Comic Books
"I'm doing mechanics," he says, fingers tapping in unconscious urgency on the sharp edges of a credit-card-sized AI computer brain; same kind of servant-mind you can find in your Maker, one that comes with the standard chemical scanning gear that checks your food as fit for consumption. Some bastard here's selling mechanics, and he wants some. Not needs. Not yet. Mechanics is — at least begins as — a drug, one new enough that we haven't yet developed addiction resistance to it. A drug whose chemical code is also machine code. Make the AI card scan the drug, do the drug yourself, and you and the machine intelligence both get good and fucked up. The drug creates a connection between your mind and the AI. The AI breaks into your head and starts messing around with your DNA. Move a human chemical here, juggle some more there — and human tissue becomes mineral matter. You grow mechanics. The high passes. The mechanics remain.
— Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan, "I Hate it Here"
Fan Works
"It's called Searuby," he said. "It's made from a special kind of coral that grows around the old Fontaine Futuristics building. It'll take you places weirder than that, believe me."
He felt it germane to avoid mentioning that users tended to get rather mobile when visiting these places and usually tended to do things entirely independent of their own conscious minds. The marine biologist who'd sold him his first batch of the drug had mentioned "conscious dream states," "mind/body disconnection," and even "Jekyll and Hyde disorder," all adding up to one of the best commercially-available hallucinogens on the market, so Manny hadn't seen any tangible reason not to sell it — or add any caveats to his sales pitch, for that matter. True, there'd been a few weird stories about certain users frantically humping the windows in attempts to fuck passing whales, only to wake up claiming that they'd been sprinting merrily across a labyrinth of chocolate built over a lake of honey. And yes, by it was too late to ask his contact about the negative side-effects, given that the poor bastard had vanished about a month after he'd started dealing, but since nobody had cracked down on Manny's business yet, he had to assume that it wasn't due to the coral. At any rate, so long as this crazy bint came back for more, it was all good in his books.
He felt it germane to avoid mentioning that users tended to get rather mobile when visiting these places and usually tended to do things entirely independent of their own conscious minds. The marine biologist who'd sold him his first batch of the drug had mentioned "conscious dream states," "mind/body disconnection," and even "Jekyll and Hyde disorder," all adding up to one of the best commercially-available hallucinogens on the market, so Manny hadn't seen any tangible reason not to sell it — or add any caveats to his sales pitch, for that matter. True, there'd been a few weird stories about certain users frantically humping the windows in attempts to fuck passing whales, only to wake up claiming that they'd been sprinting merrily across a labyrinth of chocolate built over a lake of honey. And yes, by it was too late to ask his contact about the negative side-effects, given that the poor bastard had vanished about a month after he'd started dealing, but since nobody had cracked down on Manny's business yet, he had to assume that it wasn't due to the coral. At any rate, so long as this crazy bint came back for more, it was all good in his books.
Literature
In the past, I thought little of selling my blood so a few addicts with very expensive tastes could get high on a touch of magic. It was wildly dangerous to the unGifted, who lacked the capacity to control such raw power. It was one of the few things I truly regretted, a foul secret I would never share.
— The Traitor God, by Cameron Johnston
The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what those mestos were like, things hanging so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new vesches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or deroncrom or one or two other vesches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all of your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with.
Palmer Eldritch: You were wrong. I did not find God in the Prox system. But I found something better. God promises eternal life. I can do better; I can deliver it.
Leo Bulero: Deliver it how?
Palmer Eldritch: Through the lichen which we're marketing under the name Chew-Z. It bears little resemblance to your own product, Leo. Can-D is obsolete, because what does it do? Provides a few moments of escape, nothing but fantasy. Who wants it? Who needs that when they can get the genuine thing from me?
Leo Bulero: Deliver it how?
Palmer Eldritch: Through the lichen which we're marketing under the name Chew-Z. It bears little resemblance to your own product, Leo. Can-D is obsolete, because what does it do? Provides a few moments of escape, nothing but fantasy. Who wants it? Who needs that when they can get the genuine thing from me?
The DNA made by psychoactive viruses, though, cannot make new viruses, and it is not inserted into the host genome. Instead, it manufactures enzymes which in turn synthesize chemicals that normally present only when the host neurone is activated, enhancing the particular fractional state of consciousness controlled by the infected neurones. Because the viruses can't replicate, and because the unbound DNA they make is ephemeral, users have to buy a hit every time they want to turn themselves on. If you can hack a psychoactive virus that targets an interesting component of consciousness's Gestalt, you can make a lot of money very quickly.
