Fictional drugs vs real drugs

Karen Junker said:

Uhhh....hello?

Tolkein had the hobbits smoke pipe-weed. A simple name, yet it was clear it was not just tobacco.

Although it has been over 50 years since I read the books, so I may be remembering wrong -- all I know is that my friends in the 60s just assumed it was a drug like marijuana.

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I always assumed it was tobacco or something very similar. It didn't seem to make them high or anything.

Though its being like cannabis would explain why hobbits liked to eat six meals a day.

Roxxsmom said:

Though its being like cannabis would explain why hobbits liked to eat six meals a day.

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There is that I suppose!

Karen Junker said:

Also, tobacco is one of the most addictive drugs on the planet.

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Correction, nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs on the planet. Tobacco is just the delivery agent. I think for SF/F that's an even more important distinction. On a space station where smoking is prohibited, you'd get your nicotine from a patch.

If you use the name of a mundane modern drug (eg. heroin), it's going to place me on more-or-less modern Earth. So think of drugs as part of your setting and background, not just something a character inhales, swallows, or injects.

Any society that consumes fermentables (and all sugars/carbs are fermentable) will probably discover alcohol, that's just basic chemistry. But as to whether they use it as we do? and its effects on, say, a nonhuman metabolism?? think of that as worldbuilding, not as a way to get drunk/stoned/high.

Pinkerton, I'm not an expert on drugs but what you are describing you need for the story kind of sounds like an experience with salvia (diviner's sage) I've heard, so it might be worth it to look that up. If it's sci-fi it could be a derivative of what makes salvia psychoactive?

I have no problem with "made up" drugs but it sounds kind of silly if it's 1) not alternate world and 2) actually close to something an existing drug does, which makes it sound like you're wimping out on discussing a real drug.

In my WIP there are a variety of drugs that are meant to dull/enhance psychic receptiveness and because this is not a real-life thing I have no choice but to make drugs up. Shrug.

The thing about drug use in pre-industrial cultures is it was most often tied to religious rituals. Casual, recreational drug use is a relatively modern phenomenon. Alcohol was for fun. Drugs were for communing with spirits, talking to gods, etc. And of course for medicinal purposes too.

snafu1056 said:

The thing about drug use in pre-industrial cultures is it was most often tied to religious rituals. Casual, recreational drug use is a relatively modern phenomenon. Alcohol was for fun. Drugs were for communing with spirits, talking to gods, etc. And of course for medicinal purposes too.

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Hemp and opium have been used recreationally for millennia. They were also used iatrically, but more often they were for fun.
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/potchapter.html
http://www.ukcia.org/culture/history/
Just two sources, if you are interested in the subject, then I think that you will find that the hemp plant has been used for tens of thousands of years, and opium has been used for about as long.

Karen Junker said:

Uhhh....hello?

Tolkein had the hobbits smoke pipe-weed. A simple name, yet it was clear it was not just tobacco.

Although it has been over 50 years since I read the books, so I may be remembering wrong -- all I know is that my friends in the 60s just assumed it was a drug like marijuana.

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Actually pipe-weed is a strain of tobacco. My father told me that it was the same strain that Native Americans used, but I can't find that anywhere. Considering that he's a history professor, and his area is civil war era/indian studies I don't see any reason to doubt him.

I was really hoping that someone else here had read The Butterfly Kid, which is (as far as I know) the first instance of pharmaceutical science fiction. The entire plot centers around the new drug "reality". Which causes your hallucinations to become real. Hilarity ensues. And there are lobster aliens.

snafu1056 said:

The thing about drug use in pre-industrial cultures is it was most often tied to religious rituals. Casual, recreational drug use is a relatively modern phenomenon. Alcohol was for fun. Drugs were for communing with spirits, talking to gods, etc. And of course for medicinal purposes too.

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As has been pointed out there are a lot of drugs that have been used recreationally forever. Drugs that are for communing with spirits and stuff usually have highs that are less fun.

The only drug you need is PHENTARMINE.

Hapax Legomenon said:

As has been pointed out there are a lot of drugs that have been used recreationally forever. Drugs that are for communing with spirits and stuff usually have highs that are less fun.

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One suspects recreation came first, and religious use evolved from variants of "When I consume this shit, I can talk to the gods!"

