Category:Drug

Drugs are substances other than nutriments. Nutriments are essential to sustaining the physical and mental processes of creatures, whereas drugs are introduced into the body for the purpose of modifying, temporarily or permanently, these processes. Drugs may be used medicinally, ritually, and recreationally. Drugs prescribed to cure or treat disease are medications. An overdose of drugs is poisonous. The prescription, in the case of medication, and the consumption, in the case of drugs generally, of the correct dose is essential. For any drug and indeed any substance, in sufficient quantity, can function as a poison. Foxglove, for example, can kill. Many drugs include undesirable side effects which make them at the same time poisons. This in fact true, at least at some level, of all drugs and distinguishes them from nutriments. Drugs may be and, at least at some low level, are usually addictive.

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) - chemical-based poison