Drugs Are Bad / Video Games

• Everything that happens to the main character in Afraid of Monsters is caused by the drugs that he is addicted to.
• Below the Root, the early full-color scroller video game based on Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy, includes Wissenberries, with the same effect as in the books: you'll lose time on the clock, and if you're an Erdling you'll temporarily lose your Spirit-skills. Keep some around, though. You'll find Berry-dreamers where you least expect them, and they'll help you out in exchange for a fix.
• BioShock attempts to show this through the city of Rapture's use of ADAM, a genetic modification drug that can temporarily grant the user superpowers, but can become highly addictive and can also cause mental and physical deterioration with prolonged use. Most of the citizens in Rapture, by the time Jack first enters the city, have become ADAM-crazed Splicers.
• In City of Heroes quite a few of the criminal organisations are doing various drugs that mutate their bodies and give them super-powers. The Family (a Mafia-esque criminal group) is involved in selling it. On the streets, you can hear Mooks haggling over the price and quality of drugs constantly. And a lot of missions are akin to drug busts. In Going Rogue there exists a drink called "Enriche" which is advertised everywhere and spoken highly of by the general population. You don't need much imagination to guess that it's actually a drug siphoned directly into the population's water supply to keep them happy and obedient.
• The shareware episode of Crystal Caves has a sign reading "Winners Don't Do Drugs" on the overworld map.
• Played with in Destroy All Humans! 2, a side quest has Crypto, disguised as a female hippie, talking to, and becoming exasperated with, The Freak because his junkie brain can't keep up with the conversation.
  Crypto: [looking at the camera] You see kids, this is why you don't do drugs.
• The LucasArts adventure game The Dig reduced into a thoroughly Anvilicious drug abuse allegory for the mid-part of the game with the life crystals and Ludger Brink's relationship with them.
• Disco Elysium combines this with Drugs Are Good for a purposefully ambiguous tone.
  • Your player character is an Addled Addict whose use of drugs, especially alcohol, has destroyed his body and brain. Alcohol-Induced Stupidity has also caused him to destroy his life and make all of his friends hate him. He's an enormous heart-attack risk due in part to his abuse of amphetamines, meaning that he can have a Critical Existence Failure from turning on a light while hungover or reading a sufficiently self-important Door Stopper book. Amphetamines give him chest pain, pyrholidon (a Fantastic Drug psychedelic) gives him incredible nausea and may be contributing to his delusions, and cigarettes have wrecked his lungs. He's also aged badly, going from the exceptionally charming and handsome 'rock star' cop he'd been in his mid-30s to a stinking, sickly-looking man who can can barely wear clothes and looks like he's pushing 60. He notes several times that he isn't going to live very long due to his destroyed liver and him pushing himself so hard, but the full medical prognosis is left ambiguous.
  • Alcohol and drug problems are almost everywhere else in Martinaise. The twelve-year-old Cuno is addicted to speed and beaten by his alcoholic father, the anonymous fishing village is full of drunks as there is nothing else to do there but drink, men die due to drunkenly slipping through rotting boardwalk and bashing their head or going out to sea when drunk, a taxidermist huffs taxidermy chemicals until he loses control of his bladder, hippies and artists abuse psychedelics until they can't sleep and their eyes turn yellow, and women get caught up in drunk, amphetamine-fuelled sex with abusive strangers. Possession is legal in Revachol, and the cops can't do much more than confiscate substances, because they're powerless to do anything to stop the social situation that is causing everyone to turn to drugs in the first place.
  • The Dockworker's Union is importing drug precursors to be sold on the black market in order to fund its strike against the Wild Pines Group. The majority of characters involved in the drug trade are sympathetic and the player may even politically sympathise with the plan to revolt against capital, but this situation is partially responsible for the chemical stupor that is ruining lives in Revachol. This is paralleled by how the Wild Pines's Private Military Contractors were previously involved in committing unspeakable racist war crimes on behalf of the commercial pharmaceutical industry, meaning both sides are powered by a society so broken it has no choice but to turn to drugs.
