The VisionWhat This Feels Like
This isn't a drug mod. There are drug mods. They give you random stat boosts and call it a day. This is something else entirely. This is an attempt to build real addiction into a game, from the neuropharmacology up, and to follow it all the way to the places nobody wants to go. The hook. The spiral. The people you destroy. The question of whether you can come back. And the fact that coming back doesn't undo what you did.
It starts before you touch anything. You start the game as a child. Seven or eight years old, in a small house, with parents who love you. You make choices that seem meaningless at the time. You sneak into your parents' room (Sneak +1). You read everything you can find (Magic affinity). You grab a wooden sword and swing it at the air (Combat bonus). You're shaping a person before you know who they'll become, and you won't understand the weight of those choices for dozens of hours.
· · ·
Time skip. You're at the College of Winterhold. You're studying magic, attending lectures, training with other students. You're somebody. You have potential. Everyone can see it.
Then you find a spell you weren't supposed to find. Not necromancy. Something dirtier. Crime magic. Illusion, manipulation, the kind of magic that makes people look the other way while you take what you want. And you cast it, because of course you cast it, because the game put it in front of you and you're curious, and the College reacts the way a real institution would: they throw you out.
One of the students sneers at you on the way out. "Why don't you go learn magic down at the Tattered Veil? That's where your kind belongs."
That's your quest marker. That's where the world opens up. And it's a den disguised as a school, where "magical enhancement" means skooma, and someone is already offering you something to take the edge off, and the first one's free, and you've had a rough day.
· · ·
The first hit is incredible. +50 stamina, faster running, laser-focused guidance telling you where to go and what to do. You feel invincible. The world looks better. Sunshine. Saturated colors. Music feels right.
The fifth hit is good. +30 stamina. Still worth it.
The twentieth hit gives you +5 stamina. But without it, you can't function. Your baseline has shifted. You don't get high anymore. You take it to feel normal. And the game never tells you this is happening. There's no addiction meter. You just notice you're slower than you used to be. You notice your hands shake when you haven't used in a while. You notice the weather is always overcast now.
You find a den. Sheets over the windows, dim light inside, other people slumped against walls. You take a hit. Time passes. You take another. You pass out. You wake up, eat a cracker, drink some water, struggle to stand. You take another hit. The light through the gaps in the sheets shifts from bright to dark and back again faster than it should, but you don't really notice, because nothing inside the den changes. The NPCs don't change. Your stats look fine, full bars, healthy. Everything's fine.
You decide to leave.
The door opens and the light hits you like a wall. The screen is nearly white. You can barely see. Your character is crawling. Limping. Messages come in slowly.
If you don't find food and water within about a minute, you die. The den felt safe. The den was killing you. You just couldn't see it, because your stats were lying to you the entire time. The drugs suppressed the symptoms but not the need. The debt was accumulating. And now it's all due at once.
· · ·
The drugs don't just change numbers. They change reality.
A simple iron dagger, in your hand while high, transforms into a glowing sword laced with red veins. It looks powerful. It feels powerful. It does real damage. Enemies actually die. But every hit accumulates hidden costs: physical damage to yourself, bounty if anyone saw you (because they saw a dagger, not a sword), guilt that affects later story branches, and the weapon itself feeds the addiction. It grows hungrier the more you use it.
Hallucinated followers appear and fight alongside you. They deal real damage. They disappear when you sober up. Did you kill all those people? Or did they? You can receive quests that don't exist, items that aren't real, have conversations with nobody. Dream sequences where things seem meaningful but follow no logic. Ethereal nowhere-places that feel important and aren't.
Some drugs just send you somewhere else entirely. Not combat buffs. Journeys. You come back and hours have passed, and you're not sure what happened, and there are things in your inventory you don't remember taking, and there's a bounty in a hold you don't remember visiting.
· · ·
The worst part isn't the effects. It's losing control of your own character.
When your inhibition drops low enough, your character starts making choices for you. You look at an item with a "Steal" tag and there's a percentage chance your character just takes it. You didn't press anything. You didn't want to steal it. But your character's hand reaches out, and now you're a thief, and someone saw. The percentage goes up as the inhibition goes down.
Someone disrespects you on the street. If you're in the wrong state, your character attacks them. Mid-city. Broad daylight. No input from you. Guards respond. Bounty added. "I didn't mean to do that." But you did, because you chose to keep using, and this is what using does.
