# Fictional Drug or Disease Names **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 28, 2008, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057 "2008-03-28T16:06:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/41 "2008-03-29T03:30:59Z")
Drug: William Shatner et. al. using **Tek** as an addictive drug in the Tekwar novels. (Not a very good name) **Vraxoin** , a horribly addictive drug in the Doctor Who Episode “Nightmare of Eden.” Disease: **Wandering Sickness** from the movie **Things to Come** **The Blue Death** , from Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore’s “Vintage Season.” ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/42 "2008-03-29T04:20:23Z")
There are plenty that aren’t listed in Wikipedia. Of course, that’s because they’re often one-shots in a TV series (thus the Wiki disclaimer that it may never fit certain completeness criteria). For example, Law and Order does the fake drug thing all the time when they want to Rip a drug or health related Headline. The only one I remember off the top of my head is Aptril, a fictional SSRI for an SVU episode about the effects of SSRIs on juveniles and drug company sales tactics. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/43 "2008-03-29T04:28:56Z")
The [Solanum Virus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zombie_Survival_Guide#Solanum) is the culprit that destroys most of humanity in Max Brooks’s \*[World War Z](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Z) \* (one of the best thrillers written in many years for those who haven’t read it). ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/44 "2008-03-29T04:35:34Z")
From Bradbury’s _Martian Chronicles:_ “Your lungs were full of the ‘blood rust.’ You coughed all the time.” ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/45 "2008-03-29T06:44:45Z")
Hyper from the scifi novel _Mind Blast_. A drug that causes a temporary increase in intelligence, typically to superhuman levels in many ways. In the process it wears the brain out, inevitably leading to death if used too long - but it’s hard to make yourself stop using when doing so makes you feel like a moron. A feeling that never goes away, since in comparison, you **are**. Dreamy White from _Path of the Fury_; a narcotic with a 100% addiction rate, generally extracted from human brains. Which tends to leave the “donors” with massive mental retardation or death. Algotoxin from _Brightness Falls from the Air_ as I recall. A torture drug, it permanently stimulates pain nerves. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/46 "2008-03-29T07:04:59Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] Viagragay, an impotence drug for bald men. [/QUOTE] Viagrogaine, actually. It gives you hair and what you need down there. [sub]May cause loss of scalp and penis[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![TheLoadedDog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/35a633/32.png) [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/47 "2008-03-29T07:11:30Z")
An antibiotic (with unfortunate side effects for men): Coxaphloppin ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/48 "2008-03-29T08:09:00Z")
From Timothy Zahn’s Blackcollar books, the anti-aging drug Idunine. Which always gave me a smile, since I’m something of a fan of Norse mythology. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/49 "2008-03-29T08:28:56Z")
The two that spring to my mind are Chew-z and Can-d from Philip K Dick’s _The Three Stimata of Palmer Eldritch_ ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/50 "2008-03-29T09:16:24Z")
Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Blue Mars had “the quick decline,” a sudden, unexplained system failure and death occurring in people over 200 years old. Jack L. Chalker’s many “Well World” novels included an addictive drug called “sponge.” And no one’s yet mentioned Frank Herbert’s “spice” from his Dune novels, but surely it counts as a drug. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/51 "2008-03-29T11:47:18Z")
Explosive Diarrhea, from South Park, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Ichbin\_Dubist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/51bf81/32.png) [@Ichbin\_Dubist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ichbin_Dubist)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/52 "2008-03-29T13:21:28Z")
[QUOTE=Kythereia] The “white blindness” (myxomatosis) in Watership Down always sounded incredibly creepy. [/QUOTE] Ditto in Saramaga’s _Blindness,_ which I haven’t finished so no spoilers. In Don DeLillo’s _White Noise,_ there’s Dylar, an experimental drug to combat the fear of death. In his _Great Jones Street,_ there’s a street drug (unnamed, I think) that temporarily renders the user insensible to language. There are some hilarious riffs on fake drugs in Mark Leyner’s books. I don’t have my copies handy, but I’ll transcribe some when I do. In _The Tetherballs of Bougainville_, there’s a whole page on nicknames for some illegal recreational drug; anther long section talks about the marketing campaigns for the drugs used for exeucutions. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/53 "2008-03-29T14:21:16Z")