  • The game also satirises the conventional approach to this trope. If you repeatedly say anti-drug things, you get the option to become an "Opioid Receptor Antagonist", a moral-panicking anti-drug cop who is highly against "narcomania" (and all the drugs that you have been doing are to research how bad they are). Completing the thought nets you a thought that means you gain no positive stat effects from using speed or pyrholidon, but no negative stat effects from using alcohol (because that's not a drug, and therefore is safe and fine). Combine this with the Fascist political ideology, which allows you to get double the positive effects from drinking alcohol, for two reactionary tastes that react well together, if what you're trying to do is become a drunken, aggressive asshole.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, Moon Sugar and its derivative, Skooma, are treated this way. Users are depicted similarly to real-world drug addicts, with them being desperate for the drug to the point where it ruins their lives and are willing to resort to crime to get it. Additionally, any organizations that traffic or deal the drugs are considered to be scum.
  • However, it is Inverted in the hands of the player as illegal drugs are very useful for Alchemy.
  • To the Khajiit, Moon Sugar is a borderline sacred substance. Those who control the Moon Sugar essentially control Khajiiti society. In fact, in Morrowind, the only merchants who will buy Moon Sugar and Skooma from you are Khajiits. This mirrors how many real life drugs, such as mescaline, are considered sacred by some cultures.
  • In Skyrim, Skooma has no negative effects on the Player Character whatsoever. This is despite meeting a pathetic addict of it in one of the Khajiit caravans. Potentially justified, since the Player Character is genetically different from ordinary people in this game.
• The Fallout series has a major case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, in that while to NPCs chems are a terrible scourge that can utterly destroy people's lives, in the player's hands they grant powerful stat bonuses, and though they do carry the risk of addiction, this addiction has been easily curable since Fallout 3.
  • Fallout 2 allowed the player to join the ranks of the Mordinos, the New Reno crime family responsible for the jet epidemic sweeping the wasteland. Alternatively, the player could choose to find a cure for jet addiction. Either way, it was still a drug essentially made from cow (brahmin) crap and it got the user high as balls...which is VERY, VERY bad of course. Not to mention the CNPC with a heart condition that makes him explode if you feed him too many drugs.
  • Fallout 3 used drugs similarly to the previous games; they all had side effects (including alcoholic drinks) and your character had a chance of becoming addicted (causing penalties if you didn't take the drug; although you could be cured by pretty much any doctor). There was also a side quest in Megaton where you could help an addict go clean (for which he would reward you with his stash). There were also a few perks that allowed you to ignore or reduce the side effects or chance of being addicted.
    • Originally, Med-X (a drug that increases damage resistance) was going to be named Morphine but Australia took issue with it so the developers hastily renamed it. There are rumors the game was to include animations where the user actually takes the drug but these were Dummied Out for the same reason: visual depictions of someone doing drugs are BAAAD.
  • Fallout: New Vegas plays with it a bit more. The evilest group, the Fiends, are like this because most are so drugged up (the rest are just plain crazy and on drugs). However, the second most evil, Caesar's Legion, is very anti-drug (including for medicinal purposes; even their health-restoring items are completely herbal-based and non-intoxicating).
    • Also, during one side-quest you are to help two people get over their addiction so they can help Freeside. Along with that, the Followers of the Apocalypse, who asked you to help the two, need a supplier and if you choose the casino in Freeside as supplier then speech will follow, with the Followers thinking low of the casino, but the owner of the casino admits that they detest drugs because those addicted will generally take trouble to other people.
      "We may seem like enablers, but really we don't give out drugs. People attacking caravans just to get the fix."
    • Another side quest involves helping a High-Class Call Girl escape what basically amounts to sexual slavery. One of the obstacles to her escape is that the bosses have deliberately gotten her hooked on drugs and supply her themselves to keep her dependent on them.
    • Very much present in the environmental storytelling around New Vegas's poorer neighborhoods. Freeside in particular is full of drunks and chem addicts wandering the streets. Many are either dying in gutters or will try to stab you and take your stuff.
