Marines pop pills like they’re fucking candy. Every single round, without fail, everyone’s walking around absolutely zooted on every painkiller and stimulant they can get their hands on.
If we’re being realistic, these marines aren’t going home after their deployment. They’re going to a military hospital for mandatory drug rehabilitation, then getting dishonorably discharged, then spending the next 20 years dealing with crippling addiction and organ failure.
The average marine in a single round probably consumes enough painkillers and stimulants to hospitalize a normal person. And they do this every single day. Multiple times per day if they get revived. Your liver should be a puddle. Your heart should have exploded. Your kidneys should have filed a restraining order against you.
thats equal parts each of the medicines in this fairly sizable flask. I think if we’re going to talk about realism, I think all the marines are constantly in a state of overdosing.
Would explain why we can’t push on OB clear honestly.
Command actually held a seminar after the last operation, when multiple marines were put in sickbay for withdrawal symptoms. Turns out, an MT had drug up a canister of off-brand medications that were used to replace Weyland-Yutani™ brand Bicardine™ in the OP’s first canister of unga!
The CL explained how Weyland-Yutani™ patented chemicals are designed to be mixed for both flavor and effectiveness, but this very feature also causes adverse reactions with other, lesser brands, poisoning the whole batch. This is partially why our researcher division has been outsourced to Wey-Med™ Doctors, who can ensure that experimental combat stimulants produced on ship are up to snuff and have the same modular mixing potential as the rest of our standard Weyland-Yutani™ medications!
The Liaison was so kind, he even had a special discounted lease for Weyland-Yutani™ Artificial Livers™ to any marine who wanted one. These actively filter and dispose of ALL non-Weyland-Yutani™ chemicals to ensure any future tainted unga batches won’t disrupt us in later deployments!
The way I imagine it, it’s a combination of the Almayer both being staffed by the worst of the ‘best’, being underfunded, and also being forced to fight Horrors Beyond Man’s Comprehension. If you got sent to a planet lightyears from your home, after suffering one of the worst military losses in recent memory, and are then pulled out of cryo while potentially still being wounded and certainly being demoralized- then forced to fight something which you KNOW will FORCEFULLY REPRODUCE WITH YOU by EXPLODING OUT OF YOUR CHEST if you get captured alive
I can imagine even the most straight-edged people would be pretty fucking inclined to find something to take the edge off
