Drugs
Drugs can be useful to gain temporary benefits of various sorts, but can lead to harmful addictions, negative side effects, and even overdose resulting in permanent ailments or death. Most drugs are crafted at the drug lab using either psychoid leaves or neutroamine. Beer, however requires hops and has an intermediate stage before fermenting called wort.
If you want to avoid drugs in your colony, you have the option of burning them at a campfire or crematorium, or forbidding them and selling them to a trader which is lucrative on the market. Binging pawns will take drugs even if they're forbidden though. The effects of drugs are modulated by body size, so smaller creatures need less beer to be drunk than bigger animals such as the Thrumbo.
Drugs can be assigned for regular taking through the drug policy system. Similar to Outfits, drug policies are an assigned schedule for taking drugs. You can set any number of drugs, each with a frequency. For example, you can assign a colonist to drink 2 beers every day, and take one Penoxycyline every 5 days. You can also toggle to use the drug to feed an addiction, separately from joy usage.
Drugs can also be administered through a medical operation. Animals may take drugs on their own if they are within their allowed areas.
Addiction and Tolerance
Addictions are a sad reality that most drug-using colonies must face. Without a continuous supply of drugs, withdrawal symptoms will kick in and your poor colonist will suffer. Luciferium has an instant addiction. Once taken, it will need to be taken regularly. Otherwise, the withdrawal from it will cause all sorts of mental breaks, eventually resulting in death.
Tolerance is the value related to addiction upon consumption of any drugs. It has a fixed buildup amount for each drug, and decreases each day afterwards. Tolerance gain is inversely proportional to body size, so smaller colonists (teenagers) gain more tolerance per drug use. Colonists will have a chance of getting addicted once they cross a certain tolerance threshold. Safe consumption of drugs can be set in the restriction tab for drug usage.
When tolerant, the severity given per dose of the drug will decrease by a fixed amount, meaning that they will last shorter, and colonists will need to consume more of them.
Addiction also has the same effect, in addition to requiring the pawn get a regular dose of the drug to prevent withdrawal.
| Drug | Mood | Recreation | High duration per dose | Tolerance gain per dose | Tolerance fall rate | New addiction min tolerance | New addiction chance | Safe dose interval | Safe doses at 0 tolerance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ambrosia | 5 | 50% | 0.7 Days | 3.2% | 2% / Day | 15% | 1% | 1.6 Days | 4 |
| Psychite tea | 12 | 40% | 0.3 days | 3% | 1.5% / Day | 10% | 2% | 2 Days | 3 |
| Beer | 10-25 | 17% | 0.2 Days | 1.6% | 1.6% / Day | 25% | 1% | 1 Day | 15 |
| Smokeleaf | 13 | 80% | 0.5 Days | 3% | 1.5% /Day | 15% | 2% | 2 Days | 5 |
| Flake | 35 | 70% | 0.3 Days | 4% | 1.5% / Day | 0% | 5% | Never | 0 |
| Yayo | 35 | 80% | 0.5 days | 4% | 1.5% / Day | 0% | 1% | Never | 0 |
| Wake-up | ; 0 | 40% | 0.5 days | N/A | N/A | 0% | 2% | Never | 0 |
| Go-juice | 5 | 40% | 0.7 Days | N/A | N/A | 0% | 2.6% | Never | 0 |
- Tolerance gain values are for size 1.00 colonists (normal).
Fighting Addictions
Addiction Severity
Time spent in withdrawal is calculated by multiplying addiction severity by recovery time. This means that the addiction takes longer to cure for each dose the addict takes to a maximum of 100%.
Drug binges
Colonists with either the Chemical Interest or Fascination traits as well as addicts may randomly have drug binges. Such colonists will ignore drug policies. This can cause a relapse from getting those colonists clean.
Remove access to drugs
Colonists can't take drugs that they can't reach. A drug binging colonist without access to that drug will only wander around until their senses are restored. Other withdrawal-based mental breaks are another story.
To destroy drugs, you can burn them at a campfire. You can also sell them to passing traders that are interested in buying, or have a non-binging colonist take them away on a caravan.
One alternative to keeping drugs out of the hands of binging addicts is to place the drugs in a room and board up the entrance. This could also be done to the addict by trapping them but will become counterproductive once they become hungry. Another alternative, which may be quicker depending on the case, is to load the drugs in a transport pod and keep them there until the binge is over.
'Rehab center'
Instead of keeping the drugs from the addict, you can keep the addict from the drugs by imprisoning them and keeping them there until they're clean. Imprisoning them also contains the impacts of their mental breaks. You can arrest an addicted colonist by drafting another colonist and right clicking on the addict. Using force can have a negative social influence on the patient and increased mood debuffs that will make recovery even harder, especially if such measure was performed with weapons (healing will take longer and could injure the body badly). As with any combat, the addicted or the arresting colonist have the chance of dying. It may be best to wait until the pawn collapses due to exhaustion or starvation, then arrest them without the possibility of a physical intervention. If it must be done while they can stand, then it's wise to disarm this colonist before attempting to arrest them as they may resist and go berserk. Still, addicted colonists will usually go down quickly due to the consciousness penalty from withdrawal.
