Immune to Drugs

Drugs Are Bad, mmmkay?

Except when terrible addictions to horrible drugs are Played for Laughs, often using a character who is Immune To Drugs.

These characters should be long since dead due to the vast amount of drugs and/or alcohol they take, but since their wacky antics must go on they rarely suffer any serious or lasting medical problems from them, aside from being insane, and quickly recover from them. It's almost like a superpower in some cases.

Aside from the physical effects, the character will rarely encounter any financial difficulties in supporting their habit, except as a plot point, even if they have no apparent job or other source of wealth.

Sometimes used when the character in question is poisoned, in which they show no ill effects. Because it's funny. Often used in this manner to break the Drama or establish the character as Immune to Drugs.

There is also a second variety where characters from Sci-Fi and fantasy media are literally immune due to their race, a body augmentation, or some kind of Green Rocks. That overlaps with Never Gets Drunk. It can also overlap with Alien Catnip if the disparate effect of the substance across species is a plot point.

A common distinguishing characteristic of a Gargle Blaster is that it can get this type of character drunk.

Can easily become a Charles Atlas Superpower due to Rule of Funny.

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Examples:

First Kind: Inexplicably Immune

Comic Books

• Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan, though he gets a rather horrible neurological ailment that makes him even more unpredictable, and is eventually likely to turn him into a vegetable — but that is caused by the one "drug" that he didn't take voluntarily.
  • He lives in a future where you can change your species and smoking won't kill you as long as you take the appropriate medication. It should be relatively easy to repair any damage caused by drugs and alcohol.
  • Even then, regenerative medicines don't reduce drug effects; his editor Royce recalls the one time he found Spider in a bathtub bound with healing tape and desperately trying to find a vein because all the other ones had collapsed.
  • Spider Jerusalem is modeled after Hunter S. Thompson, who was this trope as well. See Real Life below.

• Sociopathic drug addict FBI agent Red Ketchup started taking drugs for the job. Then casually. Then to keep going. Then to keep his drug-fuelled metabolism from shutting down. By the time the sleazeball movie director boss of his sister tries to poison him with cyanide, he merely does a Heroic BSoD instead. An emergency room doctor is amazed at the content of his blood, which reads more like the description of Otto's urine below, with some trace amounts of actual blood.
  Doctor: 10cc of this would kill an elephant.
  • It's unsurprising poison would fail to kill a guy who starts the day with a gallon of Prestone the same way most people drink coffee. His metabolism could make Ozzy himself back down from a drinking contest.
• The title characters of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, especially Fat Freddy Freekowski, pretty much subsist on large quantities of psychoactive drugs. Creator Gilbert Shelton has said that anyone claiming to be the "real" Freddy on which he supposedly based the character is lying, because such a person in real life would be long since dead.

Fan Works

• My Immortal, the best... or worst fanfiction ever written. The characters drink and smoke and... nothing happens. Justified in Ebony's case, because she's a vampire.
• In the Death Note AU Those Who Stand for Nothing Fall for Anything B tries to sedate Light by lacing his vodka with Ambien but it only leaves him slightly buzzed. Light later relates to L that he used to knock back "special drinks" like that all the time with Matt.
  L: I thought I heard you rattling when you walked into the Higuchi inquiry. Light, how did you live before I met you?
• Nora Valkyrie in RWBY: The Abridged Series manages to eat pancakes with enough sedatives to kill half of the students attending Beacon Academy after putting at least twenty-five pounds worth of dust into her system only a few hours earlier at most and all it did was make her stronger. Lie Ren even questions how the hell she’s still conscious.

Films — Live-Action

• Blow: George claims human beings can tolerate 1 to 1.5 grams of coke. He was snorting five grams a day, and did ten grams in ten minutes once.
• The bear in Cocaine Bear ingests enough cocaine to kill it and the entire cast several times over, but all the cocaine does it make it stronger, faster, and angrier. Note that the bear the film is based on did die from an overdose.
• Get Him to the Greek: Aldous Snow, as demonstrated especially by the infamous "Jeffrey" scene.
• In Thank You for Smoking, a group of anti-tobacco activists kidnap tobacco industry spokesperson Nick Naylor and attempt to kill him with a lethal dose of nicotine (by covering him from head to foot in nicotine patches). Later, his doctor tells him that he only survived because of his years of smoking, but if he ever smokes again, he could die because of the damage from the overdose.
• One character in The Men Who Stare at Goats claims to have built up a tolerance to a number of narcotics. Considering how he acts when dosed with LSD (along with a military base) this may not be true, or that may just be how he acts all the time now...
• Withnail and I: Withnail is shown drinking roughly nine and a half glasses of red wine, half a pint of cider, two and a half shots of gin, six glasses of sherry, 13 glasses of whisky, half a pint of ale and a shot of lighter fluid. And he also does pot. When offered a drug whose street name is "The Embalmer," he replaies, "Balls. I'll swallow it and run a mile." There's a supposed Drinking Game where the player drinks everything Withnail drinks when he drinks it, with something else substituted for the lighter fluid. It's unlikely that anyone who has even attempted the game has actually completed it.

Literature

• Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas take a ludicrous amount of drugs during a multi-day bender. They get pretty wrecked, but survive without any apparent physical damage. The characters were stand-ins for Hunter S. Thompson and his friend Oscar Zeta Acosta, whose real-life drug intake during the period was mostly likely only embellished slightly.
• If you try to drink along with any character in any work by Ernest Hemingway, you will die.
• According to the medical report in Thunderball when James Bond is not engaged in strenuous duty, he consumes half a bottle of spirits between 60 and 70 proof a day. And he smokes 60 cigarettes a day (of a higher nicotine content than standard cigarettes). In fact, a medical journal analyzed Bond's alcohol consumption and found that "The level of functioning as displayed in the books is inconsistent with the physical, mental, and indeed sexual functioning expected from someone drinking this much alcohol."
• While we're on the subject of nicotine and cocaine, Sherlock Holmes, anyone?
• In Barbara Tate's memoir, West End Girls, she writes about a prostitute who claims to be virtually immune to drugs, at one point taking an entire inhaler of benzedrine. Averted painfully - it becomes very clear over the course of the book that she vastly overestimates her immunity, and the aforementioned inhaler nearly kills her.
• How to Kill a Monster: The kids try to poison the monster by feeding it a pie after lacing it with many poisonous substances. They add rat poison, dry cleaner, turpentine, ammonia, paint, and mothballs. The monster eats it and collapses, but it soon turns out that the super poisonous pie only briefly knocked it out instead of killing it or even keeping it incapacitated for a good period of time. After it wakes up, it goes on like nothing happened with no lingering ill effects.

