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Basic Trope: A mundane substance is treated like an addictive drug.

  • Straight: Bob gets high on sugar.
  • Exaggerated: Bob snorts sugar like cocaine.
  • Downplayed:
    • Bob gets high on sugar, although it was implied that something stronger was mixed in.
    • Sugar is shown being produced in discreet production facilities, shipped among innocuous objects, and sold by backstreet dealers like an illegal substance.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: Alcohol sobers Bob up.
  • Subverted:
    • Bob is given sugar for this purpose but it doesn't work.
    • The sugar turns out to have been laced with cocaine.
    • Bob is an actor, his character is getting stoned because In-In-Universe it is heroin.
  • Double Subverted:
    • Because it isn't strong enough.
    • The sugar without cocaine turns out to have more drug-like effects than the cocaine-laced sugar.
  • Parodied: Sugar is banned causing The Mafia to smuggle cane sugar across the border.
  • Zig Zagged: Sugar is sometimes depicted like an addictive drug. Sometimes it's just sugar.
  • Averted: No one is shown getting high on something other than drugs.
  • Enforced: Moral Guardians have insisted that no real drugs be used in a show aimed at small children, but the writers want to do a drug-themed episode. Sugar gets chosen.
  • Lampshaded: "Getting high on sugar, seriously? Of all the things..."
  • Invoked: The sugar companies design a new form of sugar that is psychoactive to increase sales.
  • Exploited: Emperor Evulz ambushes Bob during his sugar entranced state.
  • Defied: Alice takes steps to ensure Bob never eats sugar.
  • Discussed: "No way I'm giving you sugar. Remember the last time I gave you sugar?"
  • Conversed: "Woah...that can't be 'just sugar'..."
  • Implied: Alice mentions that Bob has a serious sugar addiction.
  • Deconstructed: Sugar is made illegal because of its extreme psychoactive effects.
  • Reconstructed: Protesters get the ban repealed because sugar is too important to cuisine.
  • Played For Laughs: Bob is arrested for driving while sugar-high, only to let him go when they find out he's just drunk
  • Played For Drama: Bob dies of a sugar overdose.

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