Basic Trope: Something S&P-friendly is used as a stand in for drugs.
- Straight: A Wild Teen Party is made wilder due to an abundance of root beer, with the attendants waking up in bad shape.
- Exaggerated: Said party also involves sugar being snorted, injected, and smoked, but no explicitly illicit substances come into play.
- Downplayed: Alice is having trouble with a caffeine addiction. While drug parallels are there, the drug stand-in is plausible on its own grounds.
- Justified:
- A group of wild teens want the experience of doing drugs without the risks of getting caught. This is a happy medium.
- Alice is a recovering addict, where the drug stand-in serves as a less harmful replacement.
- In order to accommodate a tradition that involves alcohol, a substitute is used for those who don't drink.
- Inverted: Cocaine is used as a stand-in for Coca-Cola.
- Subverted:
- It's hard* root beer.
- It turns out, someone spiked the root beer.
- Double Subverted: ...with a boatload of sugar.
- Parodied: A group of idiot teens try and fail to get high on various substances that obviously wouldn't produce that effect.
- Zig-Zagged: A group of Party Animals drink root beer, spiked with sugar or alcohol, depending on the host.
- Averted: Drugs are either included explicitly, or irrelevant to the work.
- Lampshaded: "Wow, root beer! That's almost as good as the real thing!"
- Defied: "Do you seriously expect root beer the serve as a stand in for alcohol? Give me the real deal, or I'm out."
- Enforced: A creator wants to include a joke about smoking. The executives are ok with this, but only in a manner that younger viewers are unlikely to pick up on.
- Discused: "I don't see why Alice insists on drinking Root Beer at the bar. This is an adult program."
- Conversed: "Why on earth does this PSA insist on using stand-in drugs? Doesn't that miss the point?"
- Implied: A Wild Teen Party goes up to eleven after root beer comes into play, though no explicit connection comes into play.
- Played for Laughs: The cops break up the party and arrest everybody for drinking root beer. They are then forced to attend addiction support groups for other nonalcoholics.
- Played for Drama: Alice's life becomes worse as a result of her root beer addiction, and she needs to get back on the wagon.
- Played for Horror: Bob goes on a bad trip after one too many candy bars.
- Deconstructed: A salesman tries and fails to sell root beer to teen and adult party-goers, as they see past it having the same effects as alcohol.
- Reconstructed: ...However, after pivoting to the family demographic, he becomes more successful, as soda proves to be a safer alternative to alcohol where it makes sense as a stand-in.