Live-Action TV

• Father Jack Hackett from Father Ted who is always drinking but never dies — even after drinking floor polish, toilet cleaner (once drank a bottle of Toilet Duck), and a whole bottle of illegal sleep medication. He is apparently only sober every twelve years.
  • Subverted: "I suppose sobriety for Father Jack must be like taking some sort of mad hallucinogenic." Whilst sober he can't see properly with single-vision. Usually able to spot a Nun, he has to be told a Nun is standing right in front of him.
  • Subverted again, when we discover one of the few things Jack can't stomach:
    Fr. Ted: No, Father! Don't drink that it's—
    (Jack takes a sip)
    Fr. Jack: FECKIN' WATER!!
• Karen from Will & Grace. She seems to border on Immune to Everything, as she's admitted to taking things that aren't designed for humans ("an eye dropper of cat tranquilizer") and who knows what else (I seem to recall her mentioning that she once took a random pill she found under her kitchen sink.)
• Reverend Jim Ignatowski, on Taxi.
• Gregory House pops way too many pills, mostly Vicodin. His colleagues, as doctors, are not terribly comfortable with this. He, as a doctor, even as a paragon of Dr. Jerk, isn't always comfortable with this.
• During one episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, it's revealed that Johnny Fever has developed such a massive tolerance to alcohol, his reaction time actually improves with every drink he takes. (Fellow DJ Venus Flytrap, on the other hand, gets plastered.)
• Bottom: Edward Elizabeth Hitler – a man who has only ever been drunk once. ^note For about seventeen years and counting. Managed to get blind-drunk ^note even by his own standards on ₤1·75 ^note “There’s a sale on at the chemist’s.” […] “Old Spice, 25p a bottle!”, leading him to be unable to find the front door or the floor after falling over, finally finishing—up with a nightcap consisting of a bottle of bleach. He always carries a hip-flask which contains brandy, meths, Pernod, paint stripper, Mister Sheen, brake fluid and Drambuie.
• Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous. Although she's had her stomach pumped many times, she's never experienced long-term side effects. Along with her rampant drug and alcohol abuse, she is almost never seen without a cigarette. When she attempted to quit smoking, she apparently began recharging the multiple patches on her body!
• Subverted by Charlie in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The hard-drinking, glue-sniffing loon scarfs down some brownies spiked with downers, saying, "I can handle my sedatives." To the amazement of his friends, he's still standing hours later, but he's in a drugged-out fog, muttering gibberish. By the end of the episode, he's passed out and drooling. Zig-Zagged, though, in that he ate the brownies meant for everyone in the bar. They were actually worried he would have been killed by this.
• Super Hans on Peep Show. In one episode, he takes four grams of cocaine in one go "to relax himself".
• Sean the Irish Bastard in the series one finale of Blackadder; it takes two shots of deadly poisoned wine to finish him off.
  "It's got a bit of a sting in its tail!"
• In Teen Wolf the werekids can't get drunk because of their healing factor.
• On My Name Is Earl, Catalina has been subjected to date-rape drugs so many times, she's developed an immunity to them.

Music

• Murdoc of Gorillaz has been almost constantly drunk for several months, as of current canon, on top of all the drinking and drug-taking he did before this. 2D, meanwhile, is addicted to prescription painkillers. Neither of them seem to have suffered any permanent harm from their habits.

Pro Wrestling

• André the Giant: "It usually takes two liters of vodka just to make me feel warm inside"^note Said before surgery to try and give anesthesiologists an idea of his tolerances since the standard scales and tables of the time didn't account for someone of his size. This led to the current practice of using someone's weight to extrapolate the necessary dosage of anesthesia.. Weighing somewhere between 475 and 540 pounds was almost certainly a factor.
• While Jake "The Snake" Roberts isn't exactly in a good place in terms of health, finances or professional standing, the fact that he should, by rights, be dead by now might count.
• Rob Van Dam. Despite being the most obvious space cadet in the wrestling business (and that's up against some very stiff competition), complete with periodic interviews with High Times magazine, he's still well regarded professionally, gets plenty of job offers and is a three time world champion.
• Jeff Hardy. A total of four Wellness violations with WWE; a drug raid on his home produced a laundry list of narcotics, leading to his ongoing drug trial (including one charge of opium trafficking) and was the subject a humiliating on-screen feud with CM Punk over his drug habits. Still has legions of fans and gets loads of offers of work. A notable exception was Victory Road 2011 where he turned up drugged as fuck, and got his ass kicked by Sting in under 90 seconds.

Tabletop Games

• This trope is one of the reasons the Noise Marines in Warhammer 40,000 are so messed up, except replace "drugs" with "all sensation". After thousands of years in worship of the god/ess of decadence, they get to the stage where they need to invent new drugs and listen to concussive blasts of pressure to get their kicks.

