Jazz vs Cram, Why would I ever take Jazz? Options

[kjones]

Shit, son, if you're not a doctor then what the fuck are you?

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

A user? Someone with real interest in drugs effects on humans? An alien studying how we interact with different kind of chemicals? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

There are so many possibilities (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Rasumichin]

Shit, son, if you're not a doctor then what the fuck are you?

Literature and political science major.
Currently working on a paper on Thomas Pynchon, the 1960s, the cultural history of LSD and Deleuze's and Guattari's writings on schizoanalysis.
And drug policy reform happens to be another field of interest for me, even more so since i've done some research on civil war economies and narco states.

I used to work in a hospital for some time, though.
Volunteered there instead of serving in the army (it's mandatory here to either go to the military or spend some time working in a social/medical/environmental institution).
So i spent a year working as an assistant nurse in internal medicine, dealing mostly with alcoholics on detox, people with gastrointestinal diseases and cancer patients in their final days.
Picked up some basics there, which was a lot easier because i learned some Latin in school (helps to wrap your head around terms like vasoconstriction, even though i couldn't translate fucking Ovid nowadays if my life depended on it).
Some of my friends are doctors as well and i'm always really curious about medical topics.

[Saint Sithney]

If PMA and DOM are experimental amphetamines, consider that a failed experiment.

Shit sux.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Literature and political science major.
<SNIP>
I used to work in a hospital for some time, though.
<SNIP>
Some of my friends are doctors as well and i'm always really curious about medical topics.

And here I was hoping it would be something more interesting (like an alien studying us (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif) )

[KCKitsune]

And here I was hoping it would be something more interesting (like an alien studying us (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif) )

Oh come on chummer, if Rasumichin WAS an alien do you think he would come out and tell us lesser mortals? Nope, he would just continue fucking with our heads and record that data for his report to High Command.

"Humans are a restless type of creature, but if you put nude women and beer in front of the males of the species they can be pacified. I recommend cloning 'Playboy Bunnies' as a means of peaceful conquest of this planet."

[Rasumichin]

If PMA and DOM are experimental amphetamines, consider that a failed experiment.

Shit sux.

I've never heard anything good about PMA, and what i've heard about all of the DO line compounds was so-so at best (especially for DOM).
No surprise that stuff's almost always sold as something else on the black market.
Which is a crying shame, given that they are much more dangerous than the drugs they are sold as. PMA can also have really nasty interactions with MDMA, which is doubly problematic for an extasy "replacement" with a slow onset ("these pills are probably bunk, gotta get some other rolls, oh wait, why am i in the hospital?").

Evil GMs may mourn the absence of drug interactions in SR rules.
Though being sold woad instead of nitro may make up for that (be sure to buy some skills to identify street drugs if your character is going to use them).
One should, of course, keep in mind that dealers are foremost interested in making a profit- adulterants should be cheaper and/or easier available than the drug they are marketed as (this is why most "my weed was laced with PCP" stories don't hold up to closer scrutiny, you make more money selling it as PCP).
Which limits the number of possible adulterants, especially given the price and availability structure for drugs in SR4.

But yes, to come back to your complaint, most newly developed drugs don't quite catch on. There's a lot of trial and error in developing new psychoactive compounds.
You systematically modify an existing compound, receive dozens of new substances and then go ahead and test them.
Many fail to some degree, some do so horribly.
Once in a while, you come up with a new wonder drug.
Almost all of them make it to the grey market in some way or the other, though, if only for a short amount of time.


@ Brazilian_Shinobi : what KCKitsune said.
Have to file in the next report now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


Getting back to the original topic, i just read up again on the Jazz description in the BBB.
Couldn't find anything to the extend that it has more long-term side effects than cram.
In fact, tempo is the only drug in the game with an exhaustive list of such, but given the duration of a normal campaign, such stuff would usually only come up in an epilogue unless you start with a severe or burnout addiction.

What can be said about it is that users are more aggressive and hyperactive than cram users.