    • In the Old World Blues DLC, the Think Tanks are all severely addicted to Mentats, a drug that boosts intellectual capability. It's likely that centuries of Mentats abuse is a partial cause for their complete and utter insanity. Though the main reason is their lobotomizations by Dr. Mobius. Even worse is Dr. Mobius, who abuses not only Mentats but Psycho and Jet in his own spare time. The amazing thing is that as Brains In Jars they're still capable of taking drugs. ^note  It may actually be easier for a Brain in a Jar to take drugs; putting some in their jar fluid is basically mainlining without needles or needing to worry about the blood-brain barrier.
  • Fallout 4 continues the tradition- you can still shoot up all sorts of different chems for buffs (and it's extremely easy to make yourself immune to addiction), and one of the NPCs you recruit can be given drugs that will giver her psychic visions that will help you. However, if you don't convince her to stop, it eventually will kill her (or rather, there's a drug that will kill her if you give it to her) and almost all of your allies disapprove of giving her drugs. There's also a party member who will eventually reveal that they're suffering from a severe Psycho addiction, to the point that they've started vomiting blood and they know that they've only got a short time left unless you help them get cured. Another recruitable ally is an unabashed addict who ended up turning into a ghoul after taking a hit of an experimental radioactive drug and can end up dying from an overdose of Med-X (the aforementioned renamed version of morphine) if you max out his Relationship Values.
    • DLC companion Porter Gage also takes this tack. In his case, it's not because of moral considerations, but because as a professional Raider, he's seen gang after gang overuse chems, go full Stupid Evil Addled Addict, and fall apart on him. He'd rather you not force him to repeat the process.
• Referenced and mocked with Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, where the phrase is name-checked as part of the game's general Retraux 1980's vibe. Rex even implies that if he tries drugs just once^note (Even a non-addictive Super Serum with no side effects whatsoever, that will make his job MUCH easier), he will somehow disgrace America.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • This is the core aesop of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, without coming off as Anvilicious. The Grove Street Families protagonists hate hard drugs (marijuana doesn't seem to be included) with a passion, mostly because a drug dealer killed their mother, and drugs turned many of their allies into enemies and rendered the rest apathetic. Sweet almost succumbing to the siren's call of a crack pipe is treated as his Despair Event Horizon, and the final mission involves CJ storming his way through a massive drug factory. However, it doesn't stop Moral Guardians and Shallow Parodies based on from believing that one of the main objectives of the game is to sell crack and the such.^* To be fair, this was basically true of the previous game Vice City... It's reinforced by "adrenaline pills" common in Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City being totally absent from San Andreas.
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV, you run across several random characters who are dealing with a drug addiction, and you help them get their lives straight. Little Jacob says that marijuana use has made his partner Real Badman so paranoid that Jacob fears the day Badman will turn on him, and in another conversation he says that he's trying to quit. The motivation of the man who sold out Niko's squad is revealed to have been for money for his heroin habit, and once we finally meet him, he's a broken wretch.
  • In Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, Johnny's ex-girlfriend Ashley is a slave to her drug habit, and Johnny is forced to bail her out of trouble several times, even though he fully expects her to never change. Later, in the sequel, Johnny himself is shown to have become addicted to meth, which has turned him into a shell of his former self.
  • In Grand Theft Auto V, Franklin's personal drug of choice is marijuana, and he can even buy a medical weed store. However, he constantly gives his old friend Tanya shit because she and her boyfriend are too busy smoking crack to work, and Franklin's mother was an addict who died when he was younger. Smoking marijuana is presented as just one of the reasons Michael's son is a loser, and he vows to quit it late in the game. The player has the option of having Michael or Franklin take a hit from a bong, and both of them usually become depressed when they do so, with Franklin's self-dialogue being particularly vicious at lashing out at himself. A legalization activist is portrayed as caring more about his stash than about helping people, to the point that he and his friends get so high that they completely forget about a rally they roped Franklin into. And that's without getting to Trevor Phillips, a meth and gasoline fume addict who makes a living producing and selling crystal. He's a complete psychopath prone to violence from the slightest transgression, and while he has his moments of brilliance here and there, his short-sightedness gets him in major trouble several times throughout the plot.