Video Games

• Fallout:
  • The Player Character can be a downplayed example in the first two games through the Chem Resistant trait, which reduces the chance of getting addicted to a drug by 50%, but also means that the effect of the drug only lasts for half as long. There's also an inverse trait, "Chem Reliant", where drugs affect you for twice as long, but you are twice as likely to be addicted as well. Taking both traits is a fun way of accomplishing absolutely nothing with maximum effort. The latter games in the series, however, turns Chem Resistant into a perk, removing the downside (with "Chemist" be the perk equivalent of "Chem Reliant").
  • The Old World Blues to New Vegas add-on adds the Logan's Loophole trait, which makes you immune to chem addiction, but caps your level at 30. As with other traits, you can change it with the upgraded Sink Auto Doc, and you get another perk anyway in the add-on which boosts your addiction resistance, stacking with Chem Resistant.
  • Joshua Graham in Fallout: New Vegas. He is Made of Iron and notoriously unkillable, so much that being thrown into the Grand Canyon while on fire didn't even slow him down enough for the packs of assassins that were sent down after him to finish the job. However, the burns that cover his entire body do cause him agonizing pain, and because he is such a tough bastard, no healing or pain-relieving chems work on him.
  • Ghouls are also a downplayed example as well. Chems like the post-War Jet, an extremely addictive chem that acts like methamphetamine, barely affect them as the mutation that made them ghouls heightened their senses. Unable to get off of jet, Ghouls mix jet with sugar found in Sugar Bomb cereal or Nuka-Cola and detergent or even Flamer fuel to refine the chemicals and create a more potent high.
  • Fallout 4 allows you to become immune to both drug and alcohol addiction, letting you shoot up/drink every recreational chemical in the wasteland without consequence. Survival mode, does however add the potential problem of getting a disease from all the drug use.
• Deus Ex: Alcohol will heal you, although it will mess up your screen for a short period of time, and zyme, a rather addictive drug of the future, will just blur your screen as well. Cigarettes will harm you though. Averted in Deus Ex: Invisible War however, in which alcohol will harm the character. In Human Revolution, alcohol will again health you (though with Regenerating Health it's mostly for temporarily boosting health beyond the regular maximum) and make you drunk, and while they're not an item it's stated Adam's aug's cancel out any negative effects of smoking (he muses that he's not even capable of a little self-destruction anymore).
• Godot in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations drinks up to 17 cups of coffee in court (and who knows how many more during the rest of the day) with no ill effects. It doesn't seem to be making him jittery or anything (rarely even scalded!). At one point, the judge admonishes him that he is going to ruin his health, but the situation is that his health is already ruined thanks to a deadly poison that didn't kill him, and he apparently needs the coffee to keep him going the rest of his short remaining lifespan....
• The members of Love Fist, the Fake Band from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, are implied to be Immune To Drugs: their favorite drink is a lethal Gargle Blaster, and they can drink "boomshine" without much problem.
  • Just to explain how serious boomshine is, in a separate scene Tommy gets critically drunk from the fumes it gives off. At one point, a portion of Boomshine explodes violently enough to instagib a guy's entire arm. It makes jet fuel look like mineral water.
• Cody from Final Fight: Streetwise is forcefully fed some drugs. There are some effects, but none of them are permanent. Actually, wait... there is a permanent condition. The drugs have healed his previously injured knees! Drugs are awesome!
• The protagonist in System Shock 2 can use alcohol to regain health at the cost of psychic energy. Subverted in that smoking just drains your health with no benefit. Since psychic abilities aren't a requirement in any way (many perfectly viable character builds won't even touch them), downing bottles and BOTTLES and BOTTLES of hard alcohol not only won't even make your vision blurry, but can save you from death!
• In Left 4 Dead and its sequel, you can take pain pills and adrenaline with no negative side effects.
• In Saints Row 2, you can drink and smoke pot to an insane degree, but all it will do is make your screen go wobbly.
• Alcohol in BioShock allows Jack to regain health, and drinking a lot makes your vision blurry. So if you're low on health and find a lot of wine....
  • It also reduces the level of available EVE you have...unless you have the appropriate gene tonic, in which case it produces extra EVE instead, meaning that with Boozehound you are well and truly this trope.
• Drinking vodka in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will cure your radiation poisoning. It'll also make your screen sway a bit, but that passes after a few minutes.
• Averted in Soulbringer, with ale and wine. Ale comes in mugs, and heals you...two or three hit points apiece. And lest you think you can stack these, around four or five mugs is when the vomiting (and health loss) starts. Thardolin red wine is even worse; probably because you chug the entire bottle, a single serving makes the screen wobble and your movement wonky (with no health gain), and a second will have you throwing up.
• In Alpha Protocol, the arrest report for Konstantine Brayko (provided you left him alive) mentions he had enough cocaine in his system to, quote: "Make a baleen whale see Jesus". He shows absolutely no negative effects of this, and you can have the resident Heroic Comedic Sociopath spike his coke with rat poison and all it will do is make his drug-fuelled rampages slightly less imposing.
• Between the amount of painkillers that he throws back in the course of normal gameplay and the fact he somehow survived getting forcibly overdosed with Valkyrie, a drug best described as the mutant dumpster-baby of LSD and crystal meth, Max Payne has to count. Subverted in Max Payne 3, in which all the constant drug use finally catches up to him and he gets nailed with the mother and father of all addictions.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: At one point Ryder can down a Gargle Blaster made from half of another Gargle Blaster (see the Mass Effect 2 entry down below). Despite it being a substance that apparently goes through humans "like ground glass", the only thing Ryder suffers is a sore head and embarrassment. It's possible their AI assistant SAM is helping with this, but the game doesn't say.
• In Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman was exposed to Scarecrow's fear toxin three times, and each time, he demonstrated Heroic Willpower by fighting it off, even when Scarecrow gave him an extra dose the third time. Scarecrow notes that the amount of toxin Batman had ingested throughout the game should've been enough to drive ten men insane.

Webcomics

• Kingston from S.S.D.D.. At one point, during a Webcomic Time joke, he claims that a doctor told him that he's got "enough chemicals in his system to render most of China catatonic."
• In Fans!, a sedative dart fails to have any effect on hard-partying Perky Goth Alsin.
• Ten Winds in Keychain of Creation. "I've drunk stronger stuff with my afternoon snack." Might be either type 1 or 2 depending on whether he used a Charm to resist the sedative.
• In one Housepets! strip Karishad and Daryl are shown playing darts, with tranqs pulled out of Karishad's back.

