halluzination poison

[theebie]

hi,

i thought some about the halluzination poison, and how it will effect people.

situation 1:
i m in my apartment, and take the poison, fully knowing that i will have halluzinations, my door is locked, and i told my three buff friends to guard
it and let noone in or out.

now i am fully aware that i will have halluzinations. my mind knows that the things it will see aint real, so i basically should be able to sit calmly on my chair and wait things up, like in cinema ?

situation 2:
i didnt see that arrow coming, and now am poisoned. but i had mastered
situation 1 already ... i might know that its not real and act like that ?

---theebie---

[Malifaxis]

Hallucinations.  No 'z'

I would say in the situation of an arrow, you could probably guess.  If someone slipped you something in a drink, however, maybe you wouldn't know.  There's no outright source that you could guess (unless you saw some residue in your cup or whatnot)

[Boggis]

It would all depend on the quantity of poison used. A small amount would probably let you see things a little differently but you'd fully understand that what you're seeing is not real. A fair amount would most likely be too much for your brain to handle no matter if you're in a controlled situation or not. It just rewires your brain beyond your control for a period.

Skellebain:
This poison comes primarily from fungus and mushrooms. It seems to have a negative effect upon the victim's mind, causing light-headedness and frightening, mind-numbing hallucinations, which may lead the victim to attack those around him or her, or even damage themself.

Words like "frightening" and "mind-numbing" and "attack" don't suggest effects that you can calmly sit through like a cinema and anybody using a poison on you is unlikely going to go to all that bother just to give you a little buzz. I'd say that if you're in that second situation you mentioned claiming that you know its not real because you've taken some of the drug before is a cheesy way of copping out the consequences and effects of the drug.

[Folker]

General rule for me atleast is that if you take poison yourself, you're able control it slightly. You will still be scared shitless and so on, but still in the back of your mind you'll know it isnt real. Provided that yeah, you took one a slight bit.

But if you are poison by any way, not of your own. Then in my opinion you must wig out. You wont realize you're hallucinating the moment you see something unlikely, you'll realize it only when that hallucination does something real nasty to you and yet you'll continue living, albeit rolling around trying to beat fire down or some other thing like that.

So in my opinion, it is possible to gain control of your hallucinations that are caused by poison somebody else gave you, but only after a considerable amount of wigging out under it.

I suppose you 'could' achieve 'some' immunity to it by continiously eating skellbain, and then regan self control after only 2-3 hallucination instances. But why? It screws up all the fun. I'd prefer attaining 'immunity' like that to be a side effect of something else. Like skellbane addiction or whatever. Though then it would've been really cool if your chara ends up meeting an instance that skellbane might've showed, and disbelieve it's reality.

[Rindan]

I personally think of it like powerful real world magic mushrooms.  If you take them knowing that you are taking them, you probably will be okay.  Hell, you might even 'enjoy the show' as you put it.  You could still wig out, but the chances are greatly reduced.

On the other hand, if you don't realize that you got poisoned, you are probably going to go nuts for a time.  A perfect example of this was a friend of mine's grand mother.  Her husband picked some wild mushrooms for her, and lo-and-behold, they were actually some hallucinogenic mushrooms.  Sufficient to say, grandma went absolutely nuts.  What might have been a good time for a couple of college students resulted in grandma going absolutely nuts, declaring that she was going to die, that god was speaking to her, and apparently she denounced one of her children as Satan spawn.

Now, the way the poison is describe in Armageddon, it sounds harsher then real world mushrooms.  So, if you are out in sands and get hit by this stuff and don't realize what happened, you are probably going to go nuts.  If you get hit by an arrow and the first thought was "shit, I bet that was poison", you might have the sanity to keep yourself alive but I doubt you would enjoy the experience.  You might have the sense of mind to curl up into a ball and try and ignore the stuff you are seeing, but you would still be disturbed and scared by it.  

It is one thing to take a drug at home with friends.  It is another to have it injected with an arrow out of the blue.  The later is probably going to be damn stressful and not help much in keeping control of it.  On the other hand, if you take it recreationally... well, lets say I have heard of crazier things in the real world, so I personally think it is okay.