• In the Grange Hill computer game, accepting drugs from the pusher results in a really dark game over.
  "There is an empty look in his eye as he snatches the money from your hand. His face is pale and drawn; His body thin and unfed. He steals to keep his habit; And makes addicts of children. He is dead, and soon you will be too."
• Haze features 'nectar' as a combat enhancing drug that has the unfortunate side effect of being more likely to kill you than the enemy.
• LISA: In the wake of the apocalypse, the Fantastic Drug Joy, created by Mad Scientist Dr. Yado and distributed by the "Joy Boys" cult, becomes insanely popular across Olathe because it makes the user happy, stronger, and even heals in combat. However, it is also highly addictive, inflicting addicts with the withdrawal status effect, crippling them in combat, and causes the user to be ruled by their base desires. It also happens to turn the user into a Humanoid Abomination over time. Joy is the wedge that gets between Tragic Hero Brad Armstrong and every person he cares about, and ultimately leads to his downfall.
• Parodied with a Space Whale Aesop in one of Zaeed Massani's anecdotes in Mass Effect 2.
  "You smoke, Shepard? Don't. That stuff'll kill you. Knew a kid once, half your age. Smoked too close to a cache of explosives. Tossed a butt, blew himself sky-high."
  • Played straight elsewhere. Criminal groups like the Eclipse are heavily involved in the trade of fantastical drugs like "red sand", and both the effects of these drugs and the revenue they gross for said groups are portrayed extremely negatively.
  • Sloane Kelly in Mass Effect: Andromeda is a gang leader who stole a doctor's new medicinal drug (implied to be some kind of opioid), started re-cutting and mass-producing it for recreational distribution, and became the drug kingpin of Kadara. You run across many addicts and OD'd corpses in the port and out in the badlands.
• Mother Russia Bleeds plays with this trope. On one hand, an experimental Psycho Serum called Nekro (modeled after a real-life Russian street drug called Krokodil) serves as both a buff and healing item throughout the game. On the other hand, the game does absolutely nothing to glamorize it; all of the playable characters who use it (who all started out getting kidnapped and used as test subjects for the drug) look grungy and worn-out, while other addicts can look like Technically Living Zombies. The Final Boss is also a manifestation of the characters' addiction that they have to fight off in a Battle in the Center of the Mind, and if you end up using even one Nekro syringe during the fight you get the bad ending where your character dies of an overdose.
• Just Say No International commissioned NARC, a game in which the player is tasked with the somewhat morally questionable task of mowing down thousands of people (including mere addicts) purely to try getting drugs off the street. Presumably the message to take home from this is that Drugs Are Bad because they will lead to the cops walking up to you and blowing your head off with a rocket launcher.
• In PAYDAY: The Heist, the robbers go to a drug deal to waste the dealers and take only the drug money while destroying the drugs. One of the heist members Dallas performs hits on drug dealers and kingpins as he personally fights against the drug trade.
• In Police Quest: SWAT 2, there's an entire campaign for the Terrorist side. While you're free to murder and take hostages throughout the campaign, one of the early missions opens with your boss chastising some of the terrorist members for growing marijuana for profit, and he orders you to set fire to the crop. Even Evil Has Standards — though it's also heavily implied that the terrorists just don't want to attract attention too early, and the burning of the marijuana is to hide the evidence.
• Quest for Glory III has a Nonstandard Game Over for hitting the pipe too many times, entitled "All Toked Up".
  "You spend the next couple of years sleeping in alleyways and eating out of garbage cans. Then you die, a burned-out drug addict."
• Raid 2020: The whole point of the game is stopping a drug plague, as evidenced by the intro, having to stop a bunch of drug dealers at the pier, and the tagline "Winners Fight Drugs". This was made in the eighties, after all.
• The "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen that used to appear in the Attract Mode of many arcade games (and in some places still does. There's also messages from the EPA).
  • This screen was parodied in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, in which it says "Winners don't eat meat".
  • It was also shown in Saints Row IV, just before the Streets of Rage Shout-Out.
