Hit? Those old ladies bite. Worse, they don't have to do it with their mouths!

I'm gonna just muse privately to myself that this particular conversation illustrates pretty well why SR drugs rules aren't more realistic. But I'm just musing.

And yeah, combat stims are pretty well established. I'm willing to accept them as a possibility, and more so as a flavor.

Well, during one run, my charecter hurled Sperethiel Obscenities at a perscription bottle, threw it around the room, and flushed it down the toilet.

Does that count as drug abuse? ;-D

...and that's when i killed him, your honor. i mean, self-defense, right?

BTLs have always struck me as being too high-maintenance. i mean, i know it's the future and all, where everybody's all high-tech, but it still seems off to me that millions of people manage to e-drug themselves to death while maintaining a complex piece of electronics.

now, what would work, i think, is a type of ubiquitous simsense player with a hardwired chip--SR's version of the AOL CD. instead of hooking you up to the intratron, these would play some sort of content for you when you hold it against your forehead (cheapy version) or put on the attached wireless headband (more expensive version). you might get the day's paper (complete with ads), a trid episode (complete with ads), or a Jack Chick e-tract (complete with jaw-dropping levels of phenomenal stupidity and racism). or, you might get a BTL (complete with debilitating addiction).

One thing I love about BTLs is that they are so similar to Tek from the TekWar series of novels and by William Shatner and subsequent made-for-tv movies based on them.
So, really, you can use BTLs to have an excuse to bring Shatner into your games.


Simchips that have built in players are canon, by the way. That doesn't provide much of a problem.

I think 2XS also did a good job.

Not funny.

The same someone is not properly munching his combat chars. Hit them dead. On first strike.

In my experience, it's very difficult to identify exactly what substance someone has used other than some very general categorizations, unless the contact is in a clinical setting. For example, you generally can't tell methamphetamine use from cocaine derivatives unless you do medical tests or observe for a long time. I've seen people who OD'd on Olanzapine and were mistaken by cops as simply being ETOH. For that matter, it's sometimes hard to tell a psychotic episode from hallucinogen use.

(In one tragic incident, a person was detained to "sober up" and died several hours later. Autopsy determined he hadn't been drinking at all, but had an internal brain injury, probably simply slipped and fell.)

So I wonder Kremlin, how were you able to determine that this person was a PCP user? How did you, um... "survive," as you put it?

I've never seen anything described as a "combat drug" in use. My understanding is that they're derivatives of stimulants, amphetamines and whatnot. From what I've seen of those, I don't see them being very effective in a combat situation: Lots of screaming. Disorganized movements, disorganized thoughts. Usually can't pay attention long enough to hear an order or remember their name, let alone follow an order or remember training.

As for SR though, it's easy to imagine that those things are dealt with in drug development. But if you can accept that, you can pretty much decide what you want about 6th world street drugs.

Amphetamines are used to treat certain sleep disorders, such as narcolepsy, as well as ADD/ADHD. Lots of screaming and disorganization isn't exactly symptomatic of moderate use as prescribed by a doctor. The opposite is the case, in fact. In moderate doses Amphetamine increases concentration and improves impulse control.
Amphetamines have been and are issued to combat troops to help fight fatigue. In particular, Benzedrine inhalers were popular during WWII. They are also issued to pilots who have to fly long hours with no sleep.

Amphetamines get a lot of bad press because of the double-danger of self-medicating with bathroom-brewed drugs. But, if we're giving them to overactive three-year-olds (and we are) then they can't be all bad.

When I said "In my experience..." I should have noted that my experience is in working with substance abusers. I haven't seen the uses Hyz described. Or, if I have, I didn't notice. Thanks for the info.

But I'm also thinking about dosages. I mean, giving someone enough amp to keep them awake for a while longer isn't going to increase their fighting ability, is it? And if you do give someone enough to feel no pain and enhance their aggresssion significantly, (the sort of thing I imagine a "combat drug" would do) I suspect you'll start to get all these negative effects along with. (Like enhancing aggression is a positive effect. )

I should add that I take amphetamines daily, and haven't noticed any screaming (well, ok, maybe during finals week). Less disorganization than usual, which is why I've got a prescription for them. As you say, it's the dosage that matters.

That said, giving someone enough to keep them awake a while longer certainly increases someone's combat ability during the time period when they would otherwise be asleep.

~J

Yep, pretty much. It ain't a good idea to take a nap while someone is shooting at you. For that matter, fatigue is a killer even if you don't fall right asleep. When you're so tired that you can't hold your weapon straight a little bit of speed is just what you need. The same can be said for pilots who can't hold their sticks steady.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0809/p01s04-usmi.html

It should be noted that the Air Force is issuing 5mg and 10mg tablets of dextroamphetamine to pilots who are on missions that last more than 8 hours while psychiatrists routinely prescribe 5mg, 10mg, and even 20mg doses of dextroamphetamine to rambunctious elementary school children.

I'm sorry, but anyone who tells me that 20mg is perfectly safe for 23 kilogram school children but that the drug is so horrible and dangerous that we can't let 90 kilogram battle-hardened combat pilots have 5mgs of the stuff is going to get laughed at, called a moron who has sexual intercourse with his or her maternal parent, and wedgied if possible.

Abuse is another issue altogether. Tylenol can cause deadly liver damage if abused. The thing is that most highly abused drugs are perfectly safe when taken in the correct manner.

PCP is an exception to this, but it isn't highly abused, either. PCP is a dissociative anesthetic. It doesn't take away the ability to feel pain so much as it takes away the ability to have any clue what is happening to your body, which has the side effect of taking away the ability to feel pain if taken in sufficient dosage. In fact, using dissociative drugs to induce a sort of coma is a common anesthetic procedure used in many surgeries; ketamine and nitrous oxide are in the same class of drugs. PCP is no longer used in surgery not because of its potential addictive effects, but because it is also a neurotoxin. When you're getting high off of PCP it isn't because of the dissociative properties (although those may contribute), it for the same reason that people get high off of Fugu and spraypaint fumes, because brain cells are being killed.
There isn't really a safe dose because it is highly neurotoxic.
Still, it was commonly used as a surgical anesthetic before its neurotoxic properties were discovered. Most people can stand to lose a few brain cells without suffering any obvious adverse consequences.

As for the assertion that PCP is a "combat drug", I will agree that individuals who are in dissociative states can ignore a great deal of pain. However, it does not in any way provide a strength increase nor does it provide improved reflexes. Quite the opposite is true. The individual will be lethargic. Strength and reaction speed will both be compromised. The biggest advantage is that the partially-dissociated individual won't have to make a willpower check to do stupid crap. However, the assertion that PCP lets people punch through car windows (as posited in Terminator) is utterly absurd, not the least reason being because car windows are strong enough to withstand a punch from most human beings.

The closest thing we have to combat drugs are adrenaline and some synthetic adrenergics. These also have the advantage of allowing individuals to ignore the effects of deadly allergies and nerve agents for a short time.

So you're making the distinction between drugs that have a military application and drugs that make a guy somehow badder in a fight. And the latter is mostly the product of fiction.

I find that comforting. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because without precedent, we can imagine whatever for a fictional, futuristic "combat drug" without someone saying "that's not how it works!"