Line #60 Main/ChemicallyInducedInsanity


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5	%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please add your example in the proper place. Thanks!
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11	[[quoteright:249:[[ComicBook/{{Tintin}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rajaijah_juice_2.jpg]]]]
12	[[caption-width-right:249:Pictured: what happens when one is given a dose of Rajaijah Juice.[[note]]Though in this case, he's actually ObfuscatingInsanity.[[/note]]]]
13	Despite being perfectly sane, a character is given drugs that make people around him think that he is insane. This is usually done maliciously and without the character's knowledge. Frequently done to get a character out of the way when killing them would be too messy, or simply to discredit them.
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15	Often this would be maintained by having a caregiver giving the patient "medicine" to treat their mental illness, but in reality is dosing them to keep them insane. May be administered by SlippingAMickey and/or WaterSourceTampering. Can overlap with GoMadFromTheRevelation if HigherUnderstandingThroughDrugs opens the mind to [[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow secrets not meant for mortals to perceive]].
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17	Compare PsychoSerum where a character intentionally takes a drug to [[SuperSerum enhance himself]], but it induces insanity as a side effect; also compare InfectiousInsanity where insanity is induced by contact with an already insane person, and MushroomSamba for cases where a character is under the influence of hallucinogens (voluntarily or otherwise). See also {{Gaslighting}}, another way in which one character can make another seem insane.
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19	See also MunchausenSyndrome and the "by proxy" variant.
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22	!!Examples:
23	[[foldercontrol]]
24
25	[[folder:Asian Animation]]
26	* ''Animation/BoBoiBoy'': Adu Du makes "Chemical Emotive X", a serum to toy with the emotions of anyone who consumes it. Sure enough, anyone who eats Yaya's biscuits containing the chemical acts crazy; getting emotional over flat tires, forlorn over having money, or in Gopal's case, a compelling urge to sing and dance. The more [[BlowYouAway BoBoiBoy Wind]] eats them, the more joyous he gets, even to the extent of LaughingMad while surrounding himself in a violent TornadoMove. Wind's unbridled joy unlocks his NextTierPowerup, Cyclone.
27	[[/folder]]
28
29	[[folder:Comic Books]]
30	* ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'':
31	** Professor Milo's schemes have included subjecting Batman to a drug that made him afraid of anything bat-shaped and gassing Batman with a compound that made him lose his will to live.
32	** One of the more common backstories for the Joker has him fall into a vat of chemicals that bleached his skin, turned his hair green, and permanently damaged his mind.
33	** The Scarecrow's fear gas, depending on the formula, can actually give people specific phobias, rather than just inducing sourceless panic.
34	* In ''ComicBook/CaptainAmerica'', the very first appearance of the PsychoPsychologist villain Doctor Faustus has him driving Captain America insane with a combination of psychoactive drugs and {{gaslighting}}.
35	* ''ComicBook/ComicCavalcade'': Protus Plasm developed his "moron hormone", which makes people act like toddlers, to drug government officials into apparent mental breakdowns.
36	* In the ''Franchise/{{Tintin}}'' album ''[[Recap/TintinCigarsOfThePharaoh Cigars of the Pharoah]]'', the Egyptologist Dr. Sarcophagus is given drugs to make him insane, so as to cover up an opium-smuggling ring that was running through Egypt. The Rajaijah Juice or "poison of madness" then pops up again in next album, ''[[Recap/TintinTheBlueLotus The Blue Lotus]]'', in which Tintin is [[spoiler:dosed with a placebo]], though at the end of the album, Dr. Fang (who was kidnapped by the drug ring because they feared his research on madness) develops a cure for its effects.
37	[[/folder]]
38
39	[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
40	* The Night Howler extract serum from ''WesternAnimation/{{Zootopia}}'', which causes mammals to revert to their primal forms.
41	[[/folder]]
42
43	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
44	* In ''Film/{{Dragonheart}}: A New Beginning'', the king's apparent senility proves to be caused by drugs administered by the BigBad.
