It is known that people under the influence of drugs often Feel No Pain, display aggressive behaviors, and do not feel the same fear as sober people... Qualities that any military or Hired Guns would likely appreciate in a fight. The downsides are obvious, as these stimulants are usually highly addictive, and them being used in highly stressful situations makes the problem worse as the user may develop a reliance on them in addition to addiction, to say nothing of long-term side effects... These stimulants come with a built-in perverse incentive for addiction, as people may develop the idea that long-term side effects are preferable to simply dying in a fight right now...
A Sister Trope to Psycho Serum; while they share the goal of enhancing fighting capability but come with side effects, Combat Drugs usually do not give superpowers. Distinct from but frequently overlapping with Fantastic Drug, as some very real (or realistic) drugs are sometimes used as combat drugs, but many fictional Combat Drugs would qualify as full-on Fantastic Drugs. It can go with Drug-Crazed Savagery, which is when characters become aggressive and perform dangerous activities under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Truth in Television, Liquid Courage has been used by various militaries for this exact purpose, and armies (the Wehrmacht among them) have been known to deploy various types of amphetamines as Combat Drugs. Combat Drugs are most likely to feature prominently in the Cyberpunk genre.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Cowboy Bebop: Asimov, the Villain of the Week in "Asteroid Blues", is doing an improvised version of this. The drug he's taking is designed for getting high rather than combat use, but it boosts the reaction time and adrenaline levels of users to superhuman levels, allowing Asimov to dodge bullets and kill with a single punch. The episode takes the time to show the downsides: Asimov is addicted, the effects are very short-lived, and it's wrecking both his mind and body.
- In Naruto, there are combat drugs mixed with Food Pills known as Military Ration Pellets or Soldier Pills. A single pill will make a ninja able to fight for three days and nights without food or sleep and will stimulate their chakra and physical abilities, but cause extreme exhaustion when the effect has worn off. More extreme are the Akimichi clan's Three Colour Pills, which will convert the user's body fat into chakra but have potentially toxic side effects and cause dangerous weight loss.
Comic Books
- In Justice Machine, the martial artist Demon has an on-again, off-again addiction to the drug Edge, which enhances a user's strength, speed, stamina, and ability to ignore pain but leaves the user virtually helpless when it wears off.
- Marvel Universe: Nuke — originally a foe of Daredevil, and later Captain America and Wolverine — has a second heart, and takes different coloured pills to produce different bodily effects. Nuke's pill colours are: red, for increased adrenaline; white, to keep him balanced between missions; and blue, to bring him down.note
Fan Works
- Used for Deliberate Values Dissonance in Rocketship Voyager when it's mentioned that Voyager's Space Marines have a ration of Benzedrine Sulfate that they use during combat.
Films — Live-Action
- Logan has a substance that's basically berserker rage in a syringe. Wolverine uses it at the end to take down the soldiers who have captured Laura.
- Mad Max: In Mad Max: Fury Road and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Chrome
spray paint is used as a war drug by the War Boys. Huffing the substance makes them high so they are more or less OK with putting themselves in dangerous situations.
Gamebooks
- Lone Wolf:
- Adgana herb. The strongest Combat Skill-enhancing drug in the series (+6 CS on the first dose, +3 CS afterward), but with an increasing risk of nasty addiction that can reduce the Endurance score permanently.
- Alether potion, extracted from Alether berries, too. With less enhancement than Adgana (+2 CS most often, +4 CS for one rare superior potion) but without the side effects. As a result, much more common; you can find a draught about Once per Book.
Literature
- Deathstalker: The debauched aristocrat Valentine Wolfe has a Fantastic Drug or ten for every occasion. When he has to defend himself, his implants dispense a cocktail to enhance his strength, speed, senses, and reflexes and make him a Rubber Man. (The last was first developed as a sexual stimulant, but he's nothing if not creative.)