Web Original

• PPCers tend to go through Bleeproducts, alcohol, and painkillers at a fair rate and never suffer any longterm effects. they can draw on medical treatment from any continuum ever created, so the ill-effects could be mended if they start to become a problem. To quote one agent when told he shouldn't try marijuana, "If Dr Fitzgerald can sew limbs and genitals back on he can rebuild the inside of my lungs if necessary, and I fail to see what it could do to my brain that this job has not already done."

Web Videos

• Michael Swaim from Agents of Cracked is stated to be "immune to pills," from taking too many of them at one point.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • Barney. It's been lampshaded, including several references to a failing liver (including a gag on "The Joy of Sect," in which Barney sees a discarded liver on the floor of an airport bar and thinks that his liver tried to escape—again), and no appearances in the "future" episodes.
  • Krusty, by his own description, has become so jaded and world-weary that the only drug that affects him anymore is freebased ground-up moon rocks (and all that does is get him to normal).
  • The real walking pharmacy on the show, though, is Otto. Aside from being a run-of-the-mill pot smoker, he's also shown in "Father Knows Worst" buying model kits and glue, then dumping the kits as soon as he's out of the store, he walked out of a kitchen cutlery store called "Stoner's Pot Palace" due to "flagrant false advertising," his urine is so full of traces of illegal drugs that it barely has any actual urine in it and looks like a scene from Yellow Submarine. The "best" part in all of this: he drives the schoolbus!!
    • The episode where Otto loses his license and Skinner takes over driver duty quickly shows that in order to not go utterly insane, he needs to be high as a kite all the time!
  • The full list of what was found in Otto's urine sample:
  "Crack, smack, uppers, downers, outers, inners, horse tranquilizers, cow paralyzers, blue bombers, green goofers, yellow submarines, LSD Mach 3, and trace amounts of human urine."
• Pickles on Metalocalypse, due to his frequent use of (all) drugs in the past, and having been on "government weed" since the age of six (for his "kiddie glaucoma"), is immune to "Totally Awesome Sweet Alabama Liquid Snake", the mind-destroying drug created to reprogram the minds of Pickles' old band, Snakes-n-Barrels, in a plan to use them to get to Dethklok.
  • Doctor Rockso is powered by cocaine. C-C-C-C-COCAINE!!!
  Doctor Rockso: Seriously dude, a lot of cocaine.
• Pickles on The Oblongs. All that drinking and smoking (and living in a polluted town) should have killed her years ago. The second episode where Milo gets a pet dog had her accidentally drink gopher poison with no adverse effects (she was supposed to bury the gopher poison).
• Replace drugs with sugar and Pinkie Pie should have long ago succumbed to diabetes. Instead, she's just a somewhat weird and hyper.
• Pam from Archer. In The Papal Chase, Woodhouse accidentally injects two syringes full of heroin into her neck, with no noticeable effect at all. She's recently taken to using enough cocaine and amphetamines to keep a medium-sized city high for several days, and aside from a brief cardiac arrest (that also doesn't faze her), it hasn't affected her behavior in the least.
  • To a lesser extent, Archer, himself (though mostly with alcohol). He insists on "tapering off" because he's certain the combined hangover if he doesn't will kill him. (Which is Truth in Television; detoxing completely and immediately from alcohol if one has been consuming it regularly in large enough doses is a bad idea).
    Archer: Luke, you're not thinking straight. You wildly underestimated my liver's ability to metabolize toxins.
  • And then there's his mother, Malory. When hit in the neck with an Instant Sedation dart, her response is annoyance at the person who shot her and sip of her cocktail.

Real Life

• Hunter S. Thompson. Here's a page from his personal journal, which led to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas being published after he sent it to his boss (who sent it to a publisher).
  "The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers . . . and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."
• Keith Richards cannot be killed by conventional weapons. As Robin Williams said about him:
  I know there's a cure for bio terrorism or whatever it is, and I know it lies within Keith Richards. He is the only man on the planet who can go "Anthrax? (snort) Alright! Doesn't go with my e-coli, but fuck..." Keith is the only man who can make the Osbornes look fucking Amish. He's insane! I've seen him go up to a drug dealer and the drug dealer's like, "I'm out man, I'm sorry; I have nothing left!" Supposedly, he goes to Switzerland and changes his blood...not one or two pints, but like a fucking Chevrolet—all of it. Now what I wanna know is who gets his blood? Some old Swiss man, going, "HEIDI! We gotta go on tour, you bitch! We gotta pay for Mick's babies!" I know we will all be dead and gone, but Keith will still be there with five cockroaches. He'll be going, "You know, I smoked your uncle, did ya know that? Fucking crazy..."

• Graham Chapman of Monty Python.
  • According to the other Pythons, he would sit around during their writing sessions sipping what everyone thought at the time was a large glass of water. It was gin.
  • According to the documentary Python, a significant part of the problem was that he acted exactly the same when drunk as he did when he was sober — so they couldn't tell the difference between when he was completely sloshed and when he was just doing Pythonesque things.
  • Except during the making of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where he proved he was not Immune to Going Cold Turkey and suffered from withdrawal.
  • Graham went sober for good before filming Monty Python's Life of Brian because he'd be playing the lead role. Since he was also acting as the on-set surgeon (Chapman was licensed to practice medicine before going into comedy), he has to be sober and focused to act in that capacity as well. His long-time partner, David Sherlock, mentioned that Graham was going through two liters of gin a day before quitting.
• During the production of Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Hedorah’s suit actor, Kenpachiro Satsuma (who also played Gigan, Pulgasari and Godzilla himself during the Heisei era) suffered a bout of appendicitis on set and had to be rushed to hospital with the suit initially still on, as it took too long to remove. There, according to his memories of the incident, he found out that anaesthetics didn’t seem to work on him.
• Pretty much everyone in X Japan. While alcohol and drugs contributed to the deaths of hide ^Note X Japan had a technique that involved a doorknob and towel to take care of any shoulder pain. hide is thought to have attempted to do this, passed out, and accidently hung himself. and Taiji both, it took something other than the drugs themselves to kill both (a Noodle Incident involving asphyxiation for hide, likely murder for Taiji) and to this day, Yoshiki Hayashi and especially Pata seem to be genuinely immune. (In fact, there is a Running Gag that Pata doesn't have alcohol in his bloodstream, he has blood in his alcohol stream.)

