the movie are not realistic. Even before the adrenochrome scene, they would have been in the hospital just from their alcohol consumption, let alone the other street drugs they are supposed to be taking one after the other. If I remember correctly they supposedly take ether on the drive to Las Vegas.

The theme of the book is the bad vibes of the 1970s drug culture after the failure of the hippie love culture. Failure and regret are big themes. Folks started doing speed and heroin and burning out after dabbling in pot. So Hunter Thompson seemed to want to pick the most out there crazy thing imaginable. Something most folks never heard about. The director of the movie seems not to have realized that adrenochrome was a real substance that actually existed according to some interviews. It's just not a drug people take to get high, though the book might have convinced some people to try it.

And had been mentioned in a few other novels. In the early 1960s it was thought to contribute to schizophrenia by one doctor who studied it. He theorized that some people had a defect and couldn't metabolize it like the rest of us and it contributed to schizophrenia.

However his results are not able to be replicated and they now think there are multiple different things that contribute to schizophrenia.