Artistic License Pharmacology: Difference between revisions

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* [[Love Is in the Air]]

* [[Magic Antidote]]

* [[Psycho Serum]]

* [[Super Serum]]

* In a [[Midsomer Murders]] episode an old lady took a large amount of pills, wrote a suicide letter, had tea and then confessed to everything to the detectives before oh-so-conveniently dying before she could be arrested.

* ''[[Chuck]]'' likes poisons. One particular example had an enemy spy inject herself with a large quantity of ricin to avoid capture, because "[[Torture Always Works|everyone talks]]". She of course dies instantly, despite the fact that ricin ''can take days to work'', slowly shutting down its victim's organs and rendering them in a position of considerable pain. Just tell yourself that the large syringe had hit a major blood vessel and she died of internal bleeding.

* You might be intrigued to see a murderer in an episode of ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' killing his victims by instructing them to kill themselves, which they do obediently after he blows a certain muscle relaxant at their faces. As this [http://www.criminalmindsfanwiki.com/page/6.23+Big+Sea Criminal Minds Wiki entry] points out, this was exaggerated from urban legends about scopolamine.

 

** This is why when you are about to start a new drug, it's always a good idea to tell the doctor everything else you're taking. Also ask about food restrictions, vinegar or wine can cause a fatal heart attack if you're taking an MAO inhibitor, and grapefruit juice can render some antivirals and antirejection drugs ineffective.

* The concept of "set and setting" is related to the above and also something that many people in [[Real Life]] ignore, to their regret, as well as almost never being mentioned in fictional portrayals. "Set" means the mindset in which you consume the substance (e.g. your motivation for taking it and present emotions, e.g. someone [[Drowning My Sorrows]] and someone having a celebratory drink may have very different reactions to the alcohol, even if they are the same person), while "setting" is the surroundings in which the substance is consumed (e.g. are you drinking that can of beer in your car behind the wheel, in a loud sports bar, or quietly at home? All may have very different effects on yourself and those around you.) Ignoring set and setting in the use of a substance causes substance use-related deaths and injuries, bad experiences with side effects or original effects, and other problems. "Set and setting" is important in how ANY substance taken will affect you and its effect on others around you as well, although it is probably most important for drugs that more perceptibly alter your perceptions of reality (i.e. "hallucinogens": psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants).

** DXM/Dextromethorphan, an over the counter cough remedy that even kids can buy in most states, is one of the most risky legal highs around. Mix the effect with anything from antidepressants to MDMA to certain foods, and you can quite easily die from serotonin syndrome.

** Diphenhydramine (Benedryl) is an anticholinergic drug which, at normal doses, alleviates allergy symptoms and insomnia. In large doses, it's a potent deliriant which can cause total short-term memory loss as well as extremely vivid hallucinations. The most common hallucinations? Spiders and shadow-people.

*** To be precise, that's not so much "the" explanation as ''an'' explanation from someone who comes across as… [[Cloudcuckoolander|what's a nice way to put it]]? The more common explanation homeopaths give for their remedy is that, in one way or another, [[A Wizard Did It|"water has a memory"]]. At the time homeopathy was first being developed, atomic theory wasn't as well-established, so some people figured that no matter how much you diluted something, there'd still be something there. In this view, water isn't made of separate non-liquid molecules but out of… [[Shaped Like Itself|water]], at all levels of abstraction, and therefore you can never remove all the solute from a solvent. Since [[Science Marches On|we know better now]], a [[Voodoo Shark|new account]] about "water memory" (often coupled with "quantum" something) had to be developed.

** It's worth noting that at the time homeopathy was first proposed, many "medicines" included things like arsenic or mercury - so dilluting them down to nothing actually did improve patient outcomes by virtue of "not poisoning people". Nowadays, not so much.

** Mind, the iron in your Wheaties is probably not in the form of elemental iron, but is in some oxidized form, possibly an acid salt, like ferric citrate, or some iron oxide.<ref>Which, by the way, is rust.</ref>

* Contrary to what one might see in many espionage movies, potassium cyanide does not kill in matter of seconds. It takes at least few minutes before cyanide begins to act, and few following minutes to cause death by massive apnea and cardiac failure. Additionally, victims are also portrayed as frothing at mouth and quickly passing out. In reality, an acute cyanide poisoning is pretty messy affair involving strong seizures.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

 

* A recent episode of [[The Simpsons]] had Lisa being put on antidepressants and immediately falling into a blissful and oblivious state complete with hallucinations. In real life antidepressants simply get you back to normal; they don't give you instant happiness. And they certainly don't cause visual hallucinations.

** While it is not the normal reaction, there is a bit of truth to this one. Anti-Depressants when given to a bipolar individual can make them go into a manic episode. They also can cause mood imbalances when they're first started while the body acclimates, but nothing so extreme.

 

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