• Kurt Vonnegut wrote the following in A Man Without a Country:
  ...I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me. But I am now eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the planet were named Bush, Dick and Colon.
• Jeanne Calment, who currently holds the world record for oldest person of all time, smoked for 96 years starting at the age of 21, and lived to be 122. She reportedly only smoked one or two cigarettes a day in her later years, but it's still very impressive.
• During The '60s, Jim Henson was curious to find out what LSD was like, but when he gave it a try, nothing happened. Given the nature of some of his works, one has to wonder.

Second Kind: Immune with Justification

Anime & Manga

• In Ah! My Goddess, Goddesses can only get drunk on specific things. Belldandy packs away shot after shot of liquor without even getting tipsy, but drinking a single can of ordinary soda gets her plastered. Her sister Urd can only get drunk on sake.
• Lum and other Oni characters from Urusei Yatsura are immune to alcohol (and probably most poisons too, as seen with some badly-prepared fugu in a manga story arc) thanks to their alien metabolism. However, eating plums will make them drunk.
• Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo! is immune to all forms of toxins, including alcohol. She can shut this immunity off if she wants to get drunk (which is a common occurrence), but doing so requires a sustained conscious effort. Which means that if she gets too drunk to maintain her concentration on suppressing the immunity, she'll instantly sober up again. This is actually even more justified... she doesn't need to eat, has no sense of taste, and is part nanoculture. Please note, this is only in the first series, where she was a creation of Washu. In Tenchi Universe, these abilities no longer apply, though she still drinks enough sake to kill a bear.
• Cyborgs in Ghost in the Shell (Major Kusanagi's a full body cyborg, essentially a Brain in a Jar in a Fem Bot body; Batou's heavily augmented and has the same ability) can filter alcohol straight out of their system to sober up. In the first movie, The Major switches this off so she can actually get drunk on beer though. In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, the Major isn't shown to eat out of any kind of necessity while Batou's heavy augmentation is shown by his need to eat rather bland-looking (and assumed to be disgusting to normals) cyborg food.
• Some girls from Claymore are once shown to go drinking. When one starts getting tipsy, somebody asks if they weren't supposed to be immune to alcohol. Another one then explains that they are actually in control of their metabolism, so they CAN get drunk, if they want.
• In Heat Guy J, Daisuke is immune to drugs and poisons, because he takes an herbal mix every morning to stave off food poisoning, as he eats most of his meals at a ramen cart. This is one reason why Clair's Truth Serum did not work on him. (The other being that Daisuke doesn't let the Angst he's faced bother him.)

Comic Books

• X-Men:
  • Wolverine is a smoker who cannot contract cancer. Wolverine once drank 25 beers and didn't even get a decent buzz. Wolvie's not technically immune to alcohol, he just sobers up a lot faster. He's become absolutely smashed on the really hard stuff, but beer? He's over the first one before the second one gets cracked open. This is also why the cigarettes he smokes don't hurt him much. (When his regeneration factor was briefly suppressed after Magneto yanked the adamantium out of him, he started coughing and getting sick from them, and in one issue, threw them away in disgust. Fortunately, that problem got better quickly.)
  • Quicksilver can also get drunk, if he drinks a lot really fast. Then he sobers up in 30 seconds and gets a 30 seconds hangover. He might as well not bother.
  • Exiles notes this as being true for Mimic, who has a half-powered version of Logan's healing factor. It apparently was something of a problem when Mimic and his reality's version of Logan engaged in some sorrow drowning - they needed a "Herculean" amount of alcohol just to get buzzed.
• Due to his advanced metabolism, Captain America cannot get drunk.
• The original Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew, was affected upon first exposure to a particular toxin. Going forward, she was immune to its effects.
• Subverted by Aaron Stack, Machine Man, in Nextwave, who personally rewired his robot body to be affected by alcohol consumption. He's since become dependent on the stuff.
• Hyperion in Supreme Power is unaffected by any drugs whatsoever, due (probably) to his impossibly dense musculature and alien physiology. After several bottles of tequila, he isn't even buzzed.
• The various Doctors from The Authority, not to be confused with Doctor Who, have had problems with this. At least one of them went on a murderous rage that ended with drinking every bottle of Dom Perignon in existence (leaving him so drunk he couldn't fight back). The first Doctor in the series was a heroin addict, something that was a continuing problem for him. This is despite their ability to alter reality at will which normally puts this trope in effect.
• "I am Snowflame! Every cell of my being burns with white-hot ecstasy. Cocaine is my God, and I am the human instrument of its will!" Courtesy of the The New Guardians run of books. Thanks, DC.
• Diabolik:
  • A number of characters from this comic have been treated in such a way they can resist the effects of Truth Serums. Also, the title character and his partner Eva, being extremely paranoid and with full justification, have treated themselves in such a way that mind-control drugs have extremely little effect on them.
  • Inspector Ginko is not exactly immune to sedatives and drugs (and in fact was once forcefully addicted to heroin in revenge by some criminals), but Truth Serums don't have the desired effect on him due sheer willpower. The same willpower allowed him to completely recover in little time once he got treatment.
• The Mighty Thor: Thor can drink booze for fun, and to relax, but Asgardian constitution being what it is, much like Logan it would taken an astounding amount to get him properly drunk. The same with all Asgardians.
• Some versions of Wonder Woman are immune to getting drunk, because of her status as a demi-goddess.