And if it can happen to you, it can happen to NPCs too. You give skooma to Belethor, and over time, his shop hours become erratic, his inventory empties out, his appearance degrades. Push an addicted NPC hard enough and they'll snap. Dens can erupt into violence. Cities with addiction epidemics become powder kegs.
· · ·
You kill a dragon one night. You're stumbling through the wilderness, high or withdrawing, and a dragon attacks. The combat is chaotic, blurred, desperate. Somehow you kill it. And the soul absorption begins. It's overwhelming. Painful. Confusing.
No fanfare. No music swell. You were high when it happened. Maybe it didn't happen. You can't handle this responsibility. You're barely handling being alive. The drugs help you forget. The drugs help you not feel the weight.
But the dragons keep coming. You overhear conversations in taverns. Another attack. Rorikstead this time. Where are the heroes? Maybe there's no one. Maybe we're all just waiting to die. You sit in the corner and order another drink. You know. They don't.
The guilt counter is hidden. It increments with every dragon attack you don't prevent, every overheard conversation about destruction, every refugee you pass. It affects withdrawal severity, hallucination content, dream sequences. The guilt becomes part of the withdrawal. Burning villages. Screaming civilians. Victims asking why you didn't help.
If you wait too long, you'll arrive back at your childhood village and find ruins. A note on the floor of the kitchen. Your mother's handwriting. She was waiting for you. She knew you were struggling. She was asking you to come home. The date on the note is weeks old. She died waiting.
The Dragonborn questline doesn't unlock until you get sober and complete at least one Amends quest. You can't save the world when you can't save yourself. If you never recover, the dragons eventually win. Alduin's victory is implied. The world degrades. Dens still exist. Drugs still available. But outside is ash and ruin.
· · ·
If you take the recovery path, it's not a victory lap. You have to go back to every city you destroyed on your way down and find out what you did there. You don't remember. Blackouts took those memories. Each hold has a major quest: return to the place you affected, discover the damage, find the person you hurt, do something that cannot fix it but acknowledges it.
Some people won't forgive you. Some people are dead. Making amends changes you, not necessarily them.
And at any point, during any amends quest, there's a den nearby. The game puts the quest marker there if you want it. The whisper in the corner of the screen: One more time. Just to feel normal. Just to get through today. You've earned it.
If you relapse, it's not game over. It's a new branch. Starting over, but some amends progress is retained. NPCs remember your attempt. They also remember your failure. "I've heard this before." Harder to earn trust. But never impossible.
And somewhere, on the road to a small village near Solitude, a woman stops. Stares at you. Falls to her knees crying.
She's not a random NPC. She's the woman from the childhood sequence. You know her. You remember being seven in that kitchen. You have to face what you became.
· · ·
And if you try to escape any of this by reloading a save? The mod knows. It maintains persistent data outside the normal save system. It tracks your peak addiction level, the substances you used, the NPCs you affected. It flags that you attempted a reload escape. The consequences shift: increased random encounters with dealers, "free sample" events, lower threshold for re-addiction, and NPCs you affected are still affected. You can reload. But you can't un-know what you did.
Or you can go the other way entirely. Don't recover. Build a drug empire. Establish supply chains, recruit corrupted NPCs as dealers, control territory, wage war with existing dealers, amass massive wealth, and watch the world hollow out around you. Everyone's addicted or dead. You won. What's left?
This isn't a mod so much as a total conversion, just without changing any of the assets. It takes the existing world and rewrites what it means to live in it.
Part 1Core Mechanics
The Substance System
Each substance has a distinct pharmacological profile: acute effects (immediate gameplay impact), a receptor profile (determining tolerance and cross-tolerance), a withdrawal profile (determining recovery difficulty), and addiction potential (how quickly dependence forms).
| Substance | Profile |
|---|---|
| Skooma | Stimulant |
| Sleeping Tree Sap | Sedative / Dissociative |
| Balmora Blue | High-potency skooma variant |
| Moon Sugar | Base ingredient, milder effects |
| Hist Sap | Hallucinogenic |
| Redwater Skooma | Contaminated, unpredictable |
| Custom Blends | Crafting system, variable |
Tolerance Mechanics
Based on receptor downregulation:
The player experience progression: first hit gives +50 stamina, feels invincible. Fifth hit gives +30, still good. Twentieth hit gives +5, but you need it to feel normal.