Chatting with the imprisoned while they're getting clean will help train your warden's Social skill. Still, arresting any colonist will give them the accompanying thoughts of being imprisoned both during and afterward.
This also works great for addicted prisoners as they're already imprisoned. It is recommended to keep them in their own cell though. Otherwise, they can go berserk and attack other prisoners. If you want to recruit such an addict, it's recommended to get them clean before recruiting. There's no use in releasing an addicted new recruit, only to throw them right back in their cell very soon.
You can avoid the berserk state of a "drug rehab inmate" by installing and then removing peg legs to keep them incapacitated until new (and possibly better depending on technological level) replacement legs get reinstalled after the addiction ends. This trick can also be done by installing and removing a bionic spine which is half as costly as double bionic legs but does not make the pawn faster. Make sure you have prosthetics or bionics researched if you want to do this method of rehabilitation.
Recovery
Withdrawal will make the person feel a great mood drop and impair their stats, depending on the addicted drug. Once the withdrawal passes away, the colonist will feel good as new.
During this time, you may want to give your colonist more time to enjoy himself. Giving him social drugs may help depending on the situation, but remember never to feed his addiction as this resets the withdrawal countdown, unless he's addicted to multiple drugs at the same time, in which it may be easier to deal with 1 drug addiction at a time.
On the other hand, if they become incapacitated when the withdrawal symptoms hit all at once, it may be better to leave them like that, as they are unable to have mental breaks or such during the withdrawal period.
The health overview tab which will display a counter with withdrawal percentage. The higher it gets, the closer to complete recovery (100%, though 99.5% is rounded to 100% in display).
Healer mech serum
Using the healer mech serum instantly treats non-luciferium drug addictions if there are no other serious health problems affecting the addict. This gives a convenient but somewhat costly way to bypass the lengthy withdrawal period. Note however healer mech serum cannot remove the luciferium need. There is no cure for luciferium addiction.
When and What to Use
To avoid the downsides of drugs, the following is advised:
- Penoxycyline should be taken every 6 days to mitigate 3 dangerous diseases, however this might not be worth it the current biome has a disease frequency less than 0.5.
- Beer can be safely drunk every day, providing a decent +10 mood.
- Psychite tea can be consumed every two days, providing an additional +12 mood.
- If an ambrosia sprout happens, 200 or so ambrosia can be harvested and one consumed every 2 days (actually 1.6) for +5 mood.
- Smokeleaf joints can also be smoked every 2 days, providing a +12 boost, but also massively reduces consciousness, and should thus be used sparingly.
Hard drugs should only be consumed in an emergency.
- Yayo is useful for periods of heavy mood penalties such as family deaths and for difficult or lengthy combats. Providing a massive +35 mood, +10% Moving, halving pain, providing 80% recreation and both refilling the Rest need by 40% and reducing further Rest loss. It is a strong mood controller and a fairly potent combat drug, making pawns better fighters and preventing them from breaking, but with a 1 percent addiction chance each time, regardless of tolerance, it is not without risk. It also pales in comparison to go-juice in combat potential.
- Flake should almost never be smoked although it is cheaper and provides the same mood buffs, it has a gigantic 5% addiction chance each. A key exception are perhaps Guests, as they will leave shortly and there is little practical downside to their their addiction.
- Go-juice is an exceptionally potent combat drug, significantly reducing pain and buffing several key capacities and almost every stat. it also restores a modest amount of psyfocus
. This is especially useful used when utilizing kiting combat tactics, as it increases the speed of a pawn by 50 percent. - Wake-up is very useful in situations where something needs to be finished as soon as possible or when a pawn cannot stop working, such as constructing solar panels during a toxic fallout power shortage, or letting your doctor keep saving lives after a devastating raid. It not only makes pawns work faster and better, it provides a full nights rest and significantly reducing rest fall rate, allowing pawns to work for almost three days straight.
During the late game, when silver is plentiful, you can have two or three luciferium addicted colonists. Alternatively, you can go wild and just get everybody addicted to every drug in-game.
Trade
Drugs, especially hard drugs, can be manufactured and sold for a large profit. Below are the optimal types of drugs for sale.
Psychoid-Type
Yayo costs 8 Psychoid leaves and is valued at 21 silver each. It weighs 50 grams and takes 6 work to make. On the other hand, flake takes 4 psychoid leaves and is valued at 14 silver each. It also weighs 50 grams and takes 5 work to make. Psychite tea, however, is the most inefficient. It takes the same amount of leaves as flake, but is 4 silver less valuable than it. On the market, flake is worth 2/3rds the silver of yayo, requires 80% of the Work To Make, and 50% of the ingredient costs. The most economical option depends on which is the greater bottleneck: converting the leaves to the drug, or producing the leaves in the first place.
