Drugs in adventure games?

[Tartalo]

This thread is for adults only.
(just in case)

I'm old enough to remember the "Winners don't use drugs" in Arcades, and there are lots of games where the bad ones are Narcos. But unless you understand the arcade "pow"s as a metaphor, usage of drugs appear very few times in games as part of the story compared to other popular culture expressions like comics or music.

In Adventure Games The Dead City is a shocking example, as taking Heroin is essential in the story.

Do you remember any other example? And what do you think about this apparent difference between amateur adventure games and other popular culture forms? I am curious (About your opinions, not Heroin).

Edited to add another example

[Timosity]

In LSL3 you can smoke a joint with the hemp you pick, but you die (good little cut scene)

so it doesn't encourage you, and then teaches you a lesson in another use for the marijuana plant, making rope

picking the hemp is an essential part of the game, but what you use it for is critical (if you don't save your game before hand)

[Radiant]

Police Quest I is about drug trafficking. Of course, since you're the cop, you get to put a stop to it. PQ3 touches upon the same theme, briefly.

Plenty of games involve getting very, very drunk. E.g. Monkey Island 2, any number of "Drunken Fighter" games, and so forth.

In NetHack, you can eat shrooms which cause you to hallucinate.

[Gilbert]

You all forget about teh almighty AGS game RLBAT, in one point of the game you need to enter the "illusionary cofe world", though the game itself (alongside with other Mostly productions, and "fan" games like "Captain Muchly drinks bleach" and "Novo Mestro") was like on drug in the whole game already.

[DeviantGent]

Reality on the Norm: Cabbages and Kings had you trying to score some fungus for Doc, a man bearing a very close resemblance to Hunter S Thompson. Plus the main characters were stoners. Twas all in good fun though, and it really wasn't that key to the story.

[Hammerite]

Deus Ex you have the ability to take zyme, which made  your vision all blurred.
But you could make a mint selling it to junkies in the underground station (you could kill the dealer to)

[Baron]

In Al-Quest 1 you have to make a "cigarette" out of rolling papers and a magic mushroom that shrinks people (a la Alice in Wonderland).  The inventory picture definitely looks like a joint, though....

I always thought it would be really cool to make a small game where the locations stay the same, but your perception of them and powers changed depending on what drug you took.  So for example to solve one puzzle you'd have to "float" up over an obstacle, or for another you'd have to hallucinate that it was alive -that kind of thing.  But such a project would spoil my clean-cut image, so I'm throwing the idea out to the general public.

[Ghost]

In Legend Of Kyrandia you could eat mushrooms intended to be used in a magical potion, and the screen would glow in some highly psychadelic palette effects. It was funny, and no actual "take drugs, it's good" message was passed, but I think that you can see that in more than one way.

System Shock also came up with some funny palette cycles after certain stimulants were taken. The Fallout games actually included drugs with all their hard reality: positive effects connected with the danger of becoming addicted.

[Erenan]

I seem to recall the colors cycling in Quest for Glory I when you ate a mushroom or something. Am I mistaken about that?

[Radiant]

Oh yeah! In Quest for Glory III you can use the water pipe in the healer's house, and the colors go wild. If you do it too often, you'll turn into a junkie and lose.

In Ultima VI, there's the "silver snake venom" drug, too.

[Ghost]

And I distinctly remember a hookah in your Warthog game... 

Anyway, if you look at this from a dispassionate and pragmatic point of view, games- especially adventure games- often tend to create more or less realistic "model worlds". Drugs are part of such a world, from socially accepted drungs like tobacco and alcohol to such weird substances as heroin. Why shouldn't drugs be part of a story- a dark part, like the semi-sado-maso-theme in Phantasmagoria 2?  Gabriel Knight had some junkies in it, and no-one took too much offense since they fitted into the setting. They offer, how to put it, complex and "adult" content.

There is, of course, no excuse for celebrating drug (ab)use. But as a story element it actually allows for some twists. It's, once again, all a matter of subtle nuances.

[Tartalo]

It's true that alcohol is present in several games, the goal of La Gran Castanya and AciDDD is to drink.

So, at the end not so few appearances, at least accidental. My perception was irreal.

[He-Man]

The Fallout games actually included drugs with all their hard reality: positive effects connected with the danger of becoming addicted.

I also think that it's really cool that Fallout shows both good and bad side of doing drugs. That's an example of how that game have a lot more adult view on many subjects compared to most of other games. Fallout rocks! I hope that Fallout 3 will keep on being that way...

In my game The Bar you have take drugs to solve one of the puzzles:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=565

[Magic]

I loved the mushrooms in Ultima 8 (It's close enough to an adventure ). Heck, was there a storyline in there or were biting bits of huge mushrooms enough for us players to have fun?