Dependence Formation
Based on the allostatic load model, progressing through stages:
- Naive — No dependence, full positive effects
- Habituated — Tolerance building, reduced positive effects
- Dependent — Baseline function now requires the substance
- Addicted — Compulsive use despite consequences, severe withdrawal
The player never sees an addiction meter. They notice through gameplay. "Why am I so slow today?" Journal entries hint: "I feel off. Restless."
Withdrawal System
Based on opponent-process theory. Withdrawal effects are the opposite of drug effects. Stimulant withdrawal brings fatigue, slowed movement, depression debuff. Sedative withdrawal brings anxiety, tremors (aim penalty), insomnia (no well-rested bonus).
Severity scales with duration of use, peak tolerance reached, and speed of cessation (cold turkey vs. taper). The timeline: acute withdrawal lasts 3 to 7 in-game days, severe. Post-acute withdrawal lasts weeks, milder but persistent. Cravings can trigger randomly for in-game months.
The Relapse Trigger System
Environmental cues: entering a city where you used heavily, seeing drug paraphernalia, encountering NPCs you used with, stress events like combat or near-death. Mechanical expression includes subtle screen effects, intrusive "thoughts" as corner text or whispers, a temporary debuff that substances would fix, and a quest marker pointing to the nearest den.
Never forced to use. The game just makes it very available.
Expanded Drug Effects
Drugs don't just change numbers. They change reality.
Movement and perception: Faster running (stimulants), slow-motion combat perception (dissociatives), tunnel vision vs. expanded peripheral awareness depending on substance.
Social and party effects: Hallucinated followers appear, ready to fight alongside you. They deal real damage, your subconscious projecting violence. They disappear when you sober up.
Guidance systems: Laser-focused quest markers when high. The game tells you where to go, what to do. Feels helpful. Sober, the guidance disappears. You're lost again.
Dialogue transformations: New dialogue options appear when high. Confident, aggressive, charming, depending on substance. NPCs may react differently. You might say things you don't remember later.
Weapon illusions: A simple dagger transforms into a glowing sword with red veins. Does real damage. But every hit accumulates hidden debt: physical damage to self (revealed later), bounty (if witnessed, they saw you with a dagger), guilt accumulation (affects later story), and deepening addiction.
Loss of Control Mechanics
Addiction erodes agency. The game starts making choices for you.
| 100% | Full control |
| 75% | Occasional impulse (can resist) |
| 50% | Auto-steal ~20%, auto-aggression on major insults |
| 25% | Auto-steal ~50%, auto-aggression on minor slights |
| 10% | Barely in control, almost any trigger can cause action |
| 0% | Blackout behavior (time skip, wake up to consequences) |
Drug Interaction Matrix
| Combination | Result |
|---|---|
| Same + same | Tolerance, diminishing returns |
| Stimulant + sedative | Counteract negatives, extend functional window |
| Stimulant + stimulant | Synergistic high, massive buffs, cardiac risk |
| Sedative + sedative | Deep nod, extreme time skip, OD risk |
| Anything + hallucinogen | Psychosis risk |
| Three or more | Guaranteed psychosis |
The counteract trap: take a stimulant to wake up from a sedative. Take a sedative to calm down from a stimulant. The player thinks they're managing. Actually, double addiction forming. Two withdrawal syndromes waiting.
Part 2The Meta-Game Layer
Save Manipulation System
The game recognizes attempts to "escape" addiction through reloading. The mod maintains persistent data outside normal save: peak addiction level ever reached, substances used, NPCs affected. It flags "has attempted reload escape."
Consequences of reload escape: the game acknowledges sobriety, but increases random encounters with dealers, triggers "free sample" events, keeps NPCs you affected still affected, lowers the threshold for re-addiction (sensitization), and alters dialogue with hints of "something familiar about you."
You can reload. But you can't un-know what you did.
The Blackout System
Triggered by high doses, combinations, or certain substances. Screen fades, time passes (hours to days), player wakes in a random location with changed inventory, possible bounty, and NPCs referencing events the player doesn't remember.
Discovery happens through "Fragmented Memory" quest items. Piecing together what happened. Some memories only return in withdrawal. Some return when revisiting locations.
Part 3NPC Systems
Addiction Spread
The player can offer substances to any NPC: gift, sell, or coerce. Introduce NPCs to dealers. Each NPC progresses through stages: Naive, Curious, Using, Dependent, Degraded. Each stage changes their daily schedule, dialogue, economic function (shopkeepers become unreliable), appearance (over time), and relationships with other NPCs.