45	* ''Film/FlaviaTheHeretic'': After capturing the convent, Flavia feeds the nuns a potion made by the Muslim herbalist to drive them into a Bacchanalian frenzy.
46	* In ''Film/Maniac1934'', a guy turns into a [[LargeHam bombastic]], crazy apeman after the MadDoctor Don Maxwell injects him with super adrenaline.
47	* ''Film/{{Nightbreed}}'': Dr. Decker convinces his patient Aaron Boone that he is responsible for a horrible series of murders that have plagued the city for the past several months, then he prescribes him some antipsychotic drugs. It turns out that the drugs were actually intended to ''make'' Boone psychotic: [[PsychoPsychologist Decker is the real killer]] and is trying to cover up his own crimes by [[FrameUp framing Boone]].
48	* In ''Film/Red2010'', Marvin is clearly shown to be [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} a bit insane]]. Frank reveals to Sara (and the audience) that he'd been secretly fed LSD for eleven years.
49	* ''Film/TigerFangs'': The Nazi Dr. Lang and his accomplice, Henry, drug tigers to make them attack humans.
50	[[/folder]]
51
52	[[folder:Literature]]
53	* In ''Literature/BloodAngels: Deus Encarmine'', the traitorous Inquisitor Stele drugs a Blood Angel who stumbled onto his plot to trigger the Black Rage in him.
54	* In ''Literature/ACaribbeanMystery'', this turned out to be the chief cause of [[spoiler:Molly Kendal]]'s mental instability. The guilty party kept drugging [[spoiler:her]] for a long while [[spoiler:so that her eventual murder would look like suicide]].
55	* In ''Heavy Weather'' by Creator/BruceSterling, a member of the conspiracy doesn't like the protagonist staring at him, so threatens to inject her with a drug that will do this.
56	* ''Literature/{{Hurog}}'': In ''Dragon Blood'', the protagonist is given drugs as part of a plot to make him seem unfit to rule. The reader gets to know what he thinks his surroundings look like (people talking to him are monsters, etc.).
57	* ''Literature/JoePickett'': The bad guys in ''Out of Range'' use psychoactive drugs added to his drinking water and [[{{Gaslighting}} psychological trickery]] to turn game warden Will Jensen's depression into paranoia, which ultimately drives him to suicide.
58	* In ''Literature/JonathanStrangeAndMrNorrell'', Mr. Strange {{Invoke\|dTrope}}s this on himself: realizing that TheFairFolk are [[ByTheEyesOfTheBlind visible to madmen]] even when they're making themselves InvisibleToNormals, he creates an {{alchem\|yIsMagic}}ical distillation of insanity and spends a few days wandering around Venice in a hallucinatory stupor. It even lets him find the [[BigBad Gentleman with Thistledown Hair]], to the Gentleman's considerable surprise, though he's too loopy to realize it until after the fact.
59	* In ''The Celebrated Cases of Literature/JudgeDee'', a woman who murdered her husband to have an affair with a neighbor gave her daughter a drug that rendered her unable to speak comprehensibly to keep her from exposing her. During the trial, Judge Dee cures the daughter so she can testify.
60	* ''Literature/TheKingkillerChronicle'': Ambrose doses Kvothe with an alchemical concoction that leaves him TheSociopath for a few hours, intending him to embarrass himself at an important moment. Although Kvothe runs his mouth in front of a younger student and has to be restrained from nonchalantly murdering Ambrose when Kvothe learns what's been done, his friends manage to get him to privacy before he does any real damage.
61	* ''Literature/KushielsLegacy'': In ''Kushiel's Mercy'', Imriel has a spell cast on him, in the form of being stuck with a steel needle soaked in the sweat of a madman, to drive him insane for several weeks so that he isn't affected by a FakeMemories spell that another party cast on the entire city.
62	* ''Literature/TheLaboursOfHercules'': The titular 'bull' from "The Cretan Bull" is a huge and energetic young man named Hugh who is suffering from hallucinations and sometimes wakes up with bloodied hands and the news that animals have been found butchered nearby. As his family has a history of congenital madness, he's afraid of going off the deep end and resolves to commit suicide when he thinks he's close to harming his fiancé. [[spoiler:He's perfectly sound in mind, the hallucinations being produced by drugs in his shaving cream. The actual madman is his father- or rather, his mother's husband, who does suffer from the family insanity and resolved to drive Hugh to suicide in revenge, having murdered his wife years ago. He shoots himself once found out.]]
