[member="Geneviève Lasedri"]
Alright, so, between migraines and prepping for Father's Day, yesterday was kind of a blur. Now that things are settled, let's get started.
Now, before I jump into this, just want to make sure you understand how I judge things like pharmaceuticals and drugs and such. This is a fantasy/sci fi setting with technology and materials that we often times cannot quantify. Therefore, most drugs and such are taken with that in mind. My only concern with the things is that they should be more or less believable and won't kill the person taking them outright. So long as those are covered, I'm only concerned with production and nonessential stuff.
With that out of the way, let's move on to your submission.
Put simply and bluntly, this drug will kill whoever takes it in the most painful way possible. Let me explain a bit.
Pharma - A type of analgesic used for managing pain in the star wars universe.
- Now, an analgesic doesn't actually affect the nerve endings like an anesthetic (think barbiturates). Mild analgesics are things like ibuprofen and are often available over the counter. You go towards the stronger stuff and get morphine or oxycodone. Easy way to determine between the two are Analgesics eliminate pain without loss of sensation while anesthetics eliminate pain and sensation. Analgesics do have side effects as well and can be dangerous in the wrong dosage or if mixed with the wrong chemicals. The more powerful ones are even addictive. We have no way to determine how powerful Pharma is, so that makes it hard to determine the level of reaction. Either way, you're only killing pain and inflammation in the body.
Telezan - according to Wookiee this is a mild antidepressant.
- Antidepressants do affect the brain and brain chemistry and produce chemicals like serotonin that cause mild euphoria and other similar effects on the user. They do, however, have some side effects that vary from serotonin toxicity (rarely fatal if treated properly), pregnancy complications, and even suicidal behavior. They are only issued to patients with anxiety or depression disorders and only when the patient is above a certain level on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression.
Gylocal - This is a 'powerful stimulant and pain-suppressor' that is made of very toxic ingredients.
- Alright. First off, stimulants work by affecting the central and peripheral nervous system and can produce a range of effects from alertness to heightened pulse rates to increased blood pressure. Most do a wide combination of symptoms and most of the world is very familiar with at least one of these: Caffeine. Caffeine is a stimulant that is not only available over the counter, but pretty much over any counter. I had some this morning with breakfast when I had my coffee. Other types of stimulants include amphetamine, methamphetamine, nicotine, and cocaine. Now, from personal experience as a former smoker, I know that just the basic ones that we can buy over the counter increase heart rate and cause heightened blood pressure. This applies even more so to the stronger kinds. The main thing here is that it affects the nervous system directly, but at the cost of directly affecting the vascular system (your heart) as well. As for the pain-suppressor part, enough stimulants will prevent the feeling of pain as your brain pretty much starts to not pay attention to the rest of your body, at least with the stronger stimulants.
Dead Eye Prototype - This is an experimental drug designed to increase the user's accuracy for a short time.
- This page has very, very little to go on, but we can assume that by increasing accuracy, it does so by increasing alertness and reflexes. These are characteristic of stimulants, meaning we can easily imply this is a form of stimulant and probably carries the general ups and downs of real world stimulants, within reason.
Dipill - This is a stress-reliever that can act as a sedative in large doses.
- Stress relievers are in almost every case a form of anti-depressant or mild analgesic. In high enough doses, both can be used as a sedative. In either case, both come with their pluses and minuses as stated earlier.
Glitteryll - This is a synthetic drug made of two star wars substances called Glitterstim and Ryll that reduces memories.
- Alright, yet another substance we just can't fully quantify with a real world substance. We'll have to infer with this one by looking at the component substances. Glitterstim gives the user a brief but pleasurable telepathic boost and heightened the user's mental state, but was highly addictive and caused side effects like "loss of sight, twitching, nervousness, and paranoia." Ryll, like Glitterstim, is a type of Spice, but was primarily used for pharmaceutical purposes, though it was still addictive when used directly. So, right off the bat we have a drug that reduces the user's memories and, if the base chemicals' traits stay with the new drug, it also kills their eyesight, causes twitching, makes the user nervous, and makes the user paranoid all while being highly addictive. Also, generally speaking, most drugs are a form of stimulant in one form or another, so we have to keep in mind how Stimulants function as well.
Now, we've gone over the base ingredients for the base drug, so let's go over the three others in the gel drum variant.
Portaak Amber - A type of anti-fungal resin
- Nothing hugely concerning here, though it never mentions an actual use outside of keeping metals and electronics safe. I'm assuming this is used more as a type of preservative for the gel drum itself.
Phosovane Salts - This was used as a base ingredient for pain-killers according to Wookieepedia.
- This is either an analgesic or anesthetic, or the base of one. Since the majority of the painkillers used in this submission are analgesic, we're going to assume this one is the basis of an analgesic painkiller as well.
Rethen - This is pretty much just a type of gas found in gas giants with no listen purpose.
- According to Wookieepedia, this gas is just a present gas in gas giants. There's no medical purpose or even useful purpose it serves.
Alright, now the summary of all these things. In the basic drug, you've got 3 stimulants (two powerful ones even), 1 painkillers, and 1 antidepressant along with a drug that can be either a pain killer or an antidepressant. That's 3 stimulants and 3 depressants. Using a human as the basic biological template, the basic drug is going to both increase heart rate and decrease heart rate at the same time. That means the user's blood pressure is going to go up and down at the same time. The human body will literally not know what to do and start going into a form of shock. Toss in all the side effects of all the drugs and the user is going to be highly euphoric from the side effects and possibly in excruciating pain from the shock as organs begin to go haywire and possibly fail. With the potency of the drugs in the user's body, their nerve endings could entirely shut off, go off constantly and endlessly, or both at the same time.
Toss in the other three drugs, two of which won't do anything and one of which is a painkiller, and you're just adding fuel to the fire. This isn't even considering what the chemicals will do
to each other. The drugs could react with other drugs in the body. If they do, they could possibly produce chemicals harmful to the user's body or even break each other down into base components, which for the Gylocal would be Very Bad and Very Lethal to the user as the base components are highly toxic.
There's a chance that all of these drugs could just entirely cancel each other out entirely and the drug simply has zero effect on the user, but from a medical standpoint... I doubt it. Even mixing enough alcoholic beverages with enough energy drinks can seriously effect the cardiovascular system and potentially hospitalize someone.
At best, anyone taking this is going to be hospitalized long term. At worst, they'll die in a matter of minutes to hours.