• In SimCity 4, you can view a map of your city's crime hotspots, with a series of colour-coded symbols to denote each crime. Drug offences are ranked alongside arson and bank robbery.
• In the rather aptly named arcade game Space Pirates, at the very end of the intro, there is a quick moment where the villain (of all characters) exclaims before gameplay, "Remember, winners don't do drugs!". And then a random skull explodes.
• Splatoon 2: A subtle variation in Salmon Run. Similarly to how most weapons are made of household appliances from the days of humanity, the four Grizzco weapons, which are illegal in Inkopolis due to how overpowered they are, are made with bottles of prescription drugs.
• StarCraft:
  • Averted, as feeding your marines stimpacks doubles their effectiveness but damages them by about 1/4 of their health, but is necessary to utilize them effectively. Kind of played straight with the disclaimer though:
    Side effects including insomnia, weight loss, tremors, grand mal seizures, mania/hypomania, paranoiac hallucinations, severe internal hemorrhaging and cerebral deterioration have all been declared nominal and well within Confederate acceptable safety margins.
  • If you have the expansion, you can heal the damage from stimpacks with medics. And keep giving your marines stims. The result is, figuratively and literally, space marines on crack.
  • Other sources (novels, backstories...) mention characters with stimpack addictions.
  • StarCraft II: Nova Covert Ops finally gives stimpacks that actually heal damage when the unit uses them in addition to the combat boosts. Drugs are awesome, kids!
• While it isn't as prominent as the "green living" or "small community better than big business" themes, Stardew Valley has a dim view on drug use and addiction. Pam and Shane are alcoholics with terrible consequences for their home lives (and Shane's mental health), and Sebastian smokes what's implied to be marijuana. Pam never even tries to quit, Sebastian tries but doesn't succeed, and Shane, whose route is the most heavy-handed about alcohol ruining his life, relapses after marriage. That said, brewing wine from high-priced fruit is still one of the most profitable things to do on your farm.
• In Nitro+CHIRAL's Togainu no Chi, nothing good can come from using Line. Though it increases your physical abilites, it results in loss of rational thought, and excruciating withdrawal. Worst case scenario, you either disembowel your childhood friend (Keisuke does so to Akira) or end up a vegetable (in Shiki's case). Even Akira and Keisuke's best end results in hints of PTSD and a huge case of My God, What Have I Done?
• The Xenoblade games take an interesting approach to this. In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Torna ~ The Golden Country, there are sidequests in each game where drug dealers are fermenting Red Pollen Orbs to turn into a highly addictive drug, and it's up to the player characters to put a stop to their drug peddling. The weird thing, though, is that Red Pollen Orbs, which can be considered the series' equivalent to opium, are collectible pickup items that can be used to enhance a party member's stats, which seems to convey the message that natural resources used to make drugs aren't bad on their own, but turning them into addictive drugs is where the problem actually lies.
• We Happy Few is this trope: The Game. In an Alternate Universe where World War II went bad for England, the people of Wellington Wells did a Very Bad Thing, and are so consumed by guilt that eventually they decided that Happiness Is Mandatory and enforce it with a Fantastic Drug called Joy. Thing is, Side Effects Include... loss of short-term and long-term memory, illness, psychomania, homicidal tendencies towards those who aren't taking Joy, and much, much, more. However, because everyone in Wellington Wells is taking Joy, their society is on the brink of collapse because they're too high to run the city. When Arthur, the first player character starts to come down from his high, he realizes that his department is a dilapidated wreck with piles of undone paperwork, and as the game goes on it becomes apparent that there's a food shortage because local farms won't trade with the Wellies anymore. Wellington Wells became a Self-Inflicted Hell because the people running it would rather destroy themselves than face reality.
• In The Witcher, characters show more contempt at Salamandra's attempts to control the drug trade than their ranks including rapists and murderers. This is worse when it's a morally vague Crapsack World, so any kind of message (intended or not) doesn't fit. Of course, it makes sense as controlling the industry would then give the organization control over the addicts, which they could use to further their own agenda.

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