"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop being a Running Gag."
"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."
While most users usually have a drug of choice, in fiction one sometimes encounters a drug user who is completely undiscriminating in their choice of intoxicant. They are so keen (or desperate) to get high, that they will take any substance that offers them a chance to do so. Often Played for Laughs if the substance they are snorting (or smoking, ingesting, imbibing, or injecting) is not a narcotic at all.
In real life, this is also known as Polysubstance Dependance. The causes of polysubstance use fall largely to two categories, either using different substances to compliment eachother, such as using stimulants and sedatives together to not fall into a stupor or become overstimulated, or people use whatever is available, which is common among young users who don't have a consistent source for drugs, and people in prisons, or places with strict drug reinforcement.
A common variant is a drunkard who will drink anything remotely alcoholic to get drunk, even those that aren't meant to be potable.
May lead to I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!, G-Rated Drug, Drunk on Milk.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Sakamoto Days: To activate her Drunken Master abilities, Lu once drank from a bottle of pure ethanol meant as a disinfectant (but apparently not denatured). She was inspired by how her grandfather would run out of booze on camping trips and drink alcohol meant for lamp fuel.
Comic Books
- In the Se7en comic books series, Theodore "Victor" Allen (AKA the future Sloth victim) is a drug dealer who has a habit of Getting High on Their Own Supply, to the point that John Doe can recognize four distinctive signs of long-term addiction just by looking at him: pockmarks from crystal meth, speed-induced deterioration of bone mass, the erosion of nasal cartilage due to cocaine, and the needle scars from heroin use. For good measure, he drinks very heavily while celebrating his acquittal.
- In Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem, being a future version of Hunter S. Thompson, will take any and all drugs he can get his hands on, especially when he's having a bad day, which is often.
- Werewolf Jones from Megg, Mogg and Owl has done every drug you can think of, ranging from softer fare like weed or LSD to hard opioids like heroin or methadone. Instead of being transformed by the full moon, he turns into a werewolf when inebriated and goes back to human form when sober- tellingly, his human appearances can be counted on one hand.
Fan Works
- The Bolt Chronicles: In "The Wind," Bolt's new girlfriend Mary is seen as a character who will take anything she can lay her paws on to get high. This includes raw bread dough (which releases alcohol in her stomach), horse tranquilizers, and various prescription medications.
Films — Live-Action
- Steve McCroskey in Airplane!, as revealed in a Running Gag (but at least he's trying to quit):
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking. [lights up]
(later)
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking. [takes a swig from a hip flask]
(later)
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop taking amphetamines. [downs some pills]
(later)
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. [has a snort, collapses out of shot] - A borderline case occurs in The Cannonball Run with Dr. Nikolas Van Helsing. He keeps injecting himself with a syringe whose contents are unknown (to the viewer). When The Alcoholic Jimmy Blake asks him if it's good to drink, Van Helsing replies "Dunno. Never tried" and immediately squirts the contents of the syringe into his mouth.
- The Con is On: Peter is not only The Alcoholic but a completely undiscriminating drug taker. He buys a tray of random drugs from the dealer in the club; takes whatever pills his wife Harry hands him, usually without asking what they are; and swallows an entire bottle of prescription medication he finds in Gina's pocket.
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Raoul Duke (Hunter S. Thompson's Author Avatar) and his friend "Dr. Gonzo" bring a gigantic valise loaded to the gills with all kinds of drugs for their journey to Vegas, and at one point (while Duke is tripping so hard that he hallucinates Dr. Gonzo slowly mutating into a devil) they argue the idea of testing fresh pineal gland... as in cut someone's brain to get the gland and chew on it.
- in a flashback, Duke sees himself as a young man, and comments he was "A natural street freak just eating whatever came by."
- Heaven Knows What: Harley and her fellow homeless junkies will gulp liquor, sip on Dayquil, do benzos, shoot heroin, and take pretty much anything else they can get their hands on.
- The Lighthouse: Keeper Thomas Wake is a habitual drinker, and despite his initial reluctance, his assistant Ephraim Winslow joins in as well after several weeks of hard toil on the island. When a storm leaves them effectively stranded, their only response is to drink more and more until they finally run out of booze - whereupon they just start chugging turpentine, albeit mixed with honey to make it halfway drinkable. Judging by the screaming fits that follow, it certainly does the trick.
