Intoxicated Superpower Snag

"Don't get drugged. You'll revert to your natural form. Nobody wants to see that."

— Agent X, The Shapeshifting Detective

Not everyone reacts to intoxication the same way. In both fiction and reality, many people have experienced unusual reactions to drugs, not because of a dodgy product or Fantastic Drug, but simply because the users are slightly different from the usual market—to the point that some cocaine users can actually fall asleep while high.

However, the most unusual responses appear in wielders of fantastic powers: mutants, mages, superhumans, shapeshifters, and a huge variety of other beings blessed with otherworldly powers experience drastic side-effects as a result of getting high, most commonly affecting their abilities and how they work—or don't work.

In the case of psychics and other superhumans with abilities dependent on focus and willpower, this is due to the drug eroding their ability to concentrate, reducing the effectiveness of their powers or even leaving the character Brought Down to Normal until they've sobered up. In other cases, however, it's due to the chemical itself interacting with the power in unexpected ways, allowing for weirder and potentially more dangerous effects—including everything from a change of powers to a full-blown Superpower Meltdown.

One way or the other, it's probably for the best if the superpowered users take a quick trip to rehab before things get any weirder.

May overlap with Medicate the Medium in the case of ESP, or Bizarre Alien Biology in the case of extraterrestrials, or Power Incontinence.

Compare Malfunction Malady, in which illnesses have similar effects on superpowered entities.

Contrast Addiction-Powered and Junkie Prophet, in which the drugs actually induce the abilities, and Never Gets Drunk, in which the superpowers make it impossible for drugs to affect the wielder at all.

---

Examples

Comic Books

• Green Lantern:
  • In the classic story "Snowbirds Don't Fly", Hal is ambushed, knocked out and exposed to heroin by a drug dealer. When he wakes up and tries to fly away, his powers instead manifest by creating a gigantic, monstrous version of himself. Hal barely manages to create a barrier around himself before the abomination can squeeze him in its hands.
  • In "The Powerless Power Ring!", Hal begins to lose control of the titular source of his powers. He becomes unable to snag his targets with his light constructs, his energy blasts become unusually destructive, and he begins to feel dizzy shortly after using the ring. The ending reveals that this was the result of him ingesting toxic mushrooms.
• In The Order, any powers granted by the Soma process are disabled if the person gets intoxicated, in order to prevent the spectacle of California's state-sponsored heroes going on drunken rampages. As the process was personally developed by Tony Stark (a recovering alcoholic) and Hank Pym (who had several incidents due to untreated bipolar disorder), making sure that the powers could not be compromised was a top-of-mind issue.
• Superman/Batman: During the arc "The Search for Kryptonite", Silver Kryptonite makes Superman hallucinate, gives him the munchies, and enhances his superhuman senses to the point where he can smell someone baking brownies in North Dakota... while on the Watchtower, which is in orbit around the Earth.

Fan Fiction

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Combined with Drunken Master. When Ami was drunk, she managed to reconfigure a spell to change the shape of its effect—but can't figure out how to do it while sober.
• In the Pony POV Series, Twilight normally has no problem with this... except if she gets drunk. Last time she did, she lost control of her powers and Ponyville had to be reassured that Discord hadn't returned.
• In the Teen Titans (2003) fic Tremble Mortal, Aqualad comes to Raven's room and offers her a bit of liquor. It turns out that any alcohol both makes her lose access to her powers and effectively paralyzes her. Almost leads to some unpleasant consequences when Aqualad gets a bit touchy and mistakes her lack of objection for consent, but she manages to break through before it gets too far.