[LauraMars]

Sufficient to say, grandma went absolutely nuts.

Rindan, that little story cracked me the fuck up.  I'm sitting in class and now I'm in big trouble for laughing in the middle of a grim Gothic architecture lesson.  

Requiem for a Dream, anyone?

My opinions on this thread are that you can take the mushrooms at home in safety.  Not enough drugs in this game, in my opinion.  Yes there's spice but...more drugs!!!  More, more!  Even if you do drop it at home, if you're poisoned without knowing it, you should most-likely flip unless you spend a good amount of time taking skellebain, which is kind of a cool concept actually.

[Desertman (not logged in)]

You have to remember that this poison, as stated in the documentation, does not just give you a little slide show to watch in your mind...it causes you to become scared....even if there were no hallucinations the actual poison fucks with your mind and causes you to become afraid. You could see it ten times, and the poison would still affect you the same way....It causes FRIGHTENING hallucinations...even if you have seen them before...the poison still causes you to see them as frightening.

[Marauder Moe]

Yeah, it's not JUST frightening images, it chemically injects FEAR into your brain.  Unless there's a coded immunity to the poison, I'm not sure you should be RPing any sort of immunity without staff permission.

[LauraMars]

Yeah, it's not JUST frightening images, it chemically injects FEAR into your brain.  Unless there's a coded immunity to the poison, I'm not sure you should be RPing any sort of immunity without staff permission.

This is true, but I'm sure you could play someone who got off somehow on being REALLY SCARED.

[jhunter]

Yeah, it's not JUST frightening images, it chemically injects FEAR into your brain.  Unless there's a coded immunity to the poison, I'm not sure you should be RPing any sort of immunity without staff permission.

This is true, but I'm sure you could play someone who got off somehow on being REALLY SCARED.

That's not at all far fetched. I've always considered skellebain to be similar to taking some strong LSD or mushrooms. I don't personally have a problem with some people taking it for recreational purposes. The main deciding factor is if you -know- it is in your system and are expecting it and you know what it will do to you.

[Marauder Moe]

I don't think that it would leave you lucid, though.  It's not like you're watching a scary movie.  It's like someone snuck into your room while you were sleeping, hooked up a giant flatscreen TV over your bed, then started playing the most terrifying horror movie you've ever seen to wake you up.  You're going to be scared shitless, even if your friend told you what he was going to do beforehand.  You probably won't have the right state of mind to rationally realize what's going on.  In this example case, sure, in 10-15 seconds or so you'll fully wake up, but in the case of these poisons you'll stay in that state of mind until it ends.

That's my take on this thing.

[Boggis]

Removed

[Morrolan]

Two words:

Bad trip.


I tried the legal, but quite powerful, hallucinogen salvia divinorum a few years ago.  The trip only lasts a few minutes, objectively.

I tried it in a controlled setting, with three spotters (we were all casually spotting each other, because of the relatively short duration of the primary effects).  Now, I knew, going in, that I was taking a drug.  Nonetheless, I was so affected by it that I was experiencing a different world, with no idea how I got there.

That was in a controlled, safe environment.  Now, a powerful hallucinogen in the desert?  Hallucination and paranoia.  Did you just feel the ground shake?  Was it something under the sand trying to get to you?  Was it the SAND coming to get you?

Some people don't come back all the way from hallucinogens.  It's sad, but true.

Morrolan


EDITED because my Latin spelling sucks

[Jiaro]

I agree, especially with Salvia, and other hallucinagens; if you take them in high enough quantities, you can completely forget that you even took a drug. A friend of mine once stood up after smoking a bowl of salvia and somehow made his way over to me, demanding to know what I had done to him. Fortunately (for me) he became lost in the trip before he could attack me and collapsed to the floor where he sat with a blank stare for another three minutes. After it was all said and done, he had no recollection of anything that had occured.

In conclusion, this poison is obviously an extremely strong hallucinagen, or else there would be no point in using it on a weapon. Even if you 'practice' with the poison in managable amounts, I am sure that the amount used on an arrow would likely be much more, and therefore make you 'completely trip balls'.

My 2 'sid.

[Agent_137]

It's a bad trip. Thats what both the code and the doc description of it point to.