- John Hurt's character in Midnight Express is a heroin addict, but as he's unable to get his hands on the real stuff in a Turkish prison, he's reduced to improvising alternate sources of opioids. In his introductory scene, he's mainlining gastroenteritis medication for the codeine.
- Adam in Hot Tub Time Machine has a case of differrent drugs with him.
- Naked Lunch kicks off with the discovery that William Lee's drug-addicted wife has started using his bug powder as a substitute drug. Lee himself proves no slouch in this department, beginning with the bug powder, then moving on to "The Black Meat," an opioid powder derived from giant centipedes; then, when Lee's source in the Interzone goes missing, he's forced to move onto a local Moroccan hashish resin spread just to deal with the withdrawal. And then he starts drinking the fluid that emerges from the skull-mounted penises of the alien head that has replaced his typewriter. It's worth noting that this film was loosely based on a book that was written entirely under the influence.
- The Night Before: Isaac used to party, but has mellowed out with age. His wife however, wants him to have a good time so got him a kit with an assortment of drugs, which he consumes throughout the night.
- In Trainspotting, Renton notes that whilst not on heroin, he and his friends are busy looking for just about anything with similar effects. After going through some of the NHS sources relied upon in lean times, he rattles off a long list of substitute opioids to be used when not in possession of real junk, including things like anti-vertigo medication.
Renton: Fuck it, we would have injected vitamin C if only they'd made it illegal.
- Jordan Belfort and the rest of Stratton Oakmont in 'The Wolf of Wall Street'' drink, snort cocaine, pop Quaaludes like candy, and then some, but their main addiction is money.
Jordan Belfort: On a daily basis I consume enough drugs to sedate Manhattan, Long Island, and Queens for a month. I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain", Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, pot to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine... Well, because it's awesome. But of all the drugs under God's blue heaven, here is one that is my absolute favorite. See, enough of this shit will make you invincible - able to conquer the world and eviscerate your enemies.
[takes a hit of cocaine]
Jordan Belfort: And I'm not talking about this... I'm talking about this.
[shows the $100 he used to snort the cocaine]
Literature
- Roland from After the Revolution uses drugs to drown out the Super-Soldier implants that reward his pleasure centres for hurting and killing people: If the drugs are already making him feel good, he doesn't need to harm people to feel good. Roland will therefore drink, consume or inject practically anything that can get him buzzed, and because of his superpowered metabolism, he needs either lots of a single drug or mixtures of multiple drugs that complement each other.
- The Andromeda Strain: One of the two survivors of the titular biological hazard is Peter Jackson, the town drunk of Piedmont, a man who is often so desperate to purchase booze to stave off the pain of his bleeding ulcer (and so poor) that he has taken to drinking stove alcohol. His body chemistry is so shot from the constant drinking that Andromeda can't survive it (because it can only work within a very slim degree of blood acidity).
- Discworld: In The Truth, Mr. Tulip is very keen to take drugs. However, he never manages to get his hands on any genuine drugs and ends up snorting everything from curry powder to cleaning products.
- The Hunger Games: Haymitch was once so desperate for a drink, he went to the Hob and purchased rubbing alcohol to drink. Katniss and Peeta panicked and went to stop him, realizing that drinking pure alcohol would blind him.
- Life's Lottery: In one particular plot thread, main character Keith Marion can be introduced to pot and begin a Descent into Addiction that features him indulging in almost every illegal drug known to humanity over the course of his life. After a long period of pot, he moves on to LSD to banish the Shadow Spiders that haunt him, then has to start using amphetamines to cope with the workload at college, then escalates to cocaine in order to cope with the new high-flying professional life that follows, loses everything and becomes hooked on heroin, before finally settling into the Addled Addict phase of his life with crack.
- The Magicians: While at Brakebills, Eliot's drugs of choice are restricted to fine wines and Merit cigarettes, but after graduating, he starts drinking just about anything he can get his hands on. After watching his friend slowly go to pieces over the next few months, even Quentin has to comment after finding Eliot mixing vodka with dayquil note .
- Neuromancer: Case spends most of his free time after Wintermute upgrades his pancreas trying to find something that can still get him high. Case has a reason, though, he is an amphetamine user by choice, but the people who rebuilt his nervous system in order to get him to hack things for them also blocked his body's ability to metabolize amphetamines so he wouldn't get high and do something stupid on the job.