Fan Works

• John in With Strings Attached is immune to alcohol because of his metamorphosis. It's only really an issue once, when he first discovers it while the others are getting completely smashed.
  • In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, he also turns out to be immune to drugs.
• Thanks to her insanely powerful Healing Factor, Rampage from Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons is effectively immune to drugs, allowing her to pop addictive mental stimulants like candy. She herself considers it Blessed with Suck, as it requires her to take rather extreme measures — like poisoning herself with detergent — if she wants to feel the effects of "ordinary" toxins like alcohol.
• Evolution is a Worm and Starcraft crossover wherein Taylor's powers essentially turn her into the Queen of Blades. As a Zerg hybrid her adaptive physiology means she very quickly becomes immune to anything she's exposed to. After becoming immune to alcohol and recreational drugs she moves on to casually chugging antifreeze and drain cleaner. When she's injected with a tranquilizer cocktail consisting of an immune-suppressing bioweapon, a slew of Tinker-made designer drugs, and enough synthetic opioid to overdose a whale, it's enough to get her high for about 10 minutes and still keep fighting.

Films — Live-Action

• Legolas in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King claims to only feel a "slight tingling in [his] fingers" after drinking enough ale to make Gimli, a dwarf, pass out.
• The Newcomers from Alien Nation process alcohol harmlessly, but get drunk off of spoiled milk.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: The First Avenger: As mentioned in the Comics section above, Captain America can't get drunk because his sped-up metabolism metabolizes the alcohol before it has time to take effect.
  • In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor and Steve are shown enjoying some kind of Asgardian Gargle Blaster that floors human war veterans.
  • In Captain America: Civil War, Cap can survive brief exposure to a room's worth of some kind of poison gas.
• In X2: X-Men United, Wolverine gets shot with Instant Sedation darts and doesn't stop charging because his Healing Factor neutralizes the sedative. A moment later he yanks the darts out and shakes his head as if to clear it, but continues on like nothing happened.
• The vampires in We Are the Night can consume and feel the effects of drugs, as demonstrated during the party montage scenes, but they are said to be immune to unpleasant side effects such as overdoses or addiction.

Literature

• The Hobbit mentions that elves (unlike the D&D ones) are quite difficult to get drunk. They are shown to get drunk on really large mugs of very strong wine (the exact amount needed is not specified), but then, Legolas is of somewhat higher blood than a mere warden. In fact it's difficult to get Legolas legless!
• Case from the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, has his pancreas and parts of his liver replaced (against his will) with one that, to his chagrin, renders him immune to stimulants. One of his efforts in the novel is to find a way to still get high. Yep, he's that kind of hero.
• Hope Hubris, protagonist of Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant series, has a hyperactive immune system that lets him shake off the effects of most drugs while immunizing him to future doses. Subverted at the end of the series, when relying on this talent after recovering from food poisoning lets the damage to his kidneys become irreversible - while causing the failure of all but the most primitive forms of dialysis, with even that option doomed to stop working in the near future.
• In one of Mercedes Lackey's Serrated Edge novels, an organization trying to kidnap a psychic finds one and puts something in his drink which should incapacitate him and would kill him if the antidote wasn't given within about ten hours. However, he is an elf, immune to anything but Cold Iron and caffeine, and he saw them do it, so he drinks and goes on his way, not thinking much of it. The head operative, thinking that either her subordinates had betrayed her or the drug was a dud, feeds it to them. Since it works on them exactly as advertised, she puts it down to treachery.
• Good Omens uses the "angels" (and demons) being immune to alcohol but with a slight twist: as is seen at one point, Aziraphale and Crowley can (and do) get roaring drunk, but can instantly make themselves sober again.
• Homo drakensis from Drakon have extremely fast metabolisms, one side effect of which is that they metabolize alcohol so quickly it's almost impossible for them to get drunk. The protagonist is shown downing several double brandies one after the other, which apparently has the same effect on her that one glass of wine would on a human.
• It takes an enormous amount of pot to get the Duumvirate even mildly buzzed.
• Most militaries in the Honor Harrington vaccinate their members against various drugs to prevent enhanced interrogation.
• Pewter-burners in Mistborn: The Original Trilogy are extremely resistant to all forms of poison and drug, as a side effect of pewter's general physical enhancement.
• In Warbreaker, by the same author as Mistborn, having additional Breaths (fragments of souls that can be moved from person to person) grants a wide variety of perks, including resistance to drugs and poisons. This particular boon tops out at the Fifth Heightening (somewhere around 2,000 Breaths), at which point the resistance reaches the point of total immunity. The quasi-divine Returned get a single "Divine Breath" that's so powerful it grants the first five Heightenings all on its own. Lightsong's high priest repeatedly informs his master that he cannot get drunk, to which Lightsong cheerfully replies that he can sure try.
• The two-headed Human Alien Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an interesting case: He's not immune to the literal Gargle Blasters he consumes, but he has an extra head and can somehow control how much of the alcohol goes to each one, allowing him to remain totally sober in one head while the other gets blind drunk.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Gregor Clegane is the World's Strongest Man, but suffers migraines that cause him to drink milk of the poppy (opium) like ale. When he's fatally poisoned, his ludicrous size and drug resistance keep him alive, but he's in agonizing pain, and no amount of milk of the poppy can ease it because he's virtually immune.
• The Stormlight Archive: As with the Good Omens example above, Surgebinders can get drunk, but when they inhale Stormlight it instantly sobers them up again.
• Feral and cured humans in Janitors Of The Post Apocalypse have altered physiology to the point where they can merrily ignore not just biochemical barriers but quite happily ingest toxic substances with little effect. The majority of drugs simply don't work on them, including actual medical ones. As they don't feel pain and are extremely difficult to kill this is rarely an issue, but when one has an overactive immune system...
• A Cool Old Lady in PartnerShip, General Micaya Questar-Benn, is a cyborg with an advanced artificial blood-filtering system. When a Clandestine Chemist doses her with Blissto, the general feels the effect but is able to cycle it out of her system and be clear-headed and mobile long before expected; the chemist then tries to inject her with something lethal, but the injector hits one of the general's Artificial Limbs and, naturally, has no effect.