- The bulk of the Humanx Commonwealth Navy's combat strength is provided by 'stingships', small attack craft manned by a crew of one human and one thranx. In combat, both crewmembers are injected with "Heightened Instinct and Perception" drugs. These drugs elevate both to a state of mind they call "HIPnosis", in which the thranx is able to make decisions at lightning speed and without any emotional component, while the human is stripped of all compassion and becomes a single-minded killing machine. Put them together with the stingship's weaponry, and the result is a devastatingly effective warship.
- In Fury Born: An Imperial Cadreman's implanted pharmacope can administer a wide variety of substances, including "The Tick", a cocktail that ramps up neural responses to the point that the user sees the world go by in slow motion. A Cadreman "Riding the Tick" can't quite dodge a bullet (due to the limits of how fast their musculature can function), but they can evaluate the point at which a rifle is aiming, see the enemy's trigger finger tense, and start their evasion soon enough that their head is out of the way by the time the gun fires. Coming down from "The Tick" is an absolutely miserable, nausea-filled experience, suspected by Cadremen to be by design, specifically to counteract a tendency to get addicted to the slow-mo experience. The protagonist, Alicia DeVries, is specifically described as having possibly the easiest, quickest experience coming down from the Tick of anyone in the Cadre, and she still fully agrees with the description of it as an absolutely miserable, nausea-filled experience.
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The FN soldiers sent to put down the rebellion have to win or die, as their troopships don't have enough fuel to return to Earth. So they're "loaded with energizers, don’t-worries, and fear inhibitors that would make a mouse spit at a cat, and turned loose."
- Subverted in Dale Dye's Run Between the Raindrops. The NVA defenders at Hue have been refused permission to withdraw, so they shoot up on uncut heroin and wait to die. However this slows their reaction time and so the attacking US marines find it easier to kill them.
Live-Action TV
- The Doctor Blake Mysteries: Lucien was at the Fall of Singapore where British and Australian troops were issued amphetamines to keep them awake and alert. In "Still Waters", this allows him to immediately identify the effects of the drug when he takes a suspicious pill.
- Will Simpson from Jessica Jones (2015) is a former special operations soldier who routinely used such drugs during his military days. When he begins using them again in the series, we see various effects; they allow him to heal from wounds that should have killed him in about a day or two instead of months, and they give him minor Super-Strength and Super-Reflexes, but they also take a toll on the mind and leave him much more bloodthirsty and likely to resort to murder at the drop of a hat.
- The Sliders episode "Just Say Yes" has "Decimide", a PCP-like drug that enhances strength and rage while reducing pain sensation. One cop dosed with it gets up quickly when he's hit by a car and manages to slowly punch through a metal door on his own.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Encounter at Farpoint", the 21st-century military of the Post-Atomic Horror are shown with retractable stimulant dispensers attached to their uniform.
- Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger: Tylerian Durden is an alien who runs an illegal fight club. His fighters take a steroid named Megagesterine which increases their size and muscles for combat.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech had its share of battlefield drugs. Some were fairly straightforward, such as Qwik-Stim, a spray-injected stimulant that would keep users awake through otherwise debilitating effects of crew stuns or pilot injuries, but with the downside of nausea, tremors, and a spectacularly impressive chem-crash afterwards. Others bordered on inhuman—The Society came up with a drug called "Feralize" that shuts off the user's higher brain functions and ramps up aggression to the level of completely mindless rages, used primarily for pilots of quadruped Protomechs to 'put them in touch with their animal instincts' and make them more capable in using their quadruped Power Armor. This obviously resulted in problems when they needed to employ battlefield tactics other than constant unfettered violence, and getting Feralized pilots back after battle was particularly difficult as a side effect included long term brain damage resembling crippling long-term alcoholism, but also with the mindless rages.
- Blades in the Dark: The Cutter playbook has access to "rage essence" — a Fantastic Drug that greatly increases the imbiber's physical strength and resistance to pain for a few minutes, at the cost of them being unable to distinguish friend from foe or to stop fighting until everyone in sight stops moving.
