Mistaken for Junkie/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character is mistaken for a drug addict.

  • Straight: Alice a diabetic is getting shaky from low blood sugar. She goes someplace private to give herself a dose of glucagon. Bob walks in and thinks she's a heroin addict.
  • Exaggerated: The principal of a school for children with severe medical issues, Bob ends up believing that diabetes is just an excuse to get high on insulin and tries to ban it from the school. Despite one fourth of the students being diabetics.
  • Justified: Alice was investigating Vision, a telepathic drug when her mother found it in backpack. She then concludes that Alice's powers came from this in the first place.
    • The two aren't mutually exclusive, after all. So if Alice is diabetic and also is a drug addict, Bob has caught her doing drugs, but doesn't know about her medical issues, he would have good reason to mistake her for junkie. Although, that's more of a 'Mistaken for junkie' in one specific instance, in that she is a junkie, she's just not using at the time Bob chooses to walk in.
  • Inverted: Alice is an addict and is going through withdraw after her dealer got busted and she can't get a new supply. Bob thinks her symptoms are from emerging telepathy and gives her the number of a teacher to help her deal with it.
  • Subverted: At first it looks like a misunderstanding then it turns out she was an addict all along.
  • Double Subverted: However, she is also diabetic, and at the time was only using insulin.
  • Parodied: Alice's medicine containers are clearly marked in big red letters, yet Bob still thinks she's an addict.
  • Deconstructed:???
  • Reconstructed:???
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: Alice is startled by Bob walking in on her. Bob reads the label and apologizes for startling her and leaves her to dose in privacy.
  • Enforced: The whole episode is an Author Tract on the war on drugs.
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: ???
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Played For Laughs: Alice getting caught taking insulin and shouting "It's not heroin!" becomes a Running Gag.
  • Played For Drama: Alice gets in severe trouble because her insulin was mistaken for heroin by an authority figure.

We need talk about your addiction. Head back to Mistaken for Junkie to get the help you need.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Mistaken_for_Junkie/Playing_With?oldid=863019"