63	* Inverted in one ''Literature/LordPeterWimsey'' short story in which the villain withholds a drug that the victim needs to stay mentally healthy.
64	* In ''Crash Deluxe'', Literature/ParrishPlessis is nearly driven insane by [[ToxicFriendInfluence Glorious]] and her powerful pheromone blends.
65	* One of the viewpoint characters of ''Literature/Rule34'' is a ProfessionalKiller who ended up with a form of paranoid schizophrenia due to medical experiments on him, and [[InvertedTrope now has to take drugs to remain lucid]]. He's fortunate in one case that Scotland still has a National Health System ([[TakeThat England has apparently gotten rid of theirs]]) which supplies it for free.
66	* The second ''Literature/TheShipWho'' book, ''Partnership'', has an amoral medical student keep a man who wants to testify on one of her RoyalBrat colleagues on a dose of "Blissto" for months, in a vague happy cloud unable to do much at all, to both get him out of the way and use him as leverage against said colleague - if he moves against her, all she has to do is taper the dose and let the man say his piece. [[spoiler: Naturally, when more heroic characters take her in for unethical medical experiments he immediately rats both of them out.]]
67	* In ''Literature/TheStainlessSteelRat'', Jim has trouble predicting a psychopathic murderer's next move, so he takes a drug combination temporarily giving him the same kind of insanity.
68	* In John D. [=MacDonald=]'s ''Literature/TravisMcGee'' novel ''Nightmare in Pink'', [=McGee=] has a hallucinatory drug slipped into his drink. When he loses control, he's taken into custody by the bad guys and sent to a mental hospital so he can be interrogated and lobotomized.
69	* ''Literature/VattasPeace'': In ''Into the Fire'', the people who survived Miksland with Ky Vatta in the previous book have been quarantined and drugged into a stupor by TheConspiracy for fear that what they saw on the supposedly uninhabitable continent could derail their EvilPlan.
70	* In the opening of the ''Literature/VenusPrime'' series, Sparta has spent several years of her life being drugged into oblivion by the Free Spirit.
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72
73	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
74	* ''Series/TheCosbyMysteries'': A VictimOfTheWeek is poisoned with mercury placed on his desklamp; the heat of the lightbulb vapourised the mercury and he inhaled the fumes, making him as mad as the proverbial hatter.
75	* ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'': In the season 6 episode "Alienated", in a possible ShoutOut to ''Series/TheXFiles'' and its "[[Recap/TheXFilesS02E25Anasazi Anasazi]]" episode, a doctor is poisoned by a pharmaceutical company inducing paranoia regarding a [[Area51 secret military base]] to destroy his credibility in respect to a new drug.
76	* This is Sierra's backstory in ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}''. After spurning the advances of a rich man, he is so angered that he doses her and has her put into a mental ward. She is then turned into an Active, a programmable love slave hired out to rich clients, which includes the man responsible for her state.
77	* The ''Series/{{Endeavour}}'' episode "Canticle" has the murderer giving massive doses of LSD to their victims in order to make killing them easier or even having them get themselves killed in a delirious state. One of the intended victims does survive but is left in an insane state from which we are told they may never recover.
78	* In an episode of ''Series/GetSmart'', Max gets a TapOnTheHead and is diagnosed with amnesia. He's given some pills which are supposed to help. However, the doctor is actually working for KAOS, and the pills ''cause'' amnesia. Every hour, just as he's starting to remember things, he has to take a pill which sets him back to square one.
79	* In ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'', Frank [=ODs=] on a number of mental medications, leading to him wandering the street in soiled pants. He then gets taken to a mental ward (an ActorAllusion, as Danny [=DeVito=] was in ''Film/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest''). Once the medication wears off, he breaks out.