— Fairyland, by Paul J McAuley
Bliss was a unique designer drug — unique for two reasons. The first was that you could get addicted to Bliss just by looking at it. Which made it very hard for the police to carry out drug busts. The second was its effect. It made you believe you were God. It made you feel as if you were all-seeing, all-knowing, eternal and omnipotent. Which was laughable, really, because when you were high on Bliss, you couldn't even lace your shoes. The Bliss high lasted fifteen minutes; after coming down, the resulting depression lasted fifteen years. Few people could live with it, so they had to take another belt.
— Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
For those who like it, the faint insistent sweetness of drooz may perfume the ways of the city, drooz which first brings a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs, and then after some hours a dreamy languor, and wonderful visions at last of the very arcana and inmost secrets of the Universe, as well as exciting the pleasure of sex beyond all belief; and it is not habit-forming. For more modest tastes I think there ought to be beer.
Video Games
Moniqa: Your target is a flower specimen in Sumeragi's pharmaceutical lab.
Gunvolt: You want me to kill a flower? That's a new one.
Moniqa: The problem is the drug they produce from it. Ever heard of S.E.E.D.? It's a psychotropic medication used to control things like anxiety. In strong doses, it induces temporary Septimal highs and leads to dependence.
Gunvolt: So whoever controls the drug...
Moniqa: Gains leverage over a small army of overpowered, wastoid Adepts.
Gunvolt: Wow... bad flower.
Gunvolt: You want me to kill a flower? That's a new one.
Moniqa: The problem is the drug they produce from it. Ever heard of S.E.E.D.? It's a psychotropic medication used to control things like anxiety. In strong doses, it induces temporary Septimal highs and leads to dependence.
Gunvolt: So whoever controls the drug...
Moniqa: Gains leverage over a small army of overpowered, wastoid Adepts.
Gunvolt: Wow... bad flower.
"ADAM acts like a benign cancer, destroying native cells and replacing them with unstable stem versions. While this very instability is what gives it its amazing properties, it is also what causes the cosmetic and mental damage. You need more and more ADAM just to keep back the tide. From a medical standpoint, this is catastrophic. From a business standpoint, well... Fontaine sees the possibilities."
— Brigid Tenembaum, BioShock
Caller: I wanna talk about that SPANK stuff. People say it's bad for you. It's not bad for you at all. Why aren't you talking? Oh, you think I'm strange? Am I on the air? Hello? Answer me, you pansy!
Lazlow: Er... what's your question?
Caller: SPANK! SPANK SPANK! SPANK!
Lazlow: Er... what's your question?
Caller: SPANK! SPANK SPANK! SPANK!
Webcomics
Ch'vorthq: Before you dig in, I'dd like to read the ingredients to you.
Schlock: Uh-oh... collateral damage to the conscience.
Ch'vorthq: I'm being serious. Listen to this list... Glucose, fructose, corn syrup solids, concentrated cocoa-bean extract, assorted methylxanthine alkaloids (including caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline), sodium laureth sulfate, Minoxadyl, buckminster fullerene, codeine, hyper-ephedrine, nicotine, with BHA and BHT added to preserve freshness. Sergeant, you will be drinking a very heavy stimulant cocktail cut with shampoo and inert ultra-tensile carbon.
Schlock: I don't drink it. I eat it straight.
Ch'vorthq: And I suspect you're addicted to it.
Schlock: Step away from the tub of happiness.
Schlock: Uh-oh... collateral damage to the conscience.
Ch'vorthq: I'm being serious. Listen to this list... Glucose, fructose, corn syrup solids, concentrated cocoa-bean extract, assorted methylxanthine alkaloids (including caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline), sodium laureth sulfate, Minoxadyl, buckminster fullerene, codeine, hyper-ephedrine, nicotine, with BHA and BHT added to preserve freshness. Sergeant, you will be drinking a very heavy stimulant cocktail cut with shampoo and inert ultra-tensile carbon.
Schlock: I don't drink it. I eat it straight.
Ch'vorthq: And I suspect you're addicted to it.
Schlock: Step away from the tub of happiness.
Web Original
"I love how Red Kryptonite apparently works subdermally, then intravenously, eventually rushing to the eyes and the head. Is it basically Kryptonian cocaine? I hope Clark talks nonstop and goes on and on about his yacht."
"Along the way, I meet a drug dealer who sells this thing called Zyme. I assume this is one of those fictional drugs created so that the game doesn't have to deal with the ratings problems of real drugs, which is amusing considering the sheer number of other RL references to conspiracy stuff the game has. Apparently you can say that the US government is evil, but you can't say that there is a drug problem on the streets without making up a fictional drug for that purpose."
shattuckl: Is this where horse tilt anonymous meets?
Doug: Look, I can quit horse tilt any time, I don't have a problem. If you have a problem, that's on you.
Doug: Look, I can quit horse tilt any time, I don't have a problem. If you have a problem, that's on you.
