Drugs/medical issues in T2k (includes 'Drug use & availability in the Twilight War')

[Legbreaker]

....I've got phone numbers for three new players!

SCORE!!!!!

[pmulcahy11b]

OK, weird...on my last message in this thread, there's now what I think is Targan's avatar (the kangaroo having a beer) where the edit/delete message button was...is someone trying to tell me something

OK, it's now happening on all my posts...even weirder...

[Targan]

Far out. It's not me man, I swear. Must be ghosts in the machine...

[pmulcahy11b]

Far out. It's not me man, I swear. Must be ghosts in the machine...

Yeah, right. You know I'm mentally ill and you're trying to push me over the edge, aren't you Into a rubber room with a straitjacket Then you'll come to my house and get all my stuff Hmmm Then I'll spend the rest of my life in that rubber room yelling "TARGAN!!!", and no one will know why...

[weswood]

I know from experience that dope is pretty dang easy to start growing. Years ago in my wilder days, my roommate &I tossed our seeds off the balcony. About 4 weeks later there were little pot plants growing under our apartment.

[pmulcahy11b]

I know from experience that dope is pretty dang easy to start growing. Years ago in my wilder days, my roommate &I tossed our seeds off the balcony. About 4 weeks later there were little pot plants growing under our apartment.

In Hawaii, pot grows wild in many places. You just have to know where to look -- including, Law, Ulupau crater...

[Legbreaker]

Which of course you promptly ripped out and destroyed as the good citizens you are.

[weswood]

Which of course you promptly ripped out and destroyed as the good citizens you are.

Sadly, the yard guys did before we had the chance. I guess we just waited too long.

[bobcat]

drug Use and Availability during the Twilight War

i've been wondering about the availability of tobacco during T2K and while considering this it made me think of other things how easy would it be for characters to procure access to certain drugs and how from a GM perspective to handle their use. examples such as:

1. while combat was at its heaviest i can see some support elements taking speed in various forms to keep up with the pace of their operations(this is based off of how during the surge in OIF several motorpool's would often pop hot for speed and meth and this excuse was cited to get the soldiers off with a summary article 15)

2. the VA and other institutions have been experimenting with various drugs including but not limited to marijuana and LSD to treat PTSD i can imagine several soldiers self medicating even if it doesn't actually work

3. the recreational drug users people who were drafted while addicted to such substances or who picked up the habit while serving

4. actual honest medical purposes as regular medical supplies dwindled some medics may make do with what they can get

are there existing(canon or homebrew) rules to deal with these effects
while synthetic drugs are obviously going to be R/R at best(see point 4) what about the other stuff

[stg58fal]

I'd imagine weed would be fairly easy to find.

Meth will probably be almost as easy to get as weed, at least for a while. Once the chemicals for making more run out... With a breakdown of law and order, I'd think meth labs would be popping up all over. And exploding all over, too, at least until Amateur Hour has come and gone.

Crack and coke I think you can pretty much forget. Opiates too, unless someone starts growing the right kind of poppies domestically after the collapse.

IDK about LSD, though.

There are plenty of natural substitutes for some of these substances (esp. LSD; I can think of at least two plants that can give a similar effect without having to search teh interwebz), so while the use of the particular drug might drop off, between the sorry state of the world and the need/desire to turn alcohol into fuel rather than booze, as well as the fact that it seems like it's always the scumbags and gangers (redundant, I know) that survive, I'd expect drug use overall will probably increase. At least as far as 'drug users as a percentage of the population' goes.

[Cpl. Kalkwarf]

All I know is it would suck to be an addict in the post twilight world. Especially the ones that require chemicals to produce. Once they run out and you cannot find a substitute you will be in for a hard ride.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Opiates too, unless someone starts growing the right kind of poppies domestically after the collapse.

I'd heard - from an article P.J. O'rourke wrote when he visited Eastern Europe just months before the fall of the iron curtain - that some Poles cook down poppy field stubble to render out a base for opiates to take

Depressing (not as depressing as Krokodil - DO NOT GOOGLE, NOT SAFE FOR YOUR SOUL).

[Targan]

Wow, that Krokodil stuff sounds really grim.

I doubt that hard-core psychoactives like LSD (and drugs with similar effects such as magic mushrooms and mescaline) would be very popular for recreational use in the post-apocalyptic world. You have to be in a good headspace for LSD to be enjoyable and I think most people in the T2K universe would've seen and be carrying too much psychological trauma for "tripping" to be fun.

[pmulcahy11b]

IDK about LSD, though.

You can get a pretty good analogue for LSD by making a batch of rye bread dough or a loaf of cooked rye bread. Spread it out and let it rot for about a week to two weeks in cool, damp, dark place. If you get the correct fungus to grow on the rye (not a sure thing), you will have a small batch of ergot fungus growing on the bread. And like LSD, a little goes a long way.

Ergot has been implicated in many historical incidents of "witches," possession, and suchlike; it's also been used by shamans and witch doctors for about as long as rye bread has been around (and ergot will grow on a few other organic materials as well).

[WallShadow]

You can get a pretty good analogue for LSD by making a batch of rye bread dough or a loaf of cooked rye bread. Spread it out and let it rot for about a week to two weeks in cool, damp, dark place. If you get the correct fungus to grow on the rye (not a sure thing), you will have a small batch of ergot fungus growing on the bread. And like LSD, a little goes a long way.
.

IIRC, ergot poisoning also tends to make extremities (fingers, toes, ears, noses, and other dangle-y bits that are near and dear to our hearts) lose circulation and fall off. This is not a side-effect you'd be wanting to deal with just for any theraputic hallucinatory effects of the fungus, unless you just don't care what happens to the person you'll be freaking out.

As for cannabis leaves, they're just one side benefit of growing hemp! Hemp was grown throughout Colonial America (northwest of Lancaster, PA, is a township called "East Hempfield") for use in cordage (hemp ropes and cables were preferred for ships' rigging) and canvas (again, preferred for sails). Since the petrochemical and synthetic fiber industries are going to be long in coming back, I'd imagine that somebody, probably one of the surviving students of nature and organic farming, decided that hemp would be a good crop to bring forth.

Opium poppies may be a little more problematic; I not sure if the seed heads of normal domesticated (Eschscholzia Californica. California Poppies; Papaver Paeoniflorum; Papaver Laciniatum) poppy heads contain anywhere nearly enough sap as the Opium Poppy (Papaver Somniferum) to make a decent production run.