If converting the leaves into drugs is the bottleneck then there are two options. The psychoid leaves could be turned into yayo, however converting as much as possible to flake and then selling the remaining psychoid leaves themselves is even more efficient. For example, a pawn requires 35,000 ticks (9.72 mins) of work and 800 psychoid leaves to synthesize 100 yayo worth 
2100. With the same amount of work, a pawn could craft 140 flake worth 1960 and consume 560 of the 800 psychoid leaves. The remaining 240 psychoid leaves are worth 456 for a total of 2416. This is not without its downsides however - fewer traders accept psychoid leaves than accept drugs and without refrigeration, the leaves will eventually rot away. Thus, if the player is likely to caravan to a settlement or receive a relevant trader before they rot entirely away, or can accommodate the refrigeration of leaves long term, converting to flake and selling the remainder of leaves is ideal. If they cannot, converting to yayo for storage may be necessary.
If psychoid leaf production is the bottleneck and there is insufficient leaf supply to fully occupy your drug synthesizers' time, producing flake is the optimum as it produces more value per leaf at the cost of more work.
If caravan weight is a limiting factor, yayo is worth more proportional to mass, however the low weight of all the options mean this is unlikely to be relevant as a single muffalo can carry almost 20 stacks of flake worth over 20,000 silver.
Other Hard Drugs
Wake-up and Go-juice are both made from 2 neutroamine, with go-juice costing an additional unit of yayo. Wake-up is valued at 28 silver and takes 14 units of work to make. Go-juice is valued at 53 silver and takes 50 units of work to make. Because these hard drugs use neutroamine for production, it is generally unadvised to use these as profit drugs because neutroamine is both expensive and can not be made. It is better used for high-quality medicine.
Recipes
| Drug | Market Value | Ingredients | Work Amount | Minimum Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wake-up | 35 |  2 Neutroamine |
900 | - |
| Penoxycyline | 18 | 2 Neutroamine |
600 | - |
| Flake | 14 |  4 Psychoid leaves |
250 | - |
| Yayo | 21 | 8 Psychoid leaves |
350 | - |
| Psychite tea | 10 | 4 Psychoid leaves |
400 | - |
| Smokeleaf joint | 11 |  4 Smokeleaf leaves |
450 | Cooking |
| Go-juice | 53 |  1 Yayo, 2 Neutroamine |
600 | - |
| Beer | 12 |  1 Wort |
- | - |
Social Drugs
Ambrosia
A soft, rare fruit. Ambrosia tastes wonderful and produces a subtle mood-increasing chemical high. However, if eaten too often, it can generate a mild addiction.
Beer
The first beverage besides water ever consumed by mankind. Beer can taste good, but its main effect is intoxication. Excessive consumption can lead to alcohol blackouts and, over time, addiction.
Psychite tea
A fragrant tea infused with leaves of the psychoid plant. Drinking it induces a subtle psychite euphoria. this tea is easy to produce at cooking facilities, but can produce psychite addiction if consumed too often. Many tribes use psychite tea, both as a daily energizer and part of social and religious rituals
Smokeleaf joint
Smokeleaf leaves prepared in small rolls for smoking. The drug improves mood, but also increases appetite, reduces focus and slows movement. Smokeleaf use can produce a dependency. Joints can be produced at a crafting spot without equipment, and are a fixture in many traditional low-industriousness cultures.
Hard Drugs
Flake
A flaky substance that can be smoked to induce a short but powerful euphoric state. While it is cheap to produce, it is exceptionally addictive.
Go-juice
A synthetic combat drug developed for space marines during the early days of interplanetary warfare. Go-juice blocks pain and increases the user's melee and shooting abilities. It also enhances movement speed.
Wake-up
An addictive stimulant. Fills the need for rest, and allows users to work for extended periods without getting tired. Addiction causes reduced mental performance and, sometimes, psychotic breaks with reality.
Wake-up is an addictive stimulant. Fills the need for rest, and allows users to work for extended periods without getting tired. Addiction causes reduced mental performance and, sometimes, psychotic breaks with reality. Can cause heart attacks rarely.
Yayo
A fine white powder snorted to produce a euphoric high. Yayo reduces the user's need for rest, and suppresses pain. It is, however, addictive.
Medical Drugs
Luciferium
A concoction of mechanites that dramatically improve the body's functioning in all respects. Over time, it can even heal old scarred-over wounds or brain damage, though it cannot regenerate lost limbs. Unfortunately, without the moderating effects of regular doses every five or six days, the mechanites lose cohesion, causing continuous berserk rages and, eventually, death. After the first dose, there is no way to get the mechanites out, ever. On the urbworlds, they call Luciferium the 'Devil's Bargain'. Many have been forced to kill friends when no more of the seductive red pills could be found.
Penoxycyline
A drug for preventing diseases from starting. Blocks malaria, sleeping sickness, and plague. Take every five days. Note: This drug does nothing to cure existing infections - it only prevents new ones.