- Brad Cohen of Repeat is normally a habitual pot smoker. However, after finding himself trapped in an infinite loop that always ends with him restarting his life from the womb onwards, Brad becomes a full-blown hedonist in order to cope with the Time Loop Fatigue: in his latest lifetime, he admits to having indulged in weed, amphetamines, Ecstasy, heroin, cocaine, tranquilizers, LSD, tequila mixed with absinthe, raw hash, and liquid psilocybin - which he once had injected directly into his penis.
- In Star Island, Cherry Pye is willing to pop any sort of pill that she hopes might get her high, even if they happen to be her bodyguard's heartworm medication.
Live-Action TV
- Breaking Bad: Over the course of the series, Jesse dips into his own meth supply, heroin speedball, marijuana, smokes heavily, it's heavily implied he did cocaine during the Hookers and Blow parties, and one of the mini-episodes states he did whippets in the past. This is in contrast to Walt, who never gets more extreme than alcohol, a rare puff of tobacco, and a one-time taste of marijuana.
- In Euphoria, Rue's addictive personality is so profound that she'll take just about anything that comes in a pill bottle, to the point that after she nearly overdoses on fentanyl in the second episode, her dealer flat-out refuses to sell her any more drugs.
- The Farscape episode "Throne for a Loss" introduces the Tavleks, a gang of extortionists hooked on a powerful stimulant. After one of them is captured during a botched raid on Moya, Zhaan tries to rehabilitate the guy, and after a while, he almost seems to be responding positively... right up until he trashes one of the DRDs and tries to jerry-rig a substitute drug from its fluid components.
- Father Ted: Father Jack Hackett is The Alcoholic, and as long as he gets an alcoholic buzz, he does not care what he drinks. He spends at least two episodes of the series in the hospital and/or believed to be dead because he drank cocktails made of household chemicals like floor polish.
- Feel Good: Mae has been addicted to cocaine from a young age, but also steals Oxycodone from a hospital, and later downs a full bottle of mouthwash in a stressful situation.
- Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: In "The Viewing", Lionel Lassiter is introduced just prior to being given a heroin injection, avails himself to a glass of extremely rare and expensive booze, and snorts up a small dune of cocaine laced with Dr Zahra's special additive. In fact, the only drug he doesn't indulge in is pot, as he claims to dislike "that hippie shit" and seems to get more enjoyment out of watching everyone else at the table pass the joint.
- In The Good Place, Mindy St. Clair died with a cocaine habit and has spent all of her years in the afterlife pining for it. At one point, she pleads with the main characters to bring her "something I can snort. Eye shadow, crushed-up baby aspirin, cocaine...".
- Sherlock: In "The Lying Detective", it is revealed that when Sherlock Holmes needs to get really high right now he has no preferences, he will just take whatever he can get his hands on (when he's just casually using, he stick to nicotine patches). His brother Mycroft, knowing this fact and having no way to stop him, only asks Sherlock to keep a list of what he takes in case he ever needs medical assistance.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Over the course of "The Wire", Garak is revealed to have been coping with life on the station by means of an anti-torture implant that floods his body with endorphins. However, after two years of continuous use, the implant finally breaks down and Garak is forced to make do with any substitutes he can get his hands on until replacement parts arrive, resulting in him drinking his way through about half of Quark's stock of kanar. After being hospitalized due to a seizure, he steps up his efforts by stealing sedatives from the infirmary — and taking near-fatal doses. In both cases, Garak barely feels anything and makes it clear that this means his body is now terminally dependent on the implant.
- In Succession, Kendall's lapses back into substance abuse compel him to consume any drug he can, whether that's meth at a house in New Mexico or ketamine at a secret party in New York.
- Klaus Hargreeves of The Umbrella Academy (2019) is well-known for his habit of abusing drugs of any kind available - partly in order to stave off his visions of the dead but mostly out of sheer hedonism. In his Establishing Character Moment, he's implied to have overdosed on heroin; in a flashback sequence, he's seen rolling joints under the dinner table; he dismisses Ben's suggestion of eggs for breakfast by remarking "you can't smoke eggs"; Hazel and Cha-Cha steal some hash chocolate from his belongings; he's seen taking pills before Ben stops him... and finally, when none of the others are available, he hits the booze hard. Of course, he's more than prepared to make use of substitutes: in season three, he's seen stealing and drinking mouthwash from the hotel bedrooms.
