Cannabis and Science Fiction

Since the very beginning of storytelling, mind-altering substances have held a major fascination for the writer, reader and listener–along with sex, epic quests and the contrast between villains and heroes. This trope has undoubtedly been so popular because of the many different roles that altering substances can play. From healing the sick and performing miracles to trapping users in cycles of addiction and complacency, substances can serve all kinds of purposes in science fiction in order to help propel stories forward. Here are a few notable ways that science fiction has utilized these kinds of substances as plot devices.

The Pacifying Elixir

One common trope in the science fiction world is the use of a “drug” as a way to pacify or numb something or someone. This is more than likely a reference to our society’s prescription-happy tendency to hand out anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medication and ADHD medicine-like candy. One of the most famous examples of this can be seen in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, with the use of Soma, the substance taken by the diligent workers of this fictional dystopian society in order to keep pacified.

Fictional Mind-Altering Substances that can Do the Impossible

Science fiction is fun because it can describe people doing the impossible and improbable, and this is one of the reasons that fictional drugs are so much fun to come up with. From the incredible powers of the drug in the recent film Limitless to the serum injection used to bring back the dead in Re-Animator by H.P Lovecraft, fiction is made both more exciting and scarier by the creation of drugs like these. These substances tend to go beyond simple metaphors for drug use in real society. Often, the substances are so physically addictive that people’s bodies change if they don’t have access.

Addiction Warning Stories

Another useful thing about the sci-fi genre is that it is often used as a metaphor to warn people away from doing morally reprehensible or harmful things. Most of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek are metaphorical stories that warn viewers away from the dangers of things like war, groupthink, prejudice and hate. So it’s no surprise that a lot of stories tackle the issue of drug use as well. The “Moloko Plus” in A Clockwork Orange is a drug that makes groups of young men want to stay up all night sexually assaulting people and committing crimes—essentially speed or cocaine. Substance D in A Scanner Darkly causes hallucinations and euphoria, but at the expense of becoming extremely addicted and unable to process reality, e.g. heroin or an extreme use of psychedelics.

Mind-Expansion Aids

Not all “drug” use in science fiction is negative, however. Many sci-fi writers make a nod to the mind-expansion days of the 60s with their drug references. Ironically, Huxley has a different take on substances in Island, a fictional story of an idealized utopian society that serves as a kind of companion foil to Brave New World. In this story, users only take “drugs” to embark on vision-quest style trips that yield new and beautiful revelations about the world around them. Similarly, the Spice in Dune allows for interstellar travel and unlocks the mysteries of the universe, much like what many children of the ’60s and ’70s felt LSD could do.

Cannabis Advocacy in a Future Society

Of great interest to us today, as we begin to see a future with legal cannabis unfolding, science fiction has also advocated for cannabis use. Carl Sagan famously spoke out as a cannabis advocate in a published essay, Mr. X, and was a known smoker. Much less of a well-known fact, he also included legal cannabis in his novel, Contact, a book that tells the story of what might realistically happen if we ever really did make contact with an alien race. He wrote:

Outside a tobacconist’s there was a long, orderly and polyglot line of people attracted by the first week of legalized sale of cured cannabis cigarettes from the United States. By French law they could not be sold to or consumed by those under eighteen years of age. Many in line were middle-aged or older… Especially potent varieties of cannabis were grown, mainly in California and Oregon, for the export trade. Featured here was a new and admired strain, which had in addition been grown in ultraviolet light… It was called “Sun Kissed.”

The rest of the book is about wormholes and contact with another planet, but this simple aside predicts so much about the cannabis industry. Legal cannabis does in fact have people lining up to try powerful new, hydraulically grown strains with catchy names that come from places like California and Oregon.

Cannabis as Comic Relief

Last but not least, cannabis is good for comic relief almost anywhere, and the same holds true for science fiction. The character of Hermes Conrad in Futurama is constantly smoking cannabis and getting the munchies as a way to deal with the boring life he leads working with bureaucracy and paperwork. Many characters in serious sci-fi films are also seen getting high, making the dark stuff that happens a little easier to take. The parents in Poltergeist toke up before their child goes missing inside the TV and the walls, and in Beyond the Black Rainbow, an extremely serious psychedelic movie, the action is broken up by two stoner metal heads who accidently get in the way of the deranged main character.

Mind-altering substances have served all kinds of purposes in science fiction. Whether stories are advocating for sensible policies or calling out the dangers of addiction to things like prescription medication, there is usually an implied message about mind-altering substance use worth reading in between the lines for.