10 of The Wildest Fictional Drugs from Transmetropolitan – Screen Rant

Summary

Few works of fiction capture the true essence of gonzo as it was pioneered by Hunter S. Thompson quite like the Vertigo Comics series Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson. The series follows a journalist named Spider Jerusalem who is a pretty clear Hunter S. Thompson analogue. Jerusalem lives in The City where he writes a column for the newspaper The Word thats titled I Hate It Here. The column focuses on his perception of modern day life as it exists in this futuristic, transhumanist, cyberpunk landscape.

Along with being a gonzo journalist with a point of view that captivates readers, Spider Jerusalem is similar to Hunter S. Thompson in one other way: drug consumption. In this future world, there is no shortage of increasingly weird drugs Spider can get his hands on, and the futuristic healthcare ensures that he likely wont die of any sort of drug overdose, meaning he and those around him can really push their bodies and minds to the limit. While there are certainly far more than just two handfuls of drugs to choose from, here are just 10 of the wildest fictional drugs from Transmetropolitan!

Transmetropolitan was more than just a 60 issue comic series, but also had two graphic novels that allowed fans to read Spider Jerusalems columns just as someone would in-world (with the accompaniment of Darick Robertsons outstanding artwork, of course). Those graphic novels were titled I Hate It Here and Filth of the City, respectively, and they - along with some other Transmetropolitan specials - were collected in Tales of Human Waste. Within this epic of journalistic depravity, Spider Jerusalem recounts a time when he accidentally took Alter Gum, thinking it was just regular gum that could help him cut down on his smoking.

Apparently, no one told Spider that Alter Gum was a serious drug that gave users temporary dissociative identity disorder, and he found that out by losing his mind, running around The City completely naked while wielding a sword.

Dead Celebrities isn't a drug that Spider Jerusalem indulges in himself (at least, not in this issue), but is one he sees other people doing on television during a quiet winter night inside his apartment. Apparently, every winter, a new group of teenagers digs up the corpses of long-dead celebrities, tear off and chop up pieces of their bodies, and ingest them.

Evidently, there are rich deposits of old drugs and crystallized adrenaline in these corpses, and they have the capacity to give people a high thats worth desecrating the body of a famous person.

Another As-Seen-On-TV drug, Disconekt, isnt taken by Spider on-panel, but is rather being advertised on television. The TV spot reveals that Disconekt is a prescription drug thats meant to numb the senses and make life in The City more tolerable for the millions of miserable citizens barely making it through the day. Not only that, but its advertised as a way to calm the collective anger of those citizens, and will keep peoples heads from bursting with rage.

Transmetropolitan is borderline totalitarian, and Disconekt is less of a recreational drug derived from the advanced technology of the era, and more of a way to control the masses by the current political party in power (championed by the President who Jerusalem nicknamed the Smiler, and who is a main antagonist throughout the series).

Freak Green - also seen during a television news report - is given to children by their parents to make them tougher and more equipped to survive in the cruel world in which this series takes place. In an interview, a mother of a child addicted to Freak Green boasts that her son fights the puppy for his morning fix and that it has given him impressive grip strength.

Not only is this drug apparently meant to strengthen children at a young age (as the child in the news report looked not even six months old), but Freak Green also turns their skin green.

While visiting an area of The City known as the Reservations where humans choose to live in different time periods throughout history in order to preserve the culture of past civilizations, Spider Jerusalem is invited to also experience a portion of the Reservations called the Farsight Community. This wasnt a living monument to the past, but rather a corner of a potential future, one of advanced cybernetic enhancements (more so than the average amount found in The City), and where drugs that were banned in The City can be experienced freely - including and especially Infopollen.

Jerusalem was sprayed in the face with Infopollen the moment he walked into the Farsight Community, and he experienced trippy visions of an abstract future, an experience he described as being akin to washing down a bucket of peyote with a vatful of absinthe.

In the very first issue of the series, when Spider Jerusalem goes back into The City to start writing for The Word once again, hes more than a little rusty after living in the mountains for five years in complete solitude. So, in an effort to hit the ground running, he approaches a local drug pusher and tells him he needs the best Intelligence Enhancers on the market.

It seems Intelligence Enhancers is more of a narcotic classification than the actual name of a specific drug, though the effects of it speak for itself.

When Spider Jerusalem went to a Religions Convention to cover the vast number of new religions that have been popping-up recently, he saw people doing some decidedly odd practices in the name of their religious beliefs. However, one of the weirdest sights had to be the person who was using Liquid Holy Thoughts in an effort to wash away any impure thoughts by way of mind-altering fluid.

If the idea of what this drug does to the human mind isnt horrific enough, the application of said drug certainly is, as its a tube of green liquid thats pumped directly into the brain through a surgically-made hole in the forehead.

During a column thats dedicated to the citizens of The City themselves, Spider Jerusalem takes a deep dive into the lives of the New Scum (a phrase coined by the Smiler to illustrate his disdain for the people hes supposed to represent). One such person is someone who is on his way to becoming addicted to a drug called Mechanics. This drug temporarily merges ones mind with their personal AI, and during the duration of the drugs effects, the AI makes changes to the persons DNA. Once the high wears off, a formerly regular human now has a piece of their flesh replaced with techno-organic matter.

With each dose, a person literally loses a little bit of their own humanity at a time, slowly becoming a drug-addicted robot that only lives for the promise of the next fix.

The only drug in Transmetropolitan to make Spider Jerusalem want to swear off all narcotics completely. RPG Drugs are as they sound: they transport users to a fantasy world where they literally roleplay as a fictional character. When Spider took it, he became a parody of Superman, complete with the life the original Superman led as his alter ego, Clark Kent.

Spider hated being a mild-mannered journalist and goody-two-shoes superhero so much that he wanted to give up taking drugs completely - thats how off-put he was by his RPG-induced hallucination.

Transmetropolitan #52 opens with a woman who the Smiler is trying to have murdered due to the fact that she used to be a sex worker who serviced him, and hes trying to eliminate any and all skeletons in his closet. These days, shes a drug dealer who sells Space and Space Dust (which is a heightened version of Space seemingly the same way crack is to cocaine). The drug is primarily smoked, giving the user a euphoric high that slows down their perception of time, and is also one of the primary social drugs of the era.

However, thats not Spider Jerusalems take on the drug, as his description of the slowed-down time effect is hellish and void. Spider describes it as something that traps you in an airport waiting lounge of the mind and doesnt let you go for approximately two hundred years. It seems this particular drug was too much for even Spider Jerusalem, meaning an average person within Vertigo Comics Transmetropolitan would be wise to avoid it.

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10 of The Wildest Fictional Drugs from Transmetropolitan - Screen Rant