Fantastic Drug: Difference between revisions

* The ''[[In Death]]'' series has a lot, with names like Zoner (a marijuana [[Fictional Counterpart]]), and Zeus (a PCP analogue).

* The ''[[Red Dwarf (novel)|Red Dwarf]]'' novels had "Bliss", a brown powder that literally made you believe you were God, could supposedly get you hooked just by looking at it & would cause the user to become suicidally depressed for decades after coming down, which is probably what made it so addictive. Also, Better than Life, which was a sort of [[Lotus Eater Machine]] in the books rather than the more innocuous artificial reality video game of the TV series.

* Fictional drugs abound in ''The [[Naked Lunch]]'' by William Burroughs: Black Meat, Mugwump Juice, etc.

* AUM from ''[[Illuminatus|The Illuminatus! Trilogy]]'', alongside a whole pharmacy of real drugs.

*** I'm shocked that no one has mentioned the drug in ''Finder'' that supposedly turns it users into elves... needless to say, it doesn't work.

* [[Zilpha Keatley Snyder]]'s Green-sky books (known to gamers as [[Below the Root]]) had Wissenberries. Also known as Sacred Berries, or just Berries. A narcotic with both medicinal and recreational uses, the Kindar also used it as a means of social self-control, even giving it to kids to quiet them down in class (Snyder was a school teacher, and the use of pharmaceuticals to make kids quiet and obedient is [[Older Than You Think]]). Addicts were called "Berry-dreamers". Snyder never said that Berries caused the dreaded "wasting" disease, but she did say that people with the wasting tended to eat a lot of Berries, even when they won't eat anything else. If you were really hardcore you could try pavo-berries, which come from a "parasitic shrub" and will kill you sooner rather than later.

* ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'' by Patrick Rothfuss has Denner Resin, which acts like opium. Addicts can be spotted because of their very white smiles (and the fact that they will do ''anything'' to get their next fix). This becomes a significant plot point when {{spoiler|a local dragon finds a Denner Tree orchard, eats the trees, and becomes addicted. And then it runs out of trees...}}

* In [[Eddie and The Gang With No Name|The Seagulls Have Landed]] by Colin Bateman, one of these, called "Crush" becomes a critical plot point. A whole gang war is going on over the stuff.

* Since the only law in the titular city of [[Mortasheen]] is "Chaos Reigns", then it should come as no surprise that a few of the game's [[Mons]] are madde for producing these. Aside from [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/daemonut.htm the two] [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/grimbrosia.htm plant based ones], there's also the [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/crepusculent.htm Crepusclent], which secretes psychotropic worms that give you ludicrously powerful [[Psychic Powers]], but also [[Hilarity Ensues|causes very vivid hallucinations]]. There's also [http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/jitter.htm Jitter], who has tumorous drug-producing glands in its head, that make it "a viable alternative to the coffe machine". Unfortunately, due to these glands' they're pretty much all insane.

* ''[[Over the Edge]]'' has several imaginary designer drugs such as Slo Mo, which gives the impression that time has slowed down.

** Some background materials imply that the Emperor's Children, a legion of the settings worst abusers of combat drugs, manufacture those drugs from the basic components from [[Human Resources|broken down human bodies]].

** Combat drugs aside, there are several recreational drugs that exist in the background as well. The most ubiquitous being the narcotic lho-sticks, which are smoked like a cigarette and apparently an opiate. Others include obscura, gladstones, and grinweed. Another example that plays the trope much straighter is flects, which are warp-saturated bits of broken glass, "used" simply by looking into them; keep in mind that since they are tainted by the [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|warp]], flects are a much more insidious example than most others on this page...

** A suggested plothook in ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'' is the discovery of a goblin fruit known as "bloodroot", which has vampire-only narcotic properties, and the potential havoc that can ensue as unscrupulous changelings begin messing with vampire society and vampires, in turn, discover there is a drug they can actually ''feel'' and come hunting for it in turn.

** One running plot for the ''[[Orpheus]]'' line involved "pigment," a special type of heroin created by exposure to ghostly matter. Those who overdosed on it became their own special type of ghost - a "Hue," which could use [[The Dark Side|Spite]] with reduced penalty.

** Also, in the Known World/Mystara setting for D&D, there's an Alphatian drug called zzonga.

* ''[[Exalted]]'' not only has fantastic drugs, it has fantastic ways to produce mundane drugs. Namely, the Beasts of Resplendent Liquid, immortal dinosaur-like beasts engineered in the First Age by a Twilight Caste bioengineer. They feed on pharmaceutically helpful plants and [[Solid Gold Poop|ferment]] the plants into an associated medicine. The Guild, however, got their hands on the Beasts, and now mainly put them to work on poppy fields so they can corner the heroin market.

[[Category:This Is Your Index On Drugs]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]