Of course there are the _Lensman_ drugs. IIRC, they were[ul][li] nitrolabe, which was injected[_] hadive, which was smoked and seemed to be similar to marijuana[_]thionite, a highly addictive purplish powder refined from the leaves of a plant. Kim Kinnison uses it to wipe out a space base - it causes fantasies of the instant realization of whatever you desire. I think the problem was that you were compelled to take more and more of it until you died of an overdose of sheer ecstasy. Not a bad way to go. Bentlam was the drug Kim Kinnison takes in his persona of Wild Bill the meteor miner. You first got real drunk and then chewed it. Even as a child mixing drugs like that didn’t sound like a good idea. It sent you into a coma for twenty four hours, where you had happy dreams. [/ul]The other drug was one I encountered in a series of martial arts pulp novels about Jason Stryker. It was called Kill-13. Sort of a mix between a super stimulant and steroids - it made you into a super martial artist and then killed you after a couple of years. Those who used it called themselves “demons”, and had orange eyes.[/li] Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/54 "2008-03-29T14:35:29Z")
Saturday Night Live had [Puppy Uppers and Doggie Downers](http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76gpuppyuppers.phtml) ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/55 "2008-03-29T20:54:09Z")
The video game _Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney_ features a disease called Incuritis, which is, as the name suggests, incurable…unless you have a drug made from a special cocoon from an Eastern European country (which is illegal to import into the United States, since the cocoon can also create a deadly poison). In their campaign for drug companies to make safer drugs, _Consumer Reports_ gave us [Progenitorivox](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgoB2h_Wkco). ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/56 "2008-03-29T21:36:23Z")
[QUOTE=MacTech] From **Red Dwarf** **Better Than Life** a VR videogame that tapped directly into your brain (using cranial probes), accessed your subconscious mind to play out a “reality” scenario that was “better than life”, a great game as long as you’re not a complete screw-up with a subconsciousness that hates you and wishes you harm (like Rimmer) BTL was so addictive that the user never wanted to leave, and would slowly waste away and die in real life [/QUOTE] I seem to remember that this was incorporated into the futuristic Shadowrun RPG (I’m not familiar with Red Dwarf). How about some drugs from D&D? **Agony** (aka “Liquid Pain”) **Baccaran Devilweed Luhix Mordayn Vapor** (aka “Dreammist”) **Mushroom Powder Redflower Leaves Sannish Vodare** In the D&D Eberron Campaign Setting, a common hallucinogenic drug is called “dreamlily”. Back in 1995 Seattle Mariners outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr. broke his wrist and was out for quite a while. In his absence, utility man Rich Amaral filled in admirably in center field. During one three-game stretch, Rich made some amazing plays, both offensively and defensively, that directly resulted in Mariners wins. The next day, the TV guys threw up a mock commercial for a new wonder drug, with the tagline, “Amaral: It cures what ails ya!” And who else would like to forget “death sticks” from _Attack of the Clones_? ---
**Author:** ![Fiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e274bd/32.png) [@Fiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiver)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/57 "2008-03-29T21:59:55Z")
The life-extension drug “boosterspice” from Larry Niven’s “Known Space” stories. The life-extension drug “goloka root” from the Tom Strong comic books. The Amazonian “purple healing ray” from _Wonder Woman_ comic books. “Androcytes” keep Jaime Sommers’s bionic (and biological) systems running. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/58 "2008-03-29T22:09:50Z")
Also from _The Andromeda Strain_; experimental drug [**Kalocin**](http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1289540). A universal antibiotic, with rather…unfortunate side-effects preventing it’s production. ---
**Author:** ![3waygeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/e95f7d/32.png) [@3waygeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3waygeek)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/59 "2008-03-29T22:15:12Z")
I can’t believe no one has mentioned Star Trek yet – a treasure trove of fictional medicine. [Diseases & medical conditions](http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Category:Medical_conditions) [Drugs](http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Category:Drugs) ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057/60 "2008-03-29T22:29:03Z")
[QUOTE=Shodan] [li]thionite, a highly addictive purplish powder refined from the leaves of a plant. Kim Kinnison uses it to wipe out a space base - it causes fantasies of the instant realization of whatever you desire. I think the problem was that you were compelled to take more and more of it until you died of an overdose of sheer ecstasy. Not a bad way to go.[/li][/QUOTE] Kinda reminds me of one from the Parking Lot is Full comic…[Polytrioxolophene-12](http://plif.courageunfettered.com/archive/wc249.gif). Only less grimmly wistful. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fictional-drug-or-disease-names/443057.md?page=4)