Why The Internet Stays Hooked On Memes About Drugs

With their frequent desire to champion the underdog, memes have always been attracted to themes that are illicit and taboo. Shock humor is a valuable currency on the internet, and as memes have shifted from an amusing distraction to a genuine movement, there has been a growing awareness of their potentially mind-altering state.

As a result, it’s no surprise that illegal drug use has proved an irresistible topic. While inebriation can become a one-dimensional experience, the range of ways in which you can do it and how they’re perceived make for great commentary material.

In The Beginning

The one narcotic that remains an evergreen topic for memers everywhere is marijuana. It’s not associated with being the gateway drug for nothing, because weed has been a beloved topic of internet jokes since Impact font was used unironically. It can be seen in the phenomenon of [10] Guy’s questionable wisdom, accompanied to a lesser extent by Stoner Dog. Their impact has continued in various forms of the stoned realization memes that come with *Hits Blunt*.

On top of that, we owe weed the blessing and the curse that is designating a meme as Dank, a major player in kickstarting the mainstream acceptance of ironic memery. Making an official association between weed and memes, it acknowledged the embrace of the high mentality when it came to all things online.

A growing acceptance and partial legality in the U.S. have blunted much of the edge it may have once had, but it remains the giant of the drug meme cottage industry. This was demonstrated only this year with Sections Of A Joint, which showed that the idiosyncrasies of smoking were still palatable to a relatively online fluent audience. It didn’t hurt that the format was easy to use on other things, too. Overall, weed memes build on the well-established genre of stoner comedy, and the stereotype of the harmless but extraordinarily dumb high is exemplified in something like wyd After Smoking This, a simple before and after that delights in coming through with the most ridiculous of scenarios.

Cautionary Tale

Other substances that were adopted by memes early on were rather more serious in their consequences, and the formats they produced made sure that you knew about it. Around the same time that marijuana memes were picking up speed, formats using crack and meth as their inspiration arrived in the public eye. Memes like Crack Is Wack and Meth, Not Even Once gave a supposedly humorous flipside to classic anti-drugs messaging and campaigns with their focus on the dramatic outcomes that they portrayed.

These drugs weren’t always portrayed in a malicious manner — they were often used to mock the messaging with normal and cursed versions of pop culture characters. That said, they could sometimes target users of these drugs in a way that could be seen as harmful and judgmental.

They have had a little currency on the cursed meme scene as time has gone on, but for the most part, they have ceded to other substances. That said, they have made some more subtle resurgences, most notably with the Nah He Tweakin copypasta earlier this year.

“Status Symbols”

We know that most memes are uncomfortable with the idea of sophistication, so when it comes to often glamorized substance use it is usually keen to turn it on its head. Such is the case with drugs like cocaine and ketamine. With their association with the party scene and user profile that can be perceived as classier or more esoteric, the memes that surround them are often concerned with trying to cut them down to size.

Each drug has a big presence in one-off image macros, usually disarming their purportedly cooler reputation with ridiculous or more humorously realistic concepts. Cocaine is frequently mocked for its extortionate confidence-giving abilities, like with Cocaine Is A Hell Of A Drug, and further portrayed as something that creates hangers-on, such as the ever-needy girl in Having Roommates In X Be Like.

It’s also one of the substances that have had the most visibility on TikTok, in terms of creators who have parodied the realities of its use for those with a party lifestyle. Operating on the level of observational humor, they also acknowledge that its allure is not so shiny when the comedown kicks in.

Given its dissociative effects, it comes as no surprise that ketamine has influenced abstract memes. Primarily, it has made its mark with a few specific formats like Yoda's Ketamine Addiction or Mr. Krabs Overdoses On Ketamine. Attaching an added element of ridiculousness to an already daze-inducing narcotic, they find inspiration in the k-hole.

La La Land

Tripping is well known to bring with it the potential of otherworldly experiences that from the outside, look perfectly mundane.
This meshes well with the memetic tendency to make entertainment out of small things.

Psychedelics have proved fertile ground for internet humor, but it often isn’t intentional or explicitly memetic. Subreddits like /r/LSD have made their mark by documenting some exceptionally dumb and entertaining real-life experiences, some that have reached viral notoriety.

Aside from that, the feeling of these kinds of substances is somewhat captured in a format like Shaggy, This Isn’t Weed, where the protagonist seems to have been spiked with a photoshop-testing substance that promises strange times ahead. Wherever he’s going, it rarely looks like it’s good.

Experimental Pharmaceuticals

The array of drugs out there that are easy to use and abuse is exhaustive, and memes have covered almost all the main contenders on some level. Some of the most popular in fringe usage, though, are those which are technically legal. Partly thanks to their influence in various genres of rap (especially the rise of Soundcloud rappers) drugs like Xanax and Percocet have previously had shoutouts in ironic and deep-fried memes.

With its infamous tendency to cause blackouts, Ambien has also gained some notoriety in online humor circles — much like LSD, this has been boosted by its dedicated sub.

In terms of the legal highs making waves most recently though, is a substance even more innocuous. Benadryl had previously been the subject of light-hearted quips about passing out to avoid your allergies, but now descriptions of what happens when it is abused have become an integral part of schizoposting. Elevated from drugstore staple to intentional causer of nightmares, no pharmaceutical is safe when you’ve got a predilection for dark memery and a Doomer mentality.

Fundamentally, memes understand that having a conversation with anyone who is a little too invested in taking any kind of drug can be an excruciatingly boring experience. It is within their power to make the topic entertaining — although this can take it to some dark and uncomfortable places. Meme culture is probably as close as most people can get to amusingly describing a high, but it also reveals the banality of the process. At least today, memes aren’t a moral arbiter for the substances we may choose to consume. However, the portrait they paint is rarely glamorous.

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