Adrenochrome in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Factual Questions
1

There is a part in H. S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where he mentions taking adrenochrome as a drug, and further, that it can only be extracted from a living (though dead shortly thereafter?) body’s adrenal gland. I have three questions:

  1. Is it true that there is no adrenochrome in adrenal glands extracted from corpses?
  2. If you really do need a living donor - it doesn’t need to be a human one, right? I read the book about ten years ago, but I still remember being puzzled by that bit of it. You can just cut up a pig or whatever, right?
  3. Can an organism possessing an adrenal gland survive without one if it excised through surgery?
2

Synthesis here:

You can also buy the stuff from Sigma. No warm bodies, other than a lab tech, are required.

3

my WAG is that Hunter made that bit up. Adrenochrome appears to have some mild hallucenogenic properties, but seems nothing special

“In the DVD commentary, director Terry Gilliam admits that his and Thompson’s portrayal is fictional hyperbole.” from Adrenochrome - Wikipedia

4

Hyperbole or not, that was the most hysterically funny scene in the book.