High Times in the Capital/Mojave Wasteland [v.1.1]

TL;DR: Link goes to a guide that gives an overview of the addictive chems in Fallout 3/New Vegas, as well as information about their real-life counterparts, where applicable.

Longer version: So I've recently done a not-insignificant amount of information compiling on the drugs of the Capital Wasteland (and the Mojave Wasteland, kinda sorta) for a fic that I might write soon, and figured that I'd share it in case anyone else has the same facination with mind-and-body-altering-substances that I have.

The guide's currently focused on the Capital Wasteland/Fallout 3 chem and alcohol versions, but does include all the New Vegas variants and NV-only chems and their specific effects. Only addictive substances are addressed. It gives a basic description of what the drugs do in-game in terms of stat bonuses/reductions and in more generalized descriptions. Also, for chems with a real-life counterpart (jet is meth, med-x is morphine, ect.) I've included info on what the RL verson does to its users, its physical side effects, and, in the case of med-x/morphene and jet/meth, information on withdrawal symptoms.

(This is also written in a fairly rough, outline-ish style, so you probably shouldn't expect long, flowing sentences and literary devices or anything. It's readable, but it's not prettied up.)

This guide is meant to be more of a starting point for others who are interested in the chems in the later two entries of the Fallout series, especially writers who want to include chem use and its effects in their stories. It's an overview of the chems and their effects and as such is not extremely detailed in some respects, like where the drugs came from, their manufacturing process, how long (in-game) they last, etc. It aims to give a more realistic take on how chems would affect someone than the game engine does by including physical effects, both good and bad, so that writers who aren't familiar with the RL or in-game versions of the drugs have at least some idea of what they do and how characters feel when using them.

Most of this info comes from the Fallout Wiki (the Vault), Wikipedia, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse's website, and the rest comes from the first few entries in related Google searches. Not always the best sources of information, but for this guide I found they were helpful and, in regards to the stat changes in-game, the only places I could go. (And yes, I basically just retyped stuff a lot of the time, but that's why it's info gathering and not a report. If it bothers anyone I can provide more specific sources, but basically, it really was the Vault, Wikipedia, and the NIDA.) I might do more in-depth info gathering on the RL versions of the chems as well as general revision/rewriting/adding to the guide later, when I'm not so burnt out on looking around at this stuff.

Hope this helps some other people! Feel free to drop me a line either here or on my Tumblr if you have comments or suggestions. I'm far from the ultimate expert on drugs in general, so anything anyone has to say on the topic would be very much appreciated.

( High Times in the Capital and/or Mojave Wasteland )