This Is Your Index on Drugs

8 Following

Kids, talk to your parents about tropes.

See also Pharmacology Tropes.

Tropes:

• 420, Blaze It: The number 420 is associated with cannabis.
• Addiction Displacement: A person ends their addiction simply by becoming addicted to something else.
• Addiction-Powered: A person who gains powers by abusing their own drug abuse.
• Addiction Realization: The moment when a character realizes that they have a serious problem.
• Addiction Song: A song about drug abuse and addiction.
• Addictive Magic: Where casting spells (or just having a magic power) gets you high.
• Addled Addict: When an addict (former or current) is clearly struggling in life.
• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: The local drug dealer gets you to try a drug that you can't resist, or else!
• A.I. Getting High: When a robot takes drugs.
• Alcoholic Parent: Parent who drinks a lot.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: A person ends up doing stupid things after being inebriated.
• Alien Catnip: Something that that aliens go crazy for, often stuff that is mundane to us humans.
• Anthropomorphic Vice: Addictive substances are personified or anthropomorphized.
• Artistic Stimulation: Using drugs to be creative in the arts.
• Better than Sex: Anything (including drugs) that makes the horizontal bop seem like a lesser thrill.
• Binge Montage: A montage sequence that shows people getting drunk and/ or high.
• Bottled Heroic Resolve: A normally heroic Hollywood health pack that often comes with undesired side effects.
• But Liquor Is Quicker: Getting a person inebriated so that you can have sex with them.
• Caffeine Failure: When not even coffee can keep you awake for a task at hand.
• Chemically Induced Insanity: Intentionally inducing a desired effect onto another person (does not have to be madness).
• Chemical Messiah: A drug or chemical that is worshipped like a god for its properties.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: When a smoke is needed in a highly stressful situation.
• Clandestine Chemist: Someone educated in chemistry decides to use their knowledge for illegal purposes, often the creation of drugs.
• Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: Seeing the very thing you're trying to give up everywhere around you, no matter how improbable.
• Combat Drugs: When drugs are consumed to give an edge or courage in battle.
• Comfort Food: Where binge-eating lots of food in one sitting is the high of choice.
• Compressed Abstinence: Quitting a vice, though not exclusively drug-related.
• Compressed Vice: Someone with a hidden vice or addiction attempts to get rid of it by the episode's end. Again, not exclusively drug-related, but has lots of examples.
• Concussions Get You High: Getting hit on the head will have you act like you're on drugs.
• Contemplating Your Hands: Getting high and questioning your hands, wondering about what their (very obvious) purpose is.
• The Dark Side: An evil moral stance becomes addictive.
• Demographically Inappropriate Humour: When a work made for a younger audience makes a joke about drugs or something else inappropriate.
• Descent into Addiction: A character's journey from normal to an addicted mess.
• Dramatically Delayed Drug: A drug doesn't work until it's most dramatic — or inconvenient.
• Dr. Feelgood: A doctor who prescribes or provides dangerous drugs in an unethical manner.
• Drugged Lipstick: There's really something in that kiss that makes you feel like you're under somebody's spell.
• Drug Based Characterization: A character's needs and motivations are reflected by the drugs they take.
• Drug-Crazed Savagery: Doing drugs makes you violent.
• Drugs Are Bad: The story's moral is that drugs are very bad for you and should be avoided at all costs.
• Drugs Are Good: The story's moral is that drugs are good for you, and are nothing to be afraid of trying.
• Drugs Causing Slow-Motion: The surrounding world "slows down" when someone is on drugs.
• Drunk on Milk: Getting drunk on a substance that, by all rights, should be impossible to get drunk on.
• Drunken Master: Getting hammered makes you good at hammering bad guys...or with a hammer in a workshop.
• Drunken Montage: A clip montage of people getting drunk.
• Dry Crusader: A person who abstains from alcohol and tries to force everyone else to go without alcohol as well.
• Erudite Stoner: The Stoner regularly delivers gems of philosophical wisdom, and may also double as a New-Age Retro Hippie.
