Pill Poppers in the Cosmic Era

The Red Pill

The Red Pill was created for PsyOps, psychological warfare. Soldiers who take the Red Pill have their reaction times and aggression increased by a modest amount, but their perception in increased as well as becoming paranoid. This allowed for these soldiers to perform at above average levels in the field, without resorting to more extreme combat drugs, or expensive upgrades like a CAS or exo suit.

The Red Pill has taken on a second life. Taking the pill has become a rite of initiation for many clandestine organizations, especially those that have more extreme ideologies or world views. These are not government or corporate organizations, but are social and civilian in nature. They will have a common hostile ideology and only the members who take the Red Pill are 'aware' and 'empowered' enough to understand the threat that the organization is resisting, and to act on its behalf.

The Blue Pill

The Blue Pill has muddled origins, but it is a very popular pharmaceutical. People who take the blue pill are physically relaxed, and are able to enter stage 1 sleep with exceptional ease, even remaining partially lucid and aware of their surroundings. This generally makes them physically compliant and complacent. The most common use for blue pills is the pursuit of ukiyo, the floating world. Blue pills are also used in therapy, anxiety treatment, criminal rehabilitation, and neurotherapy.

The Blue Pill is increasingly seen as a negative, and has the same general connotations of 'drinking the Kool-Aid'. People who take blue pills are associated with tuning out of reality, trading keeping up with current events for immersing themselves into game worlds and even permanently linking into the CogNet and leaving their bodies in vegetative states.

The Black Pill

Like the Red Pill, the Black Pill was created by Intelligence Psy-Ops for use against civilian morale. People who take the black pills find their creativity highly stimulated, but are moved to a depressive suicidal state. The drug moves through a population much like heroin, where it picks up favor among artistic communities, and then creates negative emotional energy within a population as artists, musicians, and media celebrities committing suicide. This can spark copy-cat suicides, which just expands the impact of the pill.

The term Black Pill is a misnomer, it isn't an actual pill that is taken, but is rather added to other existing drugs. A community can be black pilled without their knowledge, and there are no shiny licorice pills being passed around.

The White Pill

The source of the white pill is completely unknown, it simply just appeared one day. The pill fosters a highly positive can do attitude, and a willingness towards cooperation and selflessness. It can be seen as a counterpart to the black pill, and is in many ways an amalgam of many anti-depressants but there are unknown compounds in the drug.

White Pill is seen as the chemical version of selling out, and despite its positive uses it is not widely accepted by society.