Live-Action TV

• Altered Carbon. In Season 2, Takeshi Kovacs is sleeved into a military-grade enhanced body and complains that it comes with a biofilter that's preventing him from getting drunk. Takeshi says he'll keep drinking until he discovers the filter's limit, but Poe informs him that there's limited booze in the derelict hotel they're hiding out in.
• Claire Bennet from Heroes is immune to alcohol due to her ability to heal.
• The Doctor in Doctor Who is mostly immune to drugs. Most drugs — he mentions shrooms as an example at one point — do nothing to him, but he's once seen tipsy from drinking ginger beer, and once hallucinated after taking antihistamines. Not to mention curing himself of cyanide poisoning in one episode of the new series. Also, aspirin can kill him.
• The Gua hybrids in First Wave are built to be stronger than regular humans and immune to our diseases and, presumably, our drugs. But they get completely stoned on table salt. Which is in everything we eat. Presumably, it's only when they ingest pure salt, like from a packet. The first time it's discovered, Cade is pouring salt on Joshua's open wound to try to interrogate him. It does get Joshua to open up, but not the way Cade intended. He also finds out that Joshua is on his side.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In the final season of Angel Spike moans about how hard it is for vampires to get drunk. He and Angel are next seen drunk, several hours later having drunk all the alcohol on the private jet they're on.
  • Spike is seen very drunk in the Buffy season 3 episode "Lovers Walk", though. Probably must have consumed a ton of hard liquor for that.
• In the Supernatural episode "99 Problems", the angel Castiel remains alive, conscious and mostly ambulatory after drinking an entire liquor store.
• The Flash (2014): In the episode "Plastique", Barry discovers, to his chagrin, that his hyper-accelerated metabolism means that his body processes alcohol way too fast for him to even feel a buzz. He downs half-a-dozen shots in less than a second to demonstrate it. At the end of the episode, Caitlin mixes him up a potent 300-proof shot that does give him a buzz... for less than 5 seconds. She promises to work on the problem. Hmm. Guess that's what her Ph.D. is for: getting the fastest man alive drunk.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • The Vorta are immune to most poisons due to genetic engineering by the Founders, a fact demonstrated when Weyoun takes a swig of poisoned kanar in "Ties of Blood and Water" — he detects the poison, but isn't otherwise affected by it.
    Weyoun: Oh, that is quite toxic....
  • In "Little Green Men", Quark is given multiple injections of sodium pentothal and the only effect is the Ferengi squealing in pain from the needles.
• The Mick: Mick gets Sabrina to stay home the first night by offering her some absinthe. They drink a few shots, Sabrina laughs off her attempt to drink her under the table, drinks a few more... and then has to sit down because Mick spiked it with six different sleep drugs.
  Sabrina: But... you drank it too...
  Mick: Oh, you don't worry about me, I can handle my 'quill.
• Mason from Dead Like Me isn't immune to the effects of drugs, with the exception that they can't kill him because as a Reaper he's already dead. As a result, when a bunch of heroin-filled balloons burst in his stomach, he has to suffer through an epic overdose that would quickly kill a living human.
• Sense8: Riley Blue's history of hard recreational drug use means she has a high tolerance for all sedatives. When BPO get their hands on her their scientists try to sedate her but the drugs they use wear off too fast, forcing them to up the dosage and knock her out completely.

Tabletop Games

• The werewolves of Werewolf: The Forsaken are said to be all but Immune to Drugs as an extension of their Healing Factor. Due to the extremely harsh nature of their lives many grow quite frustrated by the inability to get drunk or high for the sake of escapism (though it can be overcome by imbibing massive quantities, or occasionally with the aid of spirits).
  • That said, in first edition, this is extremely selective. A werewolf's healing factor impairs their ability to get drunk in normal amounts, but it is a very bad idea to shift into wolf form while high on certain substances. Especially if it happens to be caffeine.
• Novas in Aberrant usually metabolize drugs too fast to experience the effects, although weaker individuals can make up for it with volume. There are also super-powerful synthetic drugs available that would generally kill a normal human, including an extract from the brains of slain Novas. The fluff in the core book says that a Nova would need large quantities of industrial ethanol to get drunk, which would taste horrible.
• Space Marines of Warhammer 40,000 are generally immune to normal drugs due to their modifications, Fenrisian mead might be an exception, though, considering a Space Wolf once claimed it would give you a hangover "like continents colliding." This one is actually explained in one of William King's Space Wolf novels: there's actually a chemical in Fenrisian mead (at least the variety served in the Fang) that shuts off the organ that grants Space Marines their immunity to drugs. It's specifically so they can get drunk.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In Edition 3.0 and later, a character with enough levels in the Monk class becomes effectively immune to toxins, which means that they are effectively immune to any intoxicating substances like alcohol or recreational drugs.
  • Same with the druid class and possible numerous other non-core ones.
  • Note that the Drunken Master prestige class has as prerequisites both Monk-specific class features and nights of drunken revelry with a mentor Drunken Master. Your character must be a monk still capable of getting drunk to become a Drunken Master.
• Espers with biofeedback in Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution. The Detox ability allows you to delay the effects of poisons or toxins and temporarily purge the effects of drugs. Advanced Detox permanently purges poisons, toxins, and drugs.