• Eternal Prohibition: The prohibition continues on into the future, where very few, if any, drugs are allowed.
• Everybody Must Get Stoned: When a group of people get stoned, often by accident.
• Evil Tastes Good: Drugs often get described as tasting of evil by evil characters; a lot of overlap exists here.
• Fake High: A person falls under a placebo effect, usually by being given a non-drug substance in place of a drug.
• Fantastic Drug: A fictional drug that appears in a sci-fi or fantasy-based story; also sometimes referred to as a designer drug.
• Fiending for a Fix: Addicts become dangerous or unscrupulous because they're acting on cravings or suffering from withdrawal.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: An old-timey way of determining what the drug is by an on-site taste test.
• Forced Addiction: Turning someone into an addict by force or manipulation.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Beer that has been changed between regional edits to be water or milk.
• Functional Addict: Drug addiction does not affect a person's day-to-day activities, such as work.
• Gargle Blaster: An alcoholic drink so powerful that it makes the person who drank it either get absolutely hammered or instantly pass out.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: Exactly what it sounds like, a drug dealer partaking in the drugs they don't sell.
• A Glass of Chianti: Evil people drink red wine.
• Going Cold Turkey: Trying to get off the substance you're addicted to.
• Good Flaws, Bad Flaws: Giving flaws to a previously flawless character (like a drug addiction).
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Those that smoke are bad, except in instances where that isn't the case.
• Government Drug Enforcement: The Powers That Be are forcing you to use drugs (often psychoactive ones).
• G-Rated Drug: A harmless consumable substance is depicted as having the same properties as a drug.
• G-Rated Stoner: A character that acts like a stoner, sans any presence of drugs.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Someone being dumped has ice cream to make them feel better.
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Getting smarter through drugs, or dealing with a foreign fantastical concept with drugs.
• High on Catnip: Animals getting high.
• High on Homicide: Getting high on a specific killing.
• High Times Future: A future (or alternate timeline) where all recreational drugs are legal.
• Hookers and Blow: Situations where prostitutes and drugs (or women and wine) go hand in hand.
• Immune to Drugs: Somebody who's impervious to the pills and the powder.
• Impairment Shot: A camera shot to show someone being drugged, drunk, poisoned, injured, etc.
• Intoxicated Superpower Snag: Drugs have very interesting effects on supernatural powers.
• Intoxication Ensues: Someone gets drunk (or high) accidentally.
• Intoxication Mechanic: The player character in a video game consuming drugs (or alcohol) causes an Interface Screw which hinders the player's ability to play the game.
• It's Snowing Cocaine: Cocaine is shown in large (unrealistic) quantities.
• Jack up with Phlebotinum: Accidentally using what a person thinks is a drug they crave, only for it to go wrong.
• Junkie Parent: Parent who does drugs.
• Junkie Prophet: A drunk or addict who uses drugs to foresee events.
• Kissing Under the Influence: Where passion mixes with inebriation.
• Klatchian Coffee: Coffee so high in caffeine that just one cup is enough to make you very jittery.
• Liquid Courage: Drinking to curb social awkwardness and increase confidence.
• Love Is a Drug: Love is depicted to have addictive qualities similar to drugs.
• Magic Mushroom: Fantastical (often magical) drugs with hallucinogenic effects.
• Marijuana Is LSD: The effects of certain drugs are overblown for the sake of drama or comedy.
• Mistaken for Junkie: Someone mistakes a person for an addict.
• Monster Organ Trafficking: Profiting off of a monster's parts. Sometimes, the parts are or can be transformed into psychedelic substances.
• Mother's Little Helpers: A woman becomes addicted to pills, usually prescription pills.
• Mr. Vice Guy: An otherwise benevolent or moral character with a vice or addiction never lets them outweigh their good qualities or sense of right. Not exclusively drug-related, but has plenty of examples.
• Mushroom Samba: Drinking or eating foreign substances and hallucinating.
• Must Have Caffeine: People addicted to coffee.
• Must Have Nicotine: People addicted to cigarettes.
