Nothing goes with science fiction like drugs. There are imaginary pills like the dreamy soma from Brave New World and the speedballish, madness-inducing Substance D from A Scanner Darkly. Then there are real drugs in alternate worlds, though these are less popular. I can think of just a couple off the top of my head: the heroin-shooting alien-lovers in Liquid Sky and the alcohol-swilling armored bear in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
If you want a bizarro tour of druggy science fiction, why not go to the source? In 1974, the National Institute on Drug Abuse published a helpful pamphlet on drug references in science fiction. Why they did it is unclear. Perhaps they wanted DEA officers to be hip to the nerd freak lingo. All I can say, aftering perusing this weirdly detailed document, is that it would appear the government was obsessed with Robert Silverberg.
Then there are the wonderfully terrible psychedelic scenes in the movie Altered States (yes, it was released in the 1970s). This evobio thriller stars William Hurt as a mad scientist who takes an LSD-ish drug, hangs out in a sensory-deprivation chamber, and has visions of his primal self. Of course he isn't just hallucinating. He's actually turning into a proto-human hominid, and eventually some kind of proto-proto-whatsis. Then he sees Jesus and turns into a pile of sand. Trippy, dude.
But if you're in that late-night drug mood, there's nothing better than Charles Burns' comic book Black Hole, about a bunch of teenagers who start mutating in ghastly ways. This ain't your momma's X-Men comic – it's incredibly dark and full of anguished meditations on what it's like to be a teenage outcast. Plus, there are long drug sequences full of mind-blowing art.
