Category:Drug

Drugs are substances that modify, temporarily or permanently, the physical and mental processes of living creatures, whereas nutriments are necessary, in the first place, to sustain these processes.

Drugs may be used medicinally, ritually, and recreationally. Drugs prescribed to cure or treat disease are medications. An overdose of a medication or, more generally, of a drug is poisonous. The prescription, in the case of medication, and the consumption, in the case of drugs generally, of the correct dose is essential. Any drug and indeed any substance, in sufficient quantity, can function as a poison. Foxglove, for example, can easily kill. Many drugs include undesirable side effects which make them at the same time poisonous substances. This in fact true, at least at some level, of all drugs and further distinguishes them from nutriments. Drugs may be and, at least at some low level, are usually addictive.

Drugs may be plants (foxglove) or fungi (bocan eye), may be fungal parasites on plants (ergot), may be extracted from plants or fungi (opium from the poppy plant or staggersap from staggersap toadstool), may be readily prepared from plants or fungi (tea with addition of water to tea leaves), may be prepared with some effort from plants, fungi or venom (alcohol by fermenting fruits or vegetables or carrion crawler venom from the venom of carrion crawlers), may extracted with a great deal of difficulty from plants, fungi or venom (sleepglass), may be alchemical extracts (arsenic) or admixtures of inorganic substances (silver-mercurium), or may be chemically synthesized.

There are five means of making drugs:

• Craft (poisonmaking) - any poison (Gazetteer IV, 132)
• Profession (pharmacologist) - any poison
• Profession (herbalist) - flora-based (fungi & plants) poison (Gazetteer IV, 132)
• Craft (alchemy) - fauna-based poison, mineral-based poison, and other more esoterically based poison (Gazetteer IV, 132)
• Craft (chemistry) - chemically synthesised poison