Video Games

• The SOP nanomachines in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots break down any alcohol their users drink before it can intoxicate them. This is only one of their dehumanizing effects. Arms dealer Drebin has taken to drinking cola as a substitute. After the SOP is taken down he breaks out the booze.
• Grim Fandango, true to its Film Noir roots, has everyone chain-smoking. But since everyone is already dead... This is humorously lampshaded in the manual, ("Think about it.") possibly to pre-empt any Moral Guardian complaints.
  • One puzzle also involves drinking some liquor with gold flakes in it in order to trip a metal detector. It does have some... effects on Manny, but apart from that puzzle making him drunk it's pretty useless (though amusing).
• Mass Effect 2:
  • After getting rebuilt by Cerberus, Commander Shepard exhibits some drug immunity. While Shepard can (for instance) still get drunk, it takes a lot more than usual to knock him/her out (as in: krogan liquor), and s/he twice wakes up despite sedatives that were supposed to keep him/her down for a lot longer than they did. At one point, Shepard gets dosed with poison that's supposed to be lethal, but wakes up a couple hours later with a bad headache as the only side effect.
  • Krogan are highly resistant to most forms of poison and drugs, due to their resilient biology (they have several back-up organs and probably more than one liver). To get drunk, they resort to a mixture called ryncol, which has been known to cause those who drink it to set off radiation alarms afterward. To put this in perspective, in the Citadel DLC, Grunt (a krogan) gets arrested for stealing a burning police car and crashing it into a noodle house. He explains that he threw his (nearly full) bottle of ryncol at the car and it spontaneously combusted. Grunt was also so drunk (from only a small amount of ryncol) that he thought stealing the burning car was a good idea. And that's the only stuff that will put down Shepard. Of course, Grunt's also the physical equivalent of a teenager and chronologically less than a year old, so he'd probably be a lightweight by krogan standards.
    Ratch: Don't try to act tough, it'll tear your innards apart.
    Grunt: He's not joking. Ryncol hits aliens like ground glass.

Webcomics

• Cry 'Havoc', with werewolf mercenaries:
  Skoll: [with several empty glasses in front of her] Guys... I don't think I can get drunk anymore...
  Hati: Well you've had six pints and four shots, so for your liver's sake I'd hope not.
• Given a morbid twist in The Order of the Stick installment Start of Darkness, when newly-liched Xykon discovers that one of the side effects of being a walking skeleton is the lack of any way to drink coffee. He takes this badly.
• Also from S.S.D.D. are Tessa Edwards and her fellow augmented CORE marines, who need enough alcohol to poison a small elephant to get drunk. The bars they frequent serve "cider" that is legally considered paint thinner.
• Sweetheart of Skin Horse is a transgenic superdog with a minor Healing Factor and amped up toxin metabolism. Despite that, she still drinks enough to bypass it, for a few minutes.
  "You want room service to do what?"
  "Salt the rim of my bathtub! It's not... that... hard!"
• Spinnerette's spider biochemistry has made her completely immune to the mind-control drugs of two different supervillains. The second time she mentions that Advil doesn't work on her either, which is a bit of a pain.
• In Joe vs. Elan School, Joe's Love Interest Eva is so heavily addicted to a certain kind of pill that she tells him she needs to take 18 to feel any kind of effect. This comes right before Joe has a bad reaction to taking 12 of these pills.

Web Videos

• As one of their numerous gifts from Blibaal, Goddess of Storms and Slaughter, the Kua-Toa of Tales From My D&D Campaign are flat-out immune to poison. This also means that they don't get drunk from alcohol. Apparently, Kua-Toa drink straight formaldehyde if they want to get buzzed.

Western Animation

• Bender from Futurama who, as a robot, is actually fuelled by booze. In a "what if?" episode, where he is turned into a human, his habits become worse and he dies of massive overindulgence. Bender develops the typical symptoms of a wino when he doesn't drink. In older episodes, he's seen getting drunk on alcohol, but this is no longer canon. Apparently, he can also power himself with nice, clean, mineral oil, similar to becoming a vegetarian. Hilariously, Bender "grows" a Beard of Sorrow made out of rust if he doesn't drink enough. Lampshaded by Fry.
  Fry: Bender, you've been drinking too much. Or not enough. I can't remember how it works with you. The point is, you haven't been drinking the exact right amount.
• American Dad!: Roger. If any drug on the show is mentioned, Roger has either tried it or is on it, with barely any side effects at all, most likely due to his Bizarre Alien Biology.
• Polidori in Mary Shelley's Frankenhole makes a regular habit of drinking poison because he's immortal and regular alcohol just doesn't do it for him anymore.

Real Life

• In his memoir/spiritual manual Be Here Now, Ram Dass claims that, as a young spiritual seeker still going by Richard Alpert, he witnessed the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba ingest many times the normal range of LSD dosage without any apparent effect. This helped convince Alpert that the guru was the real deal and accept him as his teacher.
• Ozzy Osbourne. Apparently now he's just on coffee, but at this point he probably doesn't need them anymore. He eventually had his genome mapped, so scientists can figure out why he and others like him can survive what they do themselves. Really! Turns out he's a mutant, possessing some mutations that allow his body to filter drugs much more efficiently than most people. It explains a lot, doesn't it? This has also lead to some funny incidents with hospital staff, according to his autobiography:
  Regular Dose of Anesthetic: "Ooh, there's the good stuff!"
  Twice the Dose: Doctor: "Blink once if you can hear me." Ozzy: "Why would I do that? I can talk to you just fine."
  Three Times the Dose: Doctor: "Jesus Christ, you're not human!"
• André the Giant needed a lot of alcohol to get drunk, due to his gigantism as well as having built up a tolerance over the years. It took a whole case of beer just to give him a buzz, and the one time he did pass out from drinking, he'd consumed 119 bottles of beer within a period of six hours. When he needed surgery at one point, the anesthesiologist wasn't prepared for someone his size and had to gauge the dosage based on how much it took to get him drunk. Apparently it took about two liters of vodka to make him feel "warm inside."
• A small part of the population has a genetic quirk that makes opioids of any kind have a drastically reduced effect; a much smaller group is completely immune. This was discovered when a patient who needed surgery did not respond to the available pain medication.

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