The deal with Jazz is that it was developed specifically as a combat drug for cops.
From an outgame perspective : giving the GM a tool to boost the opposition against heavily cybered PCs without having to worry about the budget- doubly important back in SR2, when the initiative system was completely broken in favor of wired characters, who spent their additional passes before anyone else and could shoot 4-8 times before the coppers where able to react.

Faced with such problems, Lone Star turned to chemical augmentation to counter this threat (and you can be sure that a lot of corps, as well as gangs, followed their example).

Now, amphetamine and methamphetamine have both seen use in combat as well (practically all factions in WWII issued one or both compounds to their troops, the USAF hands out dexamphetamine to pilots up to this day), but a soldier is in a totally different situation than a rent-a-cop going up against a wired street sam and needing a short boost.
While cram could be a choice for an extended combat mission, it would leave the officer tweaked out all day long.
Doesn't fit well with the job requirements outside of busting violent offenders.
Customers might take offense to that.

So they needed a compound that allowed the user to return to baseline within an hour or two.
This is where Jazz comes in.

The fluff also indicates that it is much more tailored towards being a combat booster- i'd suspect the high to be more tense, less euphoric and more edgy than cram, though not on the level of Kamikaze (suicidal psycho bloodthirst) or nitro, which is basically a stimulant cocktail and would combine a broad range of effects (user feels all-out WAAAAGH!).

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, the duration thing really is important. A fit human cop w/ a Body of 4 will be in an altered state of mind for 8 hours-- 16 if the GM takes the "For an equivalent duration" to mean that the 6 unresisted stun persists until the side effects have worn off whether or not you take a nap in the meantime. That's good for a -2 dice pool modifier if you don't use a slap patch (and slap patches just kinda make things worse in the long run and are thus best saved for emergencies). To put it in perspective, it takes the average 3 strength human a couple good swats with a sap to inflict 6 stun-- that's one serious case of drag ass. When you consider that the average mook doesn't have the biggest dicepools to begin with, it becomes fair to say that such an officer may not really be fit for duty. After all, samurai only laugh off -2 penalties because they started with an Automatics pool of 14 to begin with. So Jazz may be nastier in the short term, but overall it requires less recovery, which hits me as a relatively fair trade.

[crash2029]

(snip)
After a few days of binging and waking, things get messy. The user is normally visibly disheveled, may suffer brief blackouts, feel extreme pressure in the head -especially when changing his position- and so on. Coordination and reasoning may be impaired significantly.
Hallucinations become common after the second or third day without sleep and are often accompanied by persecutory ideation (feelings of being hunted down and/or watched by outside forces). Jumpiness, hostility and manic repetition of certain actions (checking the blinds for a police truck outside) may be observed.
This can increase to the point of temporary psychosis (meaning that psychotic symptoms will subside after the drug's effects have worn off). A symptom idiosyncratic to stimulant psychosis is the idea of dermatozoa ("skin creatures"), the vivid impression of small animals like bugs or worms crawling under the subject's skin.

This reminds me of the last time I went off my meds for a few days. I tell you what, there is nothing quite like looking at the ceiling spinning above you while arguing with the space cows infesting the couch and trying to remember who the hell I am right now. Schizophrenia sure does make life interesting.

[Dumori]

Also sound a wee but like sleep deep of about 50-72 hours...

[Saint Sithney]

the USAF hands out dexamphetamine to pilots up to this day)

I thought they moved from dex to Modafanil/Provigil? Did that not happen?
I guess I could see some of those bomber pilots insisting on go-pill classic, and I don't imagine they'd be denied their personal preference.

[Rasumichin]

I thought they moved from dex to Modafanil/Provigil? Did that not happen?
I guess I could see some of those bomber pilots insisting on go-pill classic, and I don't imagine they'd be denied their personal preference.

Didn't hear of that change, but it would make sense.
There was some uproar after a USAF pilot accidentally bombed a squad of Canadians in Afghanistan some years ago while under the influence.
At that point, the Air Force stuck to it's policy of using amps against fatigue, but given the rise of popularity Modafinil has seen since then, i could imagine a turnover in that policy.