- Dead of Winter: One of the random items in the deck, steroids, can be equipped to a character to raise their combat stat to the Cap. The trade-off is that while they're in use, they have a chance of harming the character each round.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: The Book of Vile Darkness introduces several Fantastic Drugs, some of which can be used as combat drugs. However, between their side effects, risks of overdose and eventual addiction, they are not very interesting compared to spells or potions, which are way safer. Some magic can be used to dampen or remove the negative effects, but that would still be considered a waste of resources in most cases.
- Devilweed increases Strength but makes the user confused and skittish. Ironically, this makes it interesting for Paladins (their immunity to fear meaning no side effect), on the condition that a drug about as addictive as tobacco isn't illegal. Since the leaves are smoked like a cigar, it can also evokes the image of a cigar-chomping badass.
- Luhix, made with plants from the Abysses, renders one immune to pain and gives a small boost to all character stats, though only after a full minute of mind-numbing pain. Its absolutely nasty addiction level, however, makes it much more valuable as a slow poison than a combat drug. (Or a fast and deadly poison with an overdose.)
- Redflower Leaves increase hand-to-eye coordination, allowing to focus on a single combatant in a fight. Its addiction level is low and it has no side effect unless overdosed.
- Sannish is another drug that renders immune to pain, although it causes a slight euphoria. Its addicts can be recognized by permanent blue stains on the lips.note
- Over the Edge: Slo-Mo makes the entire world feel like it's in slow motion, improving reaction time and combat ability. It is extremely illegal, and those laws are actually enforced — the Peace Force does not play around with a drug that makes people better in combat. Side effects include mental burnout and a detachment from reality caused by a decreasing percentage of neuron firing coming from external stimuli.
- Rifts: Juicers are people implanted with a device that continually delivers a cocktail of drugs into their bloodstream intended to force the body to operate at constant peak efficiency, turning Juicers inhumanly fast, strong, and tough. However, these drugs are extremely addictive, withdrawal can be fatal, and this forced biological overdrive will kill the user within seven years of starting it by essentially burning out their body.
- In Shadowrun, there are a number of street drugs designed to augment runners' combat abilities, including Cram, a classic stimulant, and Kamikaze, which gives the runner pain tolerance and a boost to all combat-related stats. All these drugs are highly addictive, and the game has built-in mechanics for addiction and withdrawal. The nastiest of all is K10, also known as the Blood of Kali. It provides an immense bonus to combat abilities, but drives the user berserk while they're on it and the post-high crash is dangerous enough that it can easily result in death (assuming you manage to survive the whole "berserk fury that compels you to attack everything you can see for ten minutes" after you take it).
- Traveller:
- The combat drug in Book 2, Starships, comes in pill form. When swallowed, it increases the user's Strength and Endurance scores by 2 points each. The effect begins two combat rounds (30 seconds) after being taken and lasts 30 combat rounds (7 minutes 30 seconds). When the effect wears off, the user takes 1-6 Hit Points of wound damage.
- In Double Adventure 3, Death Station, one of the experimental combat drugs being tested on animals is Type A. 15 minutes after being taken, the recipient's Strength and Endurance increase to 15, but their Dexterity is reduced by 5 points. When the effect wears off after thirty minutes, the recipient suffers from fatigue instead of taking damage.
- There are multiple examples in Warhammer 40,000, but to provide one, the drug Frenzon is showcased in The Last Chancers as a "berserker-rage-in-a-can" (handed over to penal legions because the barrage of increased paranoia and fear makes it too unreliable for regular troop use).
Video Games
- BioShock: One of the scientific breakthroughs accomplished in Rapture is the creation of Tonics, performance-enhancing chemicals that are mostly used for combat. The player can use them to increase their strength when attacking with the wrench, quieting footsteps for stealth, or becoming more efficient at hacking machines.
- In Cataclysm, the player can consume stimulants that raise movement points, dexterity, intelligence, and perception while lowering fatigue.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The Blackwood mercenaries dose their recruits with sap from a captive Hist tree to enhance their combat abilities, as it does for the Argonians who live in symbiosis with the Hist. Instead, the Hist sap sends the recruits into a hallucinatory bloodlust.