- All three of the boys on Workaholics are pretty free-spirited in their consumption, but the list of substances Blake's urine tests positive for in the first episode gives Raoul Duke's list a run for its money.
Music
- "Sippin on Some Syrup" by Three 6 Mafia
People always asking me, is the Three 6 high on that?
Rolling on them X pills, stuttering, pup-pup powder packs
Woah-wuh where the weed at, ain't like that we need that
Ny Quil will slow me down, something that keep me easy - "Drug Parade" by Flatbush Zombies:
Shrooms, shrooms, LSD, mescaline, a lotta weed
Shrooms, shrooms, LSD, mescaline, a lotta weed
Shrooms, shrooms, LSD, mescaline, a lotta weed
Can't forget that THC, molly and that DMT - "The Wine Song" by comedian/folk singer Martin Pearson pokes fun at the pretensions of wine connoisseurs and is sung from the perspective of a completely undiscriminating alcoholic:
Then there's the kind of fellow
Drinks champagne to make him mellow:
Swears by Cliquot, Bollinger, and Brut.
Well, I tried some Brut myself,
I found it on the bathroom shelf,
And he's right, it got me mellow as a newt. - One of the core traits of Eminem's Slim Shady character is that he is rampantly addicted to any substance you can name - from heavy-hitters like crack and smack, to softer social drugs like weed and ecstasy, to trashy drugs like glue, Vicodin and ephedrine supplements. One radio edit of "My Name Is" even has him getting high off Kool-Aid.
- "Purple Pills" with Music/D12 is an Ode to Intoxication listing all the many substances Eminem and the others like to indulge.
Video Games
- Darkest Dungeon heroes with the Dipsomania quirk will drink any mystery liquid they come across on the off-chance that it contains alcohol. Even things like tide pool water or fluid leaking from rotting corpses.
"By gods light and dark, I hope this liquid has some kick..."
- Disco Elysium: A character with high Electrochemistry will have the latter skill constantly buzzing in his ear to try literally every drug they come across, regardless of status (i.e. egging on to lick spilled alcohol in a table or smoke discarded cigarette butts).
- Generally speaking, the main characters of Grand Theft Auto V often end up getting smashed on anything they ingest - knowingly or otherwise. However, Trevor Philips takes the cake: already a meth-head, he's also a recreational huffer, regularly gets shitfaced on beer or scotch, drinks gasoline during a mission intro, ends up doing all the drugs in a stolen van full of medical supplies, and can often be found waking up on train tracks with an empty bottle of booze in his hand. The only drug he actively dislikes is marijuana, and that's only because it's not a hard drug and (as he sees it) a drug for weaklings. That said, he still has a toke of Barry's pot - and suffering hallucinations of clows as a result.
- Exploring the Ages of Myst reveals that Sirrus has a taste for vice - in contrast to his brother Achenar - and doesn't play favourites in his intoxicants of choice: his luxurious throne room in the Mechanical Age is fitted with its own wine cellar, empty bottles are scattered around his bed in the Channelwood Age, and his palatial bedchamber in the Stoneship Age conceals a number of suspicious-looking vials and syringes.
- NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD: This is one of Ame-chan's major character flaws, which is Played for Drama and a Central Theme. Ame can try OTC cold medicine, prescription meds, marijuana, and psychotropics to decrease her stress. She also can experience other forms of addiction, such as her Extreme Libido causing a Nonstandard Game Over. The game consistently draws a direct parallel between drug addiction and Internet addiction through Ame.
- Che Garcia Hansson of The Secret World doesn't play favorites when it comes to drugs: during lean times on Solomon Island, he'll make do with pot; immersed in the nightlife of Tokyo, he makes his way through "mountains of dope," and when that's not available, he gets completely smashed on whatever booze is available until he manages to get himself kicked out of every single club in town. And then, at the height of the party, he brings out his little bio-vials of spiders...
- The Investment Banker of Streets of Rogue needs to take drugs once per minute, or he will enter Withdrawal state and take continuous damage. You can take any drug to satisfy your drug need, from cigarettes, sugar, some unknown syringes, or cyanide pill.
- The Demoman of Team Fortress 2 is shown using various substitutes for his typical alcohol: a deleted scene in one of the comics has him willingly inject himself with the Sniper's caustic sedative, one item's description mentions he drinks wood alcohol
(something usually added to keep people from drinking chemicals with alcohol in them), and one taunt has him chugging whiskey and the contents of a grenade.