I only take fictional drugs while I am writing, and in my down time I might have a beer.
I am very wary, and am not likely to try a fictional drug, even if it will keep my hair from becoming frizzy. One never knows the side effects.

TKpinkerton said:

What do you think about writers using fictional drugs instead of real drugs in their stories? I mean not just drug abuse but just use in general.
It's something I feel like I see more often in scifi or futuristic stories than fantasy so I think it's a bit more believable there, but do you think they come across as cheesy or a cheap way to have a "cleaner" version of drug use?
Would it be better to just use drugs from real life instead? Excluding a fantasy drug that has an effect not found in any real drug that is.

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I like it when sci-fi/fantasy authors make up drugs, create new ones, for their stories. They should seeing how many other things in their worlds are creations of their imaginations. If I read about a magical and mystical realm filled dwarves, elves and fairies and the characters are smoking crack, that'll break part of the fantasy for me. Because crack isn't anything fabulous. It's right here in our world. Not sure why anyone would ever consider a fictional drug a cheesy/cheap creation in speculative fiction.

In re the Tolkien discussion:

"There is another astonishing thing about Hobbits of old that must be mentioned, an astonishing habit: they imbibed or inhaled, through pipes of clay or wood, the smoke of the burning leaves of a herb, which they called pipe-weed or leaf, a variety probably of Nicotiana."

The Lord of the Rings, Prologue: Concerning Pipe Weed.

Tolkien phrases it as "probably", but that's just him being oblique. He also said that the Rohirrim weren't Anglo-Saxons, despite speaking Anglo-Saxon, living in Anglo-Saxon dwellings, and following an Anglo-Saxon leadership structure.

Peter Jackson's interpretation of pipeweed having some of Cannabis's effects is just creative license. And bad creative license, at that.

Best fictional drug every written about is Grant and Naylor's "deity".
It is immediately and completely addictive. Anyone who uses it will do anything to have it again. This despite the fact that the effect lasts only eight seconds.

I convinces you, every fiber of your being, unequivocally and without any doubt, that you are God.

The people who have used it are hopelessly addicted, because what experience in your whole life could ever compare to being God?

Just my two cents here...
In science fiction, whether you're talking about 'getting high' drugs, or medical use drugs, remember that drug R&D is ongoing all the time. We're constantly making new chemicals to use on ourselves. Right now. Today. So if you have a science fiction story going on, it's really not unreasonable to create a drug. Heck, at some point, we might actually come up with that drug for real. There's also no reason disallow the idea that other planets or dimensions might produce new and interesting pharmaceuticals. So.. get creative!

As far as fantasy goes...
If it's a historical fantasy or an urban fantasy, then you might have to stick fairly close to what already exists. However, I personally believe that we have forgotten as much information as we currently know. Throughout history ideas have been lost and books have been burned. If you want to make something up for a historical fantasy, it might just be one of those pieces of information that fell through a gap in recorded history.

In fantasy featuring places like Middle Earth and Underhill that are completely made up in the first place... well there's no reason not to create drugs that come from those places.

So... I guess that means, I'm in favor of creativity. Make the story work. Build what you need, but keep it consistent with your world.

Hi have a fictional drug in my fantasy book as well as a drug war. I'm a big fan of The Wire so I decided to inject some of that into a fantasy world, it was very fun to write

Its a very old series but E.E. Doc Smith's Lensman series has a number of "made up" drugs in it along with a few references to heroin and other "real" drugs. He handles the subject matter of factly and beautifully.

I would say that if it works for your story, then use what feels right, be it fictional or real-world. In my current future history, there are a couple of designer synthetic drugs in popular use, but I also make reference to heroin and how it has followed humans as they colonized other worlds (plus, one of my characters is an old-school smack addict).

Just to chime in, although not with anything particularly new, if it's our world but slightly futuristic, I'd be fine with all our drugs plus a few new drugs you made up. Designer drugs are completely believable to me.

If it's another world, with no relation to ours, alcohol is fine, and drugs you made up are also fine. Whether they do familiar things (like giving you a mild high when you smoke or chew them) or novel things (like provoking a religious experience) depends on how technologically advanced that other world is. The more specific the experience, the more I'd need to believe a designer drug could exist in that world.

Tamora Pierce's The Circle Opens quartet features 'dragonsalt,' a highly addictive and illegal drug that some very not-nice people use to keep a mage under control. To the non-magical, it can make them feel like they're stronger and thinking more clearly. When I first read it, I loved the fact that it was entirely new and that it was so clearly linked to that world - they had what amount to police-mages who could detect its influence in magic used in crimes, and the name was pretty explanatory.