Film — Live-Action

• Lifechanger: Drew's ability to maintain his form falters when he takes cocaine, resulting in the usual Power Degeneration and physical decomposition setting in much earlier than usual. However, Drew's ability to steal new forms work better the closer he is to decomposing, so he's careful to keep a little cocaine on hand just in case he needs a quick change of appearance.
• Minority Report: Combined with Junkie Prophet. The Precogs' ability to predict murders days before they happen only works in their nightmares, so the Department of Precrime keeps Agatha, Arthur, and Dashiel drugged so that they'll always be receptive to new visions... at the cost of leaving them stuck endlessly watching murders and unable to wake from their semi-conscious dream-states. After Agatha is freed by Anderton, it's discovered that she still has powers while sober and awake (though her conscious vision is limited to a few minutes into the future), meaning that she's been operating under this trope for most of her life.
• Scanners: A mild tranquilizer known as Ephemerol is the one thing that can temporarily disable a Scanner's Psychic Powers. As such, Cameron Vale uses it to blot out the voices that torment him, while ConSec makes sure to keep some on hand in case unfriendly Scanners come knocking. It's eventually revealed that Ephemerol's effects aren't just due to its nature as a tranquilizer: it's actually responsible for the Bizarre Baby Boom that created Scanners in the first place.

Literature

• Animorphs: In The Underground, it's discovered that the Yeerks are chemically susceptible to maple-and-ginger flavored instant oatmeal, which they treat as a highly addictive drug on par with crystal meth. Furthermore, the negative side-effects also result in afflicted Yeerks intermittently losing control of their hosts during their demented frenzies, hence how the Animorphs found out about this in the first place.
• The Black Magician Trilogy: Dannyl the mage references this when he refuses to drink, explaining that Thought-Controlled Power and mind-altering substances don't play well together.
• Firestarter:
  • Played with. After being captured by the Shop and separated from Charlie, Andy is kept regularly sedated with drugs so that he won't Push his way out of captivity. However, Andy's inability to use his power isn't just down to the drugs themselves, but also due to Heroic BSoD and addiction, leaving him Brought Down to Normal by sheer force of despair. In the end, he's only able to escape by Pushing himself clean of drug addiction in a dream, allowing him to consciously use his power again.
  • Meanwhile, after a comparatively brief period where chemical restraints are used with a variety of unpleasant side-effects, Charlie is kept off drugs while in Shop custody, as they fear that it might negatively affect her powers.
• Rivers of London: Implied. Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina relates that during her wild times in the 1970s, she once tried to do magic whilst high on acid. Exactly what happens is never explained, but she definitely recommends her audience not to try it for themselves.
• The Scholomance: Magic runs on Clap Your Hands If You Believe, so in The Golden Enclaves, a group of wizards get high on Fantastic Drugs to broaden their suspension of disbelief enough to walk through an Extradimensional Shortcut that no longer exists.
• Sword of Truth:
  • A Confessor's power must be kept under constant control, so when Kahlan is getting a wound stitched in the first book, she is forced to Skip the Anesthetic so as not to accidentally unleash her power on the healer and destroy her mind.
  • In the second book, a drunken wizard tries to kill Kahlan in the middle of his own war camp, but he's so hammered that he can't control his fireballs and ends up accidentally wiping out about a hundred of his own men before Kahlan kills him.