Web Original
- In The Most Popular Girls in School, Jenna has been known to take weed, Ecstasy, and later cocaine in Season 4.
- Not Always Legal has a story of an unseen addict who stole a businessman's briefcase and snorted the white powder that was inside, without bothering to check what it was. Turns out, it wasn't a drug of any description; it was super-absorbent. The hospital returned the businessman's briefcase, but he never did get back those samples he'd planned to show at a conference.
Western Animation
- In the American Dad! episode "I Am the Walrus", Jeff and Hayley are held hostage by Principal Lewis who forces them to clear his house. Jeff has a bunch of pills that cause paralysis (stolen from Roger), but as they are planning how to trick Lewis into taking them, he appears, takes the pills from Jeff, says "What's that, drugs? I'll take it, I don't care what it does!" and swallows them.
- Err of Aqua Teen Hunger Force is such a nicotine addict, he attempts to get high by inhaling the Ominous Fog the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future summons when telling his stories. It seems to work (via placebo if nothing else), and Err even claimed it tasted like menthol.
- Archer:
- Sterling Archer is incapable of functioning unless he's in a constant alcoholic haze. In order to maintain the haze, he's occasionally had to get creative about sources of alcohol; in one episode, he tries to get loaded on barber's germicide.
- His mother Malory as well. When the agency was visiting a space station, she (as well as Sterling) was unhappy to find out there was no alcohol on board. She tried making her own drinks by mixing Tang with rubbing alcohol.
- Cheryl's go-to drug is usually huffing glue but she occasionally dives into other narcotics, including gummy bears laced with LSD.
- In Clone High, supposedly recovered drug addict Larry Hardcore boasts that when he was still in the throes of addiction, he would have smoked raisins if he thought they would get him high.
- Foxxy Love of Drawn Together runs over her four bandmates while drunk on a Gargle Blaster cocktail. Given how hard Foxxy is shown to party, she probably can't get buzzed on anything remotely normal anymore.
Foxxy: [picking up the phone] I need to call an ambulance! Oh, girls, I am so sorry. I never should have been drinking and driving. That is the last time I mix liquor and beer and cough syrup and Kool-Aid and grape Kool-Aid and Lemon Pledge! [in confessional] And this time I mean it!
- One joke in Family Guy shows the Cookie Monster trying to freebase cookie dough in a bathroom stall with a spoon and a lighter, all while anxiously mumbling that it's taking too long.
- In Inside Job (2021), Andre is first introduced huffing chemtrails and in a later episode is shown with a briefcase full of multiple types of drugs, including a live toad with hallucinogenic skin secretions. After his drugs are thrown overboard, he resorts to licking his sentient mushroom coworker for psilocybin. In another episode, he says he's so strung out that he's now addicted to Brutal Honesty as it's the only thing that makes him feel anything.
- Rick of Rick and Morty is largely an alcoholic, being regularly encountered swigging from a hip flask and sporting dozens of empty bottles rattling around inside his spaceship. However, given that he's also an amoral hedonist, he will gladly make use of numerous party drugs - plus some things that might not have been intended to be used as drugs, including brake fluid, crushed-up crystals, the fluid used to defrost a test subject, and alien pheromones (as smoked through a hookah). In a Crossover ad for Alien: Covenant, the cocktail of drugs in his bloodstream is so strong that it instantly (and fatally) poisons a Facehugger that attached to him.
- The Simpsons:
- At the height of Krusty the Clown's opulent lifestyle, he admits to inhaling moon rocks. All it does at that point is help him get to normal.
- Barney is primarily an alcoholic, but when shot with a Tranquillizer Dart in "Much Apu About Nothing", he pulls it out to drink the rest of the liquid inside.
- Then there's Barney's ditty "Buy Me a Beer" (a parody of "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins):
Buy me a beer / Two bucks a glass / Won't you please hurry? / I'm freezing my ass / Buy me a brandy / A snifter of wine / Who am I kidding? / I'll drink turpentine.- In "The Mansion Family", Moe's barflies are so desperate for booze, he fends them off with a whip until the ship they're on crosses into international waters. Lenny asks for some rubbing alcohol for a cut, and Moe obliges. Lenny immediately starts drinking it, and Moe whips it right out of his hand.
- The Venture Bros. has an episode in which Sgt. Hatred, desperate for an alcohol fix, is on the floor of the bathroom spraying generic brand body spray into his mouth.
