Duplicate Trope: Pink Elephants

Pink Elephants refers to when "An extremely intoxicated person, at least in fiction, hallucinates — they see things that aren't visible to a sober person". May be animals (such as literal pink elephants), but this is not necessary according to the description. However, we already have the trope Mushroom Samba, which is "Use of mind-altering substances distorts the world". And despite its name, that means ALL intoxicants, not just shrooms. The proverbial pink elephants is just one of many ways of referring to such hallucinations.

Furthermore, what's confusing about the Pink Elephants trope is that its page picture overlaps with Disney Acid Sequence, which is specifically about animated music segments that go completely bonkers—intoxication may (such as in Dumbo) or may not be involved. May need to check for misuse in that area.

To be precise, Mushroom Samba is the older of the two tropes and has gained a whopping 1406 wicks and over 6,000 inbound links, while Pink Elephants has collected 98 wicks and 802 inbound links. Unless someone can establish a credible distinction between these tropes, this looks like a clear case where the latter should be merged into the former for redundancy.

edited 19th Jan '17 10:25:11 AM by Morgenthaler

Opening.

I'm leaning towards agreeing with OP, but I think an argument could be made that Pink Elephants might be a reasonable subtrope for the specific case of alcohol-related hallucinations, simply because alcohol is the primary mind-altering drug of choice for much of the world, and therefore should have a wildly disproportionate number of examples.

That's just an off-the-cuff thought made before even looking at the tropes. (Though I'm already familiar with Mushroom Samba.)

edited 19th Jan '17 2:20:11 PM by Xtifr

EDIT: I Derped and didn't read the whole OP. Disregard.

edited 19th Jan '17 4:22:56 PM by pokedude10

So Pink Elephants details about what they see, while Mushroom Samba is just them hallucinating things without necessarily showing what exactly they see.

Yeah, subtrope/supertrope relation there.

Does alcohol cause hallucinations in Real Life? If not, Pink Elephants might be worth keeping as a trope related to Mushroom Samba about drugs that cause hallunciations when they shouldn't. Might need a rename, though.

edited 19th Jan '17 5:33:51 PM by Karxrida

Alcoholic Hallucinosis is rare and only affects really chronic alcohol abusers. Its almost all auditory as well so visual hallucinations are not something that happens in RL.

But the effects of Mushroom Samba is not limited to legit hallucinogens, and the description says that it can be caused by things such as sugar and chocolate. Hence that distinction is moot

Edit:

edited 19th Jan '17 6:27:23 PM by Adept

Pink Elephants (the concept, not our trope) is most commonly associated with Delirium tremens (the "DTs"), which is what severe alcoholics often experience when suffering from alcohol withdrawal. And yes, it includes hallucinations, but they're actually caused by the absence of a drug, rather than its presence.

But we're concerned with portrayals in fiction, not the medical details of reality. :)

In fiction, pink elephants are usually associated with alcoholics, but they can be caused by the alchy getting drunk as often as from withdrawal. The point is that it's associated with alcohol and alcoholics, specifically. Not drugs in general. Just alcohol.

If the concern here is that Pink Elephants is The Same But More Specific, well, that's allowed when the more-specific variant is very common, and alcohol (and alcoholism) are ve-e-e-e-e-ry common in fiction (and RL).

edited 19th Jan '17 6:33:36 PM by Xtifr

Then at the very least the description should mention that one is a subtrope to the other.

@5: I don't see the distinction between showing/not showing in the trope descriptions.
@10: Not if we decide Pink Elephants should be about withdrawal effects (cutting everything before 4th paragraph).

edited 1st Feb '17 12:52:07 AM by eroock

Seeing actual Pink Elephants in works are not withdraw effects which will lead to rather massive misuse.

I think Pink Elephants themselves and how they are used in alcohol hallucinations should be a trope in of themselves, just about Pink Elephants though.

Things like World Of Warcraft for example during the brewfest if you get absolutely hammered you will start to see literal Pink Elephants just hanging around, known as "Pint-Sized Pink Pachyderm". Hell most of the current page is specifically about only Pink Elephants and nothing else really.

edited 1st Feb '17 1:17:00 AM by Memers

That's the direction I'm leaning as well.

, I think the cultural notes in the fourth paragraph show why restricting this to elephants is overly restrictive.

edited 2nd Feb '17 3:48:28 PM by Prfnoff

Then back to what I said in post #9.

So, based on the previous posts, I can see several ways in which Pink Elephants can be distinguished from Mushroom Samba.

1. Make the former an alcohol-specific subtrope to the latter. Remove the mention of non-intoxicating substances from the description of PE and move the relevant examples to the supertrope.
2. Differentiate between the content of the hallucination. If we go by the description summary mentioned in the OP, one merely distorts perception (MS) while the other causes one to actively see things that's not there (PE). However, that might fall under the category of The Same But More
3. Use the definition mentioned in post 9 (hallucination is caused by absence of a substance rather than its presence) for PE, and change the examples accordingly.

Did I get that right?

No, that's not at all what I meant in post 9. I said that in reality, pink elephants are associated with alcohol withdrawal, but in fiction, they're simply associated with alcohol. Period.

In other words, post 9 was suggesting what you've labeled 1. Not 3.

My two cents on post 16:

1. Does it serve us to split off alcoholic hallucination from other drugs? The visual effect and narrative purpose is very similar. Also it would create extra work for TRS to sort out examples and probably also lead to miscategorization later (unless we change the name Pink Elephants into something clearer like Alcoholic Hallucination). Cutting PE and merging examples under MS certainly has some merits for me as an alternative.
2. Differentiating by the kind of hallucination will put users in a difficult spot. The line between distorted perception and seeing things that are not there is thin, IMO.
3. This is us basically creating a new trope, which is not bad as such but it has to be seen how many examples we actually have that fit into this slot.

Well, no one else seem to support a merge, so if we're going to have 2 pages, then we should at least establish a clear distinction between them.

OP proposed a merge. It certainly is an option to have on an upcoming crowner.

As I said originally, alcohol-induced hallucinations is very common—enough so to easily justify a subtrope here. Second, as for sorting—looking at the examples on the page, very little sorting will be required. People know what "pink elephants" refers to, and the examples are almost all alcohol related.

Here;'s another possible way to distinguish them:

Pink Elephants is specifically visual hallucinations of things that aren't there at all resulting from the use of intoxicants. (I'd suggest including drugs as well as alcoholother than alcohol, but not things that are not considered intoxicants generally). One non-alcohol-use that's otherwise a perfect case of Pink Elephants is in David Eddings Mallorean: The band has captured someone who may have information they need, and Sadi give him a dose of a potion that will make him anxious to talk — about anything. Sadi then warns Polgara to be quick about asking what she wants to know, because 'In about five minutes, he's going to start seeing butterflies, and you won't get anything useful out of him after that.' (paraphrased)

Mushroom Samba would include altered perception of things that are there ( A man thinking his dog is a yeti), as well as altered perceptions of his surroundings ( He's convinced it's night, or raining, or snowing) or condition (a stoned person who 'can't find my leg!") and can be caused by anything, not just things that are normally considered intoxicants ("I made my coffee with Red Bull this morning and now I can SEE SOUNDS!!!")

edited 7th Feb '17 6:31:19 PM by Madrugada

Apparently, the example lists of PE and MS are already following the categorization suggested in #22. A little tweaking of the descriptions and we can be done here.

That was my point #2, actually.

I favour the creation of Alcoholic Hallucinations as a subtrope to Mushroom Samba and making Pink Elephants a redirect to AE.