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[SethCreiyd]

Add to the General Section, "criminal catalyst".  Right now "justice" consists of little temper tantrums your dwarves throw, but were a dwarf addicted on a drug and couldn't get it, he would try stealing money, stealing drugs, experimenting with new drugs, and making money "illegally" (selling/growing drugs) in addition to throwing things, picking random fist-fights, and going beserk.

Dwarves' behavior in this aspect should require a kind of check against their personality.  There are many real-life substance addicts who do not resort to theft or violence to get their fix, though they may forgo food and drink, or abandon their personal relationships.  Desires for drugs could become a 'need,' with announcements like "Urist Stonerdwarf cancels Eat:  Seeking marijuana."

That brings up another point: I don't think there's a need for exclusively [fanciful] drugs.  There are many real-life flora and fauna in Dwarf Fortress already, and adding in ones that happen to be psychoactive would not necessarily break immersion.  -Blunt- would be rather tacky, but not nearly as much as a -marijuana cigar-.

Marginally on-topic, I am currently plastered on mead.

[Mel_Vixen]

Some proffessions would even need drugs for theyr work. Like a doc for his patients victims and for himself to stay awake or a shaman / druid to communicate with the Ghosts and spirits.

So you could get to "legal" drugs and theyr illegal use.

[Malrin]

This looks like another level of hilarity for Dwarf Fortress. Now we are giving drugs to our giant community of alcoholic manic-depressive people.

If I were adding it, the alchemist would be able to make all sorts of weird substances that could cause hallucinations, berserk rages, heck maybe even a chemically induced strange mood.

Also maybe there should be naturally occuring substances in the food. A long time ago, Rye bread was a dietary staple in many cities and villages, but it often contained mold which produced ergotamine, a hallucinogenic substance. The whole village would have rye bread for lunch and then everyone goes batshit insane. Perhaps we'd need the alchemist to treat the food before it is edible. (But knowing dwarves, he might just pour concentrated sulfuric acid into your plump helmet roast)

Also, using tranquilizers, neurotoxins, and toxic gasses against invaders has potential.

[Karnewarrior]

Booze makes them happy until they realize the barrel's empty.

sig'd

[Owlbread]

This looks like another level of hilarity for Dwarf Fortress. Now we are giving drugs to our giant community of alcoholic manic-depressive people.

If I were adding it, the alchemist would be able to make all sorts of weird substances that could cause hallucinations, berserk rages, heck maybe even a chemically induced strange mood.

Also maybe there should be naturally occuring substances in the food. A long time ago, Rye bread was a dietary staple in many cities and villages, but it often contained mold which produced ergotamine, a hallucinogenic substance. The whole village would have rye bread for lunch and then everyone goes batshit insane. Perhaps we'd need the alchemist to treat the food before it is edible. (But knowing dwarves, he might just pour concentrated sulfuric acid into your plump helmet roast)

Also, using tranquilizers, neurotoxins, and toxic gasses against invaders has potential.

Now, see, there was a good point there about the ergotism. There's so many fantastic situations that could be created there. Why not drop food tainted with the ergot fungus into the pit of starving goblin prisoners and watch them go insane? What if the fortress was indeed driven mad without cure? Those who still remained sane would have to stave off the insane, splitting the fortress population in two. Imagine the reclaim. Frantic traps laid here and there, bones remaining tangled together as an echo of the violence.

I'm still taken with the idea of the player only discovering that there was an outbreak of ergotism in the fortress or some other sort of illness when the game suddenly states "Monom Mebantekkud, Peasant cancels Haul Stone: Bat country", and all of a sudden 15 manta rays appear in his kill list.

On another subject, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned snuff yet. I'm sure the baron would enjoy that.

[Vattic]

It's important to note that for the majority of the fort, or at least the stable healthy ones, the symptoms brought on by ergot would be temporary. Perhaps it could work like a party, your dwarves would mostly be unfit to work for a period of time. There are some potentially dangerous physical side effects but I'm not sure how common they are as ergot doesn't seem to wipe out whole villages.

I just looked the stuff up and apparently ergot is what was originally used to synthesise LSD. It is also still used today and has been used for medicinal purposes since at least medieval times. There is also some evidence to suggest that it was consumed for religious purposes. Some historians think that in France a poor harvest forced the masses to eat ergot infected food which along with other pressures caused one of the greatest tantrum spirals of all time otherwise known as the French Revolution. They even killed all the nobles! Still though they seem to have survived so I don't know if always having such a think wipe the fort out is a good idea.

"Urist McDwarf thinks he is a banana." (bonus points for whoever gets the reference)

[SirHoneyBadger]

Most of the drugs available in the 14th century and before will be of the entirely natural, unprocessed variety.

The only ones that really seems like a danger, as far as mass abuse is concerned, are opium, and possibly hashish, both of which would require processing, which would atleast limit their availability.

In general, the more severe and/or toxic, like ergot, toadstools, toads, etc. don't seem to historically have been abused, on anywhere near the same levels as more modern drugs.

