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Basic Trope: An alien gets high on a mundane substance.

  • Straight: Alice gets high on vinegar.
  • Exaggerated: Alice gets high on water and oxygen.
  • Downplayed: Alice gets pleasurable sensations from vinegar, but not to the point of intoxication.
  • Justified: Alice has Bizarre Alien Biology.
  • Inverted:
    • Alice takes marijuana and complains that she can't get high while humans can.
    • Drinking olive oil sobers Alice up.
    • Bob eats something that is a delicacy on Alice's planet and proceeds to get high.
    • A mundane substance that is the alien equivalent of table sugar gets humans high.
  • Subverted: Alice is given vinegar for this reason, but it doesn't work.
  • Double Subverted: ...because Alice has some weird recessive gene, and it would work like that on anyone else of her species.
  • Parodied: Alice gets high on fine wine and lobster, but doesn't think to mention it until she happens to attend a banquet.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice drinks vinegar and gets high, but it is revealed this was just an act. Later she eats cinnamon and gets high, but only because she has a special condition that makes this effect only in her, not the rest of her species. Another alien mentions that Jello is what really gets to them.
  • Averted: Alice gets high only on human drugs and nothing else.
  • Enforced: The main characters need a clue that Alice is not as human as she seems to be.
  • Lampshaded:
    • "Alice is acting really weird after drinking that vinegar; what is she, an alien?"
    • "You know you're not supposed to drink that, right?" "...But it makes me feel all sparkly inside..."
  • Invoked: Evil humans serve food with vinegar in it at a banquet, knowing that Alice will be intoxicated and no one else will.
  • Exploited: Bob keeps a small bottle of olive oil on his person whenever Alice is nearby, just in case.
  • Defied: Alice consciously sticks to food and drink from her own planet, knowing the possible side-effects human food may have on her.
  • Discussed: "Hey, guys, do you have any vinegar around here?" "No...not since Alice moved in."
  • Conversed: "Hey, look, the strangely-human alien is looking at the vinegar, I bet hijinks are about to ensue!"
  • Implied: Alice is acting like she is drunk, and there's an empty vinegar bottle on the table.
  • Deconstructed: Alice gets high on vinegar, and it's presented in the same way as an actual drug addiction would be, complete with disheveled appearance and damage to her brain.
  • Reconstructed: Alice realizes she has a problem, attends a clinic and then from then on is able to use vinegar in moderation with the addictive side-effects.

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