80	* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'':
81	** One episode has a villain of the week who has a girl she was abusing (who witnessed her murder another child in her care) committed and drugged (she managed to convince the staff that the girl was legitimately insane, but the trope was otherwise in effect).
82	** Another episode {{invert\|edTrope}}s it by having a corrupt nursing home take a patient off his meds to prevent him from telling anyone about a patient who died due to negligence. This makes them legally responsible for the patient's subsequent episode that led him to kidnap a child and kill two people.
83	* {{Inverted\|Trope}} in an episode of ''Series/{{Leverage}}'', in which Parker checks into an addiction-treatment center as part of the team's latest con, where she is given anti-depressants and becomes temporarily relieved of her [[StickyFingers kleptomaniacal tendencies]].
84	* An episode of ''Series/ThePretender'' has Jarod investigating a woman with a psychological condition. She's on medication, but it doesn't seem to help. At one point, she accidentally drops one of the pills into a glass of water. When the water turns red as a result, he realizes that the medication is not what she thought which leads him to discover that it's what's causing her condition.
85	* Used a few times in ''Series/{{Psych}}'':
86	** In "[[Recap/PsychS05E03NotEvenCloseEncounters Not Even Close... Encounters]]", a law firm has a man dosed so that people think he's an insane [[ConspiracyTheorist conspiracy nut]] to discredit them when he is building a case against them when he finds that they've had some shady dealings.
87	** In "[[Recap/PsychS06E06ShawnInterrupted Shawn, Interrupted]]", Shawn [[GoAmongMadPeople goes into a mental ward]] to try to prove that a crime lord is [[ObfuscatingInsanity faking insanity]] to get an InsanityDefense. It turns out that this trope is at play instead, and he is being continually dosed by one of the nurses.
88	** This happens to Lassiter in "[[Recap/PsychS06E11HeeeeeresLassie Heeeeere's Lassie]]", where the killer is putting a chemical in the air vents to drive certain residents insane.
89	* In the ''Series/Stingray1985'' episode "Playback", this turns out to be the cause of the violent deaths of most participants in an isolation experiment: A fire burnt some piping in the backup ventilation system, causing madness-inducing fumes to be ventilated throughout the building during a test of said backup system. The SoleSurvivor was unaffected because he was doing a space walk simulation at the time, and thus on an independent air supply.
90	* ''Series/ServantOfThePeople'': Nina Yegorovna, Vasiliy's pick for head of State Security, is slipped a drug by her underlings, who resent the new administration's anti-corruption stance (and also probably hate taking orders from a woman). It goes into effect when she visits a bar after work, and they videotape her dancing and singing in the rain like she's in a musical. She flees the country in disgrace. Later, Mikhail, her replacement, discovers what happened to her and does the same thing to the security agents.
91	* ''Series/TheXFiles'': In [[Recap/TheXFilesS02E25Anasazi the second season finale]], it is revealed that Mulder's erratic behavior of late was due to drugs in his water supply, presumably done by the Conspiracy to discredit him.
92	[[/folder]]
93
94	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
95	* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' supplement ''Unearthed Arcana''. The Elixir of Madness is a magical liquid that causes anyone who drinks it to go insane. If it is slipped into someone's drink, it will cause them to go mad when they drink it. The victim can be restored to normal by one of three high-level spells: Heal, Restoration, or Wish.
96	[[/folder]]
97
98	[[folder:Video Games]]
99	* In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedBrotherhood'', Ezio is able to give drugs to make the target assault passers-by, much like a spree killer.
100	* ''VideoGame/BatmanTheTelltaleSeries'': In the backstory, [[spoiler:Thomas Wayne]] used drugs to drive Mrs. Cobblepot insane so that he could seize her assets. Oswald Cobblepot/the Penguin, seeking revenge on everyone involved, drugs Harvey Dent and Mayor Hill with an unstable {{truth serum\|s}} on national television (which is what turns Dent into Two-Face). [[spoiler:Vicki Vale]] drugs Bruce with steroids to make him maul the Penguin in public.
101	* In ''VideoGame/HitmanBloodMoney'', Agent Smith is given drugs to make him look as TheAlcoholic.