Not like crack, heroin, meth, etc.

Ergot pollution for instance might cause you occasional problems as a player, but it's not something you'd be actively able to inflict on your neighbors, or really want to, for that matter. 

You might feed some to your goblin prisoners, or whatever, but there's really no guarantee that it's going to drive them insane, in any entertaining fashion, anyway. And certainly not on a permanent basis.

Drugs back then were mostly used-when they were used at all-either medicinally, or ritually. Possibly sometimes to strengthen your own soldiers (Norse berserkers, Zulu warriors, etc), but not really in a pharmaceutical or mercantile fashion.

Even opium and hashish, the worst of the lot, had beneficial side-effects.

Ergot, magic mushrooms, and the like, might be used perhaps to poison an invading army, but there again, it's probably something you want to keep the secret of to yourself, rather than giving or selling it to your enemies.

[Morrigi]

Hashish and cannabis won't really do too much to you in the long term as long as you don't smoke it, besides possibly some memory problems. It's less addictive than alcohol, tobacco, etc. too. Apparently it also has the effect of making you fall asleep if you try to OD on it, so it's not exactly easy to do that either. Anyway, it really wouldn't do much to one's dwarves besides making them all happy/paranoid/lolololol/angst/lololololhappywhydoesthecatsoundlikeatentacledemon/oshit/MUNCHIES/ok, i'm done. I'm in support of at least being able to grow it and make happy dwarf biscuits.

[Detoxicated]

Hashish has been around for ages... but personally i would like to have substances not derived from earth, as all the plants are their own creations...

Powdered Unicorn Horn makes you spray happiness.

[Nikov]

Be it known I would ordinarily knee-jerk 'no' to this.

I am totally for an enhanced alchemical arc including poisons, dyes, medicines and even drugs as well as pipes and smoking.

I personally find drug abuse in games distasteful and would not care to expand it past jolly ale-swigging, pipe-smoking fat bearded men dancing on tables. I do not want to see all my dwarves walking around chewing their beard rambling about how AMAZING IT TASTES CHECK IT OUT GUYS (don't call that a stereotype, it is a quote). However, I also find executing my own nobles distasteful and you probably find my fascination in dwarven sewer simulation and design distasteful. So here's a thought. Init file token [REC_DRUGS:1] lets you go take your fellow bearded midgets and go get lit, while my [liBERALISM:0:10:20] dwarves build a wall around my fort, thus ensuring you won't show up come winter as a bunch of threadbare, strung-out beggars clamoring for copper coins and hauling jobs while bashing Ayn Rand over five dollar imported coffee milkshakes. If anything calls for an on-off switch its this.

So yeah. I think extended alchemical products including those with effects we might call 'recreational' would be a fine addition, so long as they are not without side effects on both an individual and societal standpoint.

[SethCreiyd]

Drugs are not good or bad anymore than a hammer and nails are good or bad.  What matters is how they are used.

I don't think the dwarves would be worried about Ayn Rand, but they'd certainly murmur about the snarky new philosopher who's been telling them all to give up the booze and use water to get through the working day.

[zwei]

I'd definitelly be in for "poppy" plant and "milk of the poppy" extract that could be used to dope injured dwarves so that they more easily resist pain effects and thus would prevent unconsciousness.

[Dvergar]

Why do we want to bring new real life plants and their derivitives into the game?  Why not something already in the game, such as meal made from plump helmet spores?  Or fish extracts, or gnomeblight?

I am sure people of the pre-columbian world were not much more resistant to drug abuse.  First of all, alcohol is a drug and drunkeness crippled many European cities.  Second, the problem was more likely supply, pre-15th century European individuals would be hard-pressed to get their hands on Opium or Hashish or Cannabis, or some other Middle Eastern drug.  Once things were readily available to a population, they were open to abuse.  Examples include refined sugar (Europe), tobacco(Europe), opium(China/?Japan?), and hard liquor(Africa/Americas/Europe)

Marginally on-topic, I am currently plastered on mead.

Ugh, that sounds awful, true mead is pure fermented honey, right?  Anything else is melomel, which isn't so bad.

[SethCreiyd]

Ugh, that sounds awful, true mead is pure fermented honey, right?  Anything else is melomel, which isn't so bad.

This stuff:  http://www.bunrattymead.net/

I got some for Christmas and it was quite nice.

[Dvergar]

Maybe I will have to try some mead then, its just that the recipies for making it yourself seem disgusting.

In any case, I think recreational drugs should be connected premeditated/focused criminal activity.  It is by no means game breaking, for example look at the appearance of drugs in other fantasy media, The Elder Scrolls has "schooma" and "moondust", Fallout has some kind of injected drug that is called something generic, Star Wars has spice, the Greek epics have the Oracle at Delphi, other series I have read such as The Wheel of Time have "tabac" (I don't recommend the series btw), and even the Lord of the Rings have the hobbits growing tobbaco and Gandalf passes around some magical powder while climbing over the Mountains of Moria.