In short, when writing fantasy including magic or law enforcement, considering whether something is legal, whether it has different effects on magic and non-magic users and different sentient/sapient species, its addictiveness, value and potential deadliness can all make choosing a fictional drug easier. Legality could be directly related to any one of those things, particularly if something is renowned for increasing violence, addictiveness, potency, or a potential poison. At the same time, if certain drugs have certain medicinal properties - opiates being a prime example - that can cause other problems within that society.

Drugs - whether medicinal, recreational, or poisonous - are a brilliant way of world-building, and I agree with the others that modern names would often throw me when dealing with a secondary world, if not with an urban or sci-fi one (depending on whether the sci-fi is human-based or not), unless it's there deliberately as a point of significance, such as it turning out that one character who consistently refers to 'milk of the poppy' as morphine or heroin is actually from 'our' world and trapped in that one.

At the same time, finding out old or ancient names for drugs or medicines can work well for secondary worlds, and also extinct plants that may or may not have had the properties attributed to them by historical records. Or using plants which were believed to have properties - such as the self-explanatory fleabane - and giving them those properties.

Just my thoughts.

I've created numerous drugs in my stories. I've made outlandish ones – genetically engineered hallucinogenic poppies and skittle-color tonics that have different effects depending on the flavor – and also more ordinary ones – pain killers and anti-anxiety drugs created in the future.

As long as I am working in my own fantasy worlds, I actually prefer to create my own drugs. Sure, I have to loosely follow the facts we know about drugs in the real world, but there is also the great freedom of letting your imagination run wild.

One way to imagine the future is to look back at the past and extrapolate forwards. If we do that, we can clearly see that drugs (and our attitudes to them) are constantly changing. So it is entirely reasonable to imagine that they will continue to change and evolve into the future.

In fact, the thing that would be hard to believe would be a futuristic or fantasy world with the same drugs that we have now. That's just not going to happen.

For the same reason, it would be unrealistic to transport modern day drugs or items back to medieval times. Ye olde hypodermic needle? I don't think so.

Yes, made-up drugs can seem a bit cheesy at times if they aren't done well. But that's the same for any made-up item if the author doesn't ground it in at least a little bit of realism.

Fermented sugars produce alcohol which is less likely to give you the squits than plain water. And that is why everyone in your standard medieval village will be drinking beer or cider. Even the children. Write that into your fantasy novel and I'm with you 100%.

People will want drugs in the future, whether medicinal or recreational. Legislators, chemists and miscreants will be doing their damndest to find a balance between criminality, legality, health and cost. So the drugs of the future will not be the ones that we have now. Give me some believable future drugs and I'm also with you 100%.

Star Trek's synthahol and illegal Romulan ale? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Fermented sugars produce alcohol which is less likely to give you the squits than plain water. And that is why everyone in your standard medieval village will be drinking beer or cider. Even the children. Write that into your fantasy novel and I'm with you 100%.

The table beer of earlier centuries was often very weak by modern standards, to the point where I would not trust the alcohol to disinfect it. More to the point, however, it was boiled for a significant period during brewing.

Boiling the water would have rendered it safe, too. By why would anybody do a damfool thing like that?

Robert Dawson said:

Boiling the water would have rendered it safe, too. By why would anybody do a damfool thing like that?

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To drink tea. Or coffee. Or (my preference) hot chocolate.

Apparently that's one of the reasons tea is so widely drunk in the east. They had tea (and rice wine, but I don't know how old that is). The west went for alcohol instead.

On the sugars note, would that make mead, if made with boiling water as well as honey, the least likely to hold bacterial infection?

Tanydwr said:

To drink tea. Or coffee. Or (my preference) hot chocolate.

Apparently that's one of the reasons tea is so widely drunk in the east. They had tea (and rice wine, but I don't know how old that is). The west went for alcohol instead.

On the sugars note, would that make mead, if made with boiling water as well as honey, the least likely to hold bacterial infection?

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Boiling wort for ale or honey in water for mead is how it is usually done. Boiling kills off the bacteria, but there is plenty of yeast floating around tat will land on the wort or diluted honey and ferment it. Lambics are still made that way with no yeast culture added.