- In the Fallout series, virtually every chem has a combat-boosting effect, and Psycho is specifically military in origin.
- Pep pills (which contains amphetamines) and heroin are usable items in Fear & Hunger: Termina. Pep pills give you an agility boost while heroin gives a boost to all stats and a full Mind recovery but also gives your character a permanent heroin addiction.
- Helldivers: An available perk is the MD-99 Autoinjector. It's a stimpack that increases passive health regeneration and makes it much faster to get up while you're downed, but you can't actively use it to heal yourself.
- Helldivers II makes healing stims a base component in the Helldiver arsenal, allowing them to survive for a couple more seconds out in the field before their entire body is crushed beyond repair by a Bile Titan. What this means in terms of practical gameplay is that Helldivers now have the means to shrug off aggregated small-arms fire and bring themselves back from the brink of death in situations where they would have been guaranteed to die in the original game. Stims also have zero addictive properties, and any suggestion otherwise is treason punishable by death.
- Intravenous: In the sequel, Shaun and Gideon can use an inhaled stimulant to gain Bullet Time for a few seconds.
- In Max Payne, the new designer drug hitting the street, Valkyr, is eventually revealed to be a (failed) combat drug designed by a Government Conspiracy.
- In the Risk of Rain series, the Soldier's Serum is an expy of/reference to Starcraft's Stimpak and boosts attack speed by 15%.
- The Silent Hill games have Ampoules, which can heal a player's health stat all the way to maximum, and doubles as a powerful painkiller; in the first minute or so after being administered, the player is invulnerable to most enemy attacks, and remains in this state until the Ampoule's effect wears off.
- StarCraft: Terrans can upgrade their Marines with Stimpacks that grant a temporary move and fire rate boost but damage the unit. Marauders also get the same ability in StarCraft II (though not in the Wings of Liberty campaign), and Reapers have the Combat Drugs passive ability that gives them a Healing Factor out of combat.
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown: "Combat Drugs" is an ability belonging to Support Class soldiers, which upgrades their Smoke Bombs. In addition to providing obscuring cover for themselves and their squad, it also comes with stimulants that grant bonus Critical Hit chance, aim accuracy, and Will to soldiers inside, designed to be an offense-oriented buff to Smoke Bombs (the direct alternative is "Dense Smoke", which makes smoke clouds bigger and improves defensive stats).
Western Animation
- In the American Dad! episode "Dope & Faith", Roger tricks Steve into working in a crack den, which causes trouble when Steve brings a brick of cocaine home with him thinking it would count as "extra credit". When the dealers come to the house to take their cocaine by force, Roger ends up getting a faceful of cocaine which gives him the focus and stamina to shoot the dealers to death in a shootout in the living room.
- Archer Danger Island involves a group of Nazi soldiers coming to a remote island in the Pacific Ocean. Like the real-life Nazis, the soldiers and their boss, Fuchs, tend to use cocaine and amphetamines as performance enhancers. As in real life, this also leads to a false sense of what they can do and critical errors in judgement.
Real Life
- It's hypothesized that one way the Vikings' berserkers were made to erupt in martial rage was the administration of hallucinogenic plants.
- See The Other Wiki for a shortlist of drugs issued by world militaries
- The US Air Force issued amphetamine (commonly called "go pills") to keep pilots on long flights awake until 2017 when it was replaced with modafinil.
- Methamphetamine was used so frequently by Nazi Germany's armed forces that it was nicknamed Panzerschokoladenote . It also was used by the Imperial Japanese armed forces, with the stockpiles left over being taken by certain groups that started the yakuza.
- Sleeping pills ("no-go pills") are commonly prescribed to make sure pilots and soldiers are adequately rested before operations.
- ISIS has been known to give fenethylline to troops.
- During World War I until 1916, the British Army handed out "Forced March" pills containing combination of caffeine and cocaine.