Affected NPCs may become hostile if denied, may steal, may die, may lose jobs and homes, may end up in dens. Essential NPCs become non-essential once addicted.
Persistence Across Saves
NPCs you've affected stay affected even if you reload. The emotional payload: you can undo your choices but not their consequences.
Part 4Narrative Questlines
The Descent (Implicit)
Not a quest, just gameplay. Player discovers substances. Player finds them useful. Player becomes dependent. World reflects consequences. No quest markers, no objectives. Just the slow slide.
Rock Bottom
Possible triggers: overdose (near death), blackout with severe consequences, NPC death caused by player's dealing, family discovery, imprisonment, loss of all gold and items. Initiates the choice to pursue recovery.
The Amends Questline
One major quest per hold. Each involves returning to a place you affected, not knowing what you did there, discovering the damage, finding the person affected, and completing a task that cannot "fix" it but acknowledges it. At each point: a choice, because there's always a den nearby.
No forgiveness guaranteed. Some people won't forgive. Some people are dead. Making amends changes you, not necessarily them. Tangible gameplay sacrifice: gold, items, time, reputation.
The Relapse Questline
If the player uses after beginning recovery, it's not game over. New quest branch. "Starting over" mechanics. Some amends progress lost, but some retained, because NPCs remember the attempt. Multiple relapses are tracked. "I've heard this before." Harder to earn trust. But never impossible.
The Dealer Path
The player can choose not to pursue recovery. Instead, build a drug empire: establish supply chains, recruit dealers (corrupted NPCs), control territory, conflict with existing dealers, amass massive wealth, watch the world hollow out. You "won," but what's left?
The Dragonborn Burden
You are the Dragonborn. You know it. You're not doing anything about it. The discovery is not triumphant. It's horrifying. You were high when it happened. Did it even happen? You can't handle this responsibility. You're barely handling being alive.
World events continue without you. Dragons attack holds. NPCs die. Towns are damaged. Refugees appear. News spreads through tavern dialogue. You overhear everything. The guilt counter increments in the background, affecting withdrawal severity, hallucination content, dream sequences.
Escalating Consequences
- Background noise: Occasional news of attacks, distant dragon sightings
- Visible impact: Refugees in cities, damaged buildings, shops struggling
- Locations destroyed: Minor locations become dragon lairs, NPCs you knew are dead
- Major holds threatened: Whiterun attacked repeatedly, essential services disrupted
- The childhood home: Burned. Destroyed. A note from your mother. She died waiting.
The Redemption Lock
The main quest is locked until the player achieves sobriety, completes at least one Amends quest, and confronts the guilt through a specific quest trigger. You can't save the world when you can't save yourself. Recovery isn't just about you. It's about what you can do once you're capable.
The Alternate Ending: Too Late
If the player never recovers, dragons eventually win. World state degrades completely. Alduin's victory is implied. The player can continue in a ruined world. Dens still exist. Drugs still available. But outside is ash and ruin.
The Last Dragonborn was found in a den
in Riften, a needle in their arm.
No one knew who they were.
No one knew what they could have been.
The prophecy was fulfilled,
just not the way anyone hoped.
Part 5The Origin Story
Chapter 1: Childhood (Age 7 - 8)
The vanilla Dragonborn start makes no sense for this narrative. The player needs to be someone before they become no one. Addiction story requires something to lose, people to hurt, a fall to experience.
Character creation: Option A is creating yourself as a child, with appearance carrying forward to adulthood. Option B is creating two characters (parents) with no explanation; the game generates a child as a blend of both, looking different from either. Player appears as their kid, 7 or 8 years old.
Gameplay involves exploring the house, interacting with parents, making choices that seem small but shape starting stats: sneaking into parents' room (Sneak bonus), reading obsessively (Magic affinity), play-fighting with a wooden sword (Combat bonus), helping mother cook (Alchemy affinity), listening to father's stories (Speech bonus), wandering outside alone (Survival instincts). Dialogue choices seed personality traits. Duration: 15 to 30 minutes.
Chapter 2: The College of Winterhold
Time skip. The player wakes in a College dormitory, carrying echoes of childhood choices in starting stats. Training sequences, lectures, spell practice, relationship building. Then the inciting incident: a forbidden spell, not necromancy, but "dirty trickster crime magic." The player casts it