You can't logic yourself out of a bad trip. You might be able to slowly become immune to the drug, but you can't just be like, "pssha, seen this before. pssha."

[Armaddict]

Generally agree with Rindan's post.  If you know you're taking it, or having it administered, it's a lot easier to not go absolutely insane as a result.

If your character -isn't- expecting it, or -doesn't- realize that it's an external factor on their senses and perceptions, they're going to go -absolutely, off the wall, totally and completely insane-.

Skellebaine is described as generally frightening, but I'd say the same for LSD.  The hallucinations brought on are somewhat maddening, but when you know you have it, it's easier to handle.  But skellebaine could be more intense.

I've got a friend who took ten hits of LSD at once, and while he said it was intense as hell and crazy, he didn't go ape shit.  He didn't act differently afterwards.  But there's another drug called DMT that he and I have both taken, and this is more similar to what I would attribute to skellebaine.  Even -knowing- that you were taking a strong hallucinogen, there's just no way to prepare for its onset and it's pretty hard to keep your grip on yourself and reality.

From the description of skellebaine, I'd say it's probably similar to DMT in the way it comes on and becomes frightening.  Imagine getting grazed by an arrow, or suffering a light sting from some insect or some such, and within ten seconds, a powerful 'body fry' is overtaking you.  Nausea comes on quickly due to the feeling, and within 30 seconds your perceptions are completely wacko.  Objects that make no sense surround you, powerful images are flickering across your vision only to disappear when you try to focus on them, and noises around you are reduced to a dull 'wah wah wah' sound that is incomprehensible.  The harder you try to make things normal, the stranger things become.

Skellebaine, in my opinion, is not role-played well.  I haven't had the opportunity to play it's effect recently, but it is, in essence, everything your character knows to be real turning to liquid and melting away to be replaced by real-looking images that are much more negative, confounding, or nonsensical.

Someone who recognizes they're on skellebaine, I think, would be shouting their ass off for everyone to leave them alone, literally.  Leave me here, by myself, and let me try to deal with this shit.  If you're here, I might attack you without even knowing it.  GET AWAY.

Someone who doesn't...they're going to freak out.  FREAK OUT.  Don't have your character cool and composed as they try to go through it, because I frankly -cannot- envision that stuff being dealt with when you're not ready for it.

[Morrolan]

An ex-gf of mine was growing deadly nightshade in the fridge from seeds.  (Don't ask why...she was just like that.)  This requires changing the water every few days.  That water, even in small amounts, and even just through the skin, has hallucinogenic properties.  Which she spilled on herself one day.

So, that went well.  I mean, it's called deadly nightshade for a reason, right?  She tripped pretty badly just from that.

Morrolan

[Angela Christine]

If you don't know you've been poisoned, you might not attribute the affect to poison even if you realize it can't be really real.  In our world people often attribute strange, apparently inexplicable things to aliens, supernatural entities or mind control, when there is only very shaky evidence that any of those things exist.  In Zalanthas you know for a fact that mind control is real, that magick is real, and that freakish monsters are real.  There is plenty of evidence, and plenty of normal, sane, unimaginitive people that claim to have seen these things first hand even if you never have.  So, even if in a lucid moment you think "That can't happen!" you still won't know if it is merely poison, or if a psionicist is mindfucking you, or a mage is really making things happen that shouldn't happen.  It is pretty unlikely, but you could even think it is a spirit thing,  a God-King or his Templars visiting a punishment or vision on you.  Tricky.



Angela Christine

[Cenghiz]

Let's imagine you're riding a roller-coaster.. You do know that nothing will happen, you do know that you'll stay on the wagon but you still fear..
Eh, maybe you can get used to it.. But after how many experiments?
And even you enjoy roller coasters, you'll still be scared shitless after an accidental fall.. This means even when you get used to the hallucinations, they'll still be effective if you're unaware that you're taking poison.

That's my two 'sids.

[Sephiroto]

[Derailment]  I'd like to suggest that you take the time to capitalize your sentences both in and out of game, theebie. [/Derailment]

[theebie]

i capitalize always in game, and not at all on the gdb :)