Razelle Breuner
Rogue Element
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Raz has a smoking habit. Let's talk side effects.
- Image Source: Google image search, specifically here.
- Restricted Missions: N/A
- Primary Source: Has literally nothing to do with Kubaz stimsticks.
- Name: Antisombulants, stimulants, stimsticks, sticks, sunshine, morning stimcaf, smellingsalt, etc.
- Manufacturer: Various. Legion, even. That's like asking who makes table salt.
- Homeworld: N/A
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Affiliation: Open-Market
- Modularity: Flavor
- Legal Status: Legal in most systems, unfortunately
- Ingredients: Naturally-occurring stimulants, paper, tinder
- Classification: Drug (technically Stimulant)
- Method of Consumption: Inhalation
- Average Life: Hours. Exact time varies depending on an individual's constitution, with healthier users experiencing effects - both primary and side - much lighter than unhealthy users.
- Nutritional Value/Allergies/Side Effects/Purpose: Delays the effects of fatigue and improves focus, at the cost of addiction and a much harder crash after the effects wear off. Allergies are rare, but exist, and as an inhaled drug, can be fatal.
- Improves energy and concentration in most humanoid species
- Mild, manageable side-effects. Initially.
Strengths:
- Upper: Stimsticks target fatigue poison generators in the humanoid body, temporarily blocking them with a relatively benevolent combination of natural and synthetic chemicals. This provides humanoids with a boost in energy that can allow them to stay active for hours after their normally tired bodies would give out. It also improves the ability to focus on a single task (at the cost of lateral thinking), allowing stimstick companies to make the claim that it "improves concentration."
- The Crash: The inevitable side-effect of stim smoking is that no matter how many sticks you daisy-chain together, the crash is inevitable. The moment the effects wear off, smokers find themselves sluggish, unmotivated, and fatigued...often far worse than when they started.
- Addictive: Insidiously addictive, actually. Stimsticks are easy to pick up, cheap, and don't have any of the harsh side-effects of rougher drugs. As a result, there seems to be no downside to chronic use. Unfortunately, chronic use is the downside, as long-term smokers tend to develop a powerful addiction that can be almost impossible to kick. And while one pack is cheap, four packs a week for your entire life can get pretty pricey.
- Health Complications: As with any inhaled drug, long-term use of stimsticks can lead to some very unhappy respiratory damage. This can be mitigated with modern medical treatments, but those aren't cheap.
Favored by overworked desk jockies, stencil-pushers, and sararimen, stimsticks are a devil's bargain. By inhaling a decent amount of stimulants over several minutes, stimsticks provide both an immediate burst of stamina and a long-lasting reserve of energy to help stay focused and awake during long, tedious work. In return, the inevitable crash hits like a train.
Favored by the lowest rungs of society, stimsticks are a devil's bargain. By picking up a pack or six, you can work harder, faster, and longer than almost any other baseline humanoid. Your productivity will skyrocket due to improved stamina and focus, which has been noted - and even "proven" by some surveys funded by stimstick manufacturers - to increase professional opportunities. In return, you're saddled with a deceptively expensive addiction that takes concentrated and often professional effort to cure.
Favored by billions of humanoids across the galaxy, stimsticks are a devil's bargain. They allow you to live more, right now. To live faster and experience more than your feeble constitution would normally allow. In return, they take that life. The numerous health complications - from respiratory damage to cardiovascular stress to cancer - shorten the average life expectancy of a stim smoker by anywhere from ten to thirty years.
But hey, you saw someone smoking in a holo back in high school, right? They were so cool. You should be cool like that.
A word on chain-smoking. Don't, or at least do so very responsibly. Your body is not receiving an energy boost, and stimsticks do not replace the need for sleep. The positive effects other than simple fatigue relief are incidental, so they don't "stack," meaning chain-smoking stim sticks will normally just make you crash like someone shot down a TIE. And get you hooked faster. And burn through your supply. True burnouts are rare, no matter how many sticks one swallows in a fanatical blaze, but they do happen, and death via coma is a horrible way to go.