Live-Action TV

• Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger: In Episode 3, the team discovers that being drunk intensifies the Akibarangers' powers within the Delusion World. Moegi (who's a Fujoshi) decides to try this out as well during the next bout, causing the Monster of the Week to constantly shift between a bad-ass supervillain and a Yaoi protagonist, putting Red and Yellow at odds and making the fight a lot harder than it needs to be. Akiba Blue ends up being the one to save the day by quoting GoGo Sentai Boukenger, sobering the other two up.
• Jessica Jones (2015): In "AKA Crush Syndrome", Jessica learns that Kilgrave had to have a kidney transplant after being hit by a bus and insisted on remaining conscious throughout the operation. From this, she realizes that Kilgrave can't maintain the use of his powers while under the influence of surgical anesthesia, which would shut down the parts of his brain responsible for controlling his slaves. In the episodes that follow, Jessica sets out to obtain drugs in order to safely capture him, and in "AKA The Sandwich Saved Me", she and Simpson are able to successfully abduct Kilgrave without any brainwashed pawns interfering. Unfortunately, Kilgrave planned ahead by legitimately hiring a group of mercenaries to guard him, so their allegiance doesn't change while his powers are on the fritz. Consequently, he's rescued almost immediately, allowing him to recover the use of his powers in private.
• Misfits: Early in the second season, the Misfits and their newest friends are out partying when they decide to try some Ecstasy pills (Simon attempts to abstain, but Jamie drops a pill in his drink anyway). After some One Eyed Shots of the team's pupils rippling, they find that the drugs have temporarily reversed their abilities: Alisha induces instant revulsion in everyone she touches, Curtis accidentally catapults himself forwards in time, Kelly is unable to stop voicing her inner monologue, and Simon is noticed and adored by everyone around him. Less amusingly, the cryokinetic girl that Jamie's been romancing finds herself with uncontrollable pyrokinesis and suffers a fatal Superpower Meltdown that nearly kills the temporarily mortal Nathan and ends up killing Jamie for real.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019):
  • Klaus's ability to communicate with the dead is temporarily disabled by intoxication, so he spends most of his time getting high on anything within reach. As such, in situations when his powers might actually be useful for a change, he's forced to wait until the last of the drugs are out of his system before he can use the full extent of his abilities.
  • After suffering a Heroic BSoD in "The Day That Wasn't", Luther gets drunk, goes clubbing, and does a shitload of party drugs as well. Klaus, jittery from withdrawal, fears that being high will have similar nullifying effects on Luther's super-strength and is forced to go to the rescue when his brother's drugged-up antics end up pissing off some local tough guys.
  • It's eventually revealed that Viktor AKA Number 7 actually has superpowers, but after realizing how dangerous they were, Reginald Hargreeves erased Viktor's memory of them with help from Alison. Since then, Viktor has been prescribed anti-anxiety medication in order to suppress his abilities, and given his chronic lack of confidence, he isn't inclined to stop taking them. The plot naturally begins heating up when Leonard Peabody steals Viktor's prescription, gradually allowing his powers to return... but after spending most of his life having his emotions suppressed by drugs, Viktor has no gauge on his emotions — and consequently, not much restraint in the use of his powers.

Video Games

• BioShock: Both Jack and Subject Delta find that alcohol drains their EVE bars, leaving them with progressively less energy to use on plasmids... but on the upside, alcohol restores their health bars, so it's useful if you don't have any health kits and don't mind squandering mana. By contrast, nicotine regenerates the player characters' EVE bars but damages their health bars.
• The Shapeshifting Detective: If you decide to become Lexie and try to get answers out of Zak Weston, he immediately gets very sleazy, offering you a glass of vodka as he tries to rope you into a naked photoshoot. If you actually go through with it, you quickly discover that your drink has been spiked, causing you to lose control of your powers and revert to your true form—not the "Sam" persona, but your real true form. You recover quickly, but Zak is so horrified by the sight that he refuses to speak to you again.

Webcomics

• Dominic Deegan was once the victim of a cruel prank as a kid involving a variation of this trope, recounted here. One of his classmates had recently had Alterism (the local magical equivalent of plastic surgery) done to fix his cleft lip, and Dominic was dared to use his Second Sight to watch the procedure. What Dominic didn't know is the classmate had taken a hallucinogen that affects seers. Instead of seeing the worst parts of the procedure (which is what everyone expected), for a week, he had horrible nightmare visions of everything that could go wrong with Alterism. And thanks to the drug distorting his visions, he was the subject every time. Understandably, he's not a big fan of that magic.

Western Animation

• Rick and Morty: In "Auto Erotic Assimilation", Rick bumps into an Old Flame by the name of Unity, a planet-spanning Hive Mind that's assimilated the local population and can control them in any way it pleases. Unfortunately, it's not long before the two of them renew their relationship and start doing drugs again... and as a result of its intoxication, Unity loses control of a few thousand host bodies. Worse still, it turns out that the planet's population was in the middle of a race war when Unity took control of them, and the conflict starts up again within minutes of the hosts being freed. Plus, one of the sex offenders that Unity had reformed goes after Summer, though Unity is able to rescue her and Morty before things get any worse. Ultimately, Rick's bad influence proves to be one of the major reasons why Unity decides that it can't be with him anymore, prompting it and its host bodies to leave the planet with only a series of Dear John Letters in their wake.

---