102	* In ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'', UB-01's venom apparently has this effect on humans, removing the victim's moral and behavioral inhibitions and inflicting emotional extremes, and is also ''addictive''. [[spoiler: Lusamine's abusive {{Yandere}} obsession stems from ''years'' of exposure to the stuff, and after her stint as [[FusionDance Mother Beast]] she needs long-term medical care to recover.]]
103	* In ''VideoGame/WeHappyFew'', the entire populace of Wellington Wells is addicted to "Joy", which causes people to forget their troubles (especially the "Very Bad Thing") but also causes hallucinations and erratic behavior. Those who are not on Joy are brutally attacked by users until they either give in and take the drug or are killed.
104	* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Oddworld}} Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus]]'', several levels feature large tanks of laughing gas, which is used to pacify Mudokon slaves by making them mindlessly run around laughing. Most notably, the gas features prominently in the Slig Barracks level "Bombing Range", where Mudokons are apparently used as target practice and are all dosed on laughing gas to keep them ignorant of their brutal fate. Thankfully, [[VideogameCaringPotential the player can save them.]]
105	[[/folder]]
106
107	[[folder:Web Original]]
108	* ''AudioPlay/AlienAbductionRolePlay'': Acktreal Domma is slowly driven insane over the course of the entire series. The rest of the crew hypothesizes that the hormones or some other chemical found in the two human test subjects is the cause.
109	* ''Website/SCPFoundation'': Dr. Clef once held an orientation meeting with new researchers on the subject of {{Reality Warper}}s. He'd spiked the food and drink with hallucinogens so that when he started yelling at them that reality ''was'' being changed, they believed it, driving home just how helpless you are against such [=SCPs=].
110	[[/folder]]
111
112	[[folder:Western Animation]]
113	* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In one [[WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror "Treehouse of Horror"]] story, Kodos and Kang spray Homer with rum so people will dismiss his alien-abduction story as drunken ravings.
114	* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': In [[Recap/StarWarsTheCloneWarsS6E4Orders "Orders"]], Nala Se drugs Fives, who has found out that all the clone troopers have [[MindControlDevice mysterious chips]] in their heads, with something that makes him ultra-paranoid. This, combined with Palpatine telling him the truth about the chips' [[ThePurge purpose]], has Fives acting more and more deranged until he is killed by Commander Fox, with no one seeming to believe him. [[spoiler:SequelSeries ''[[WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels Rebels]]'' reveals that Rex eventually realized he was telling the truth.]]
115	[[/folder]]
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117	[[folder:Real Life]]
118	* One of the parts of Project MKULTRA involved giving drugs such as LSD so as to attempt mind control. The Soviets tried something similar, and found they got the best results with [[BoringButPractical good ol' fashioned alcohol]].
119	* UsefulNotes/TheStasi used methods, including drugs, to {{Gaslight\|ing}} dissidents.
120	* Amphetamines and other stimulants can have this effect if used in excessive doses or too frequently. Even controlled, medically supervised use of pharmaceutical-grade ones like Dexedrine can lead to impaired judgement and increased aggression.
121	* A persistent ScareEmStraight UrbanLegend holds that there is a man in an asylum who believes himself to be an orange after taking LSD. The story goes like this: A man enters Canada from the United States. He comes across an amazing deal on LSD, so he buys a lot of it, and tapes the sheet to his stomach. At the border, he's ordered to get out of his car and wait in a room while they search it. He gets so nervous that he starts sweating, which soaks the sheet and causes him to absorb a hundred hits of LSD through his skin. He then starts thinking he is an orange and has to peel himself, so he starts taking off his clothes. To this day, he is stuck in a psychiatric ward, still convinced he is an orange.
122	* Of the hallucinogens, the deliriant subclass induces hallucinations similar to delirium or psychosis. These hallucinations are true hallucinations, or the user cannot tell apart from reality the images and sounds generated. These hallucinations often tend to be evil in nature and users report the trip being one of the worst experiences of their lives.
123	[[/folder]]

Context Main / ChemicallyInducedInsanity