• Nailed to the Wagon: Locking someone away until their addiction expires.
• No Medication for Me: Losing a part of yourself when you take medication.
• No Smoking: A form of censorship that replaces cigarettes with other things (often gum or lollipops).
• Ode to Intoxication: Songs that celebrate getting high or buzzed on something, including drugs.
• Ode to Sobriety: Songs that celebrate non-consumption of drugs.
• Of Course I Smoke: Person who normally doesn't smoke tries to make it appear that they do smoke.
• Off the Wagon: A reformed character returning to their original vice.
• One Drink Will Kill the Baby: Pregnant mothers shouldn't drink, lest the alcohol they consume ends up harming the baby.
• Opium Den: The place where characters in an old-timey setting are shown tripping on opium.
• Phlebotinum Pills: These pills give you special powers and/or abilities.
• Playing Drunk: Sober people making it look like they've done a few drinks.
• Post-Stress Overeating: Someone overeating in an attempt to reduce stress.
• Power High: Gaining power is treated like being on drugs.
• Psycho Serum: A serum that makes people go insane.
• Quick Nip: Someone casually takes a quick sip of alcohol without interrupting what they're doing.
• Recovered Addict: A character who was previously addicted to drugs/alcohol, but has come off the bandwagon and made a recovery.
• Repulsive 'Roids: Users of anabolic steroids are portrayed as outcasts.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: The three popular ingredients of a rock star.
• Shag Wagon: A custom van that people use as a place to engage in sex and drugs.
• Slipping a Mickey: Putting a little something in somebody's drink to get them to fall asleep or be unconscious.
• Smoking Is Cool: When smoking makes you look like a badass.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: When smoking makes you look like a total ass.
• Smug Straight Edge: The Straight Edge will not hesitate to rub their views in people's faces, especially those of actual drug users.
• Spiked Blood: Vampires getting drunk or high from something added to somebody's blood.
• The Sponsor: Someone who helps a former drug addict with their recovery (and may be a former addict themselves).
• Staging an Intervention: When you need to get a drug addict off the stuff that's killing them.
• Stimulant Speedtalk: Stimulants bring about a need to talk, often at high speed, often about nothing.
• The Stoner: A classic character archetype: someone whose addiction to marijuana is a big part of their character.
• Stoner Flick: A film featuring stoners that is preferably made to be watched while high.
• Stoners Are Funny: The Stoner doubles as a Plucky Comic Relief.
• Straight Edge: Someone who thinks Drugs Are Bad and will totally abstain from doing any drugs at all.
• Straight Edge Evil: An antagonist who is also a Straight Edge; only the truly evil would do drugs, after all.
• Toad Licking: Getting high from the secretions of psychoactive toads.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: When The Dark Side affects you like a drug in all the worst ways possible.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: A common audience reaction where a work is believed to have been created through the use of drugs.
• Uncoffee: Coffee or tea substitutes in fantasy or science fiction settings.
• Undiscriminating Addict: A drug addict whose addiction is so strong that they'll try to get high off of anything.
• Unsuspectingly Soused: When a person gets drunk on something they think is non-alcoholic, but definitely has alcohol.
• Vodka Drunkenski: Russian characters that are alcoholics.
• Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: The crazy things college students do in fraternities or sororities, which include drugs and alcohol.
• Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere: A vampire trying not to drink blood of a person despite the temptation.
• Watch It Stoned: A movie is believed to be even better when viewed while intoxicated.
• Watering Down: Despite its alcohol-related name, this covers cutting drugs as well.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: After a night of being drunk or high, a person regains consciousness and panics while trying to remember what happened last night.
• Wine Is Classy: Wine is portrayed as a sophisticated drink that only high-class, dignified people enjoy.
• You Can See That, Right?: When getting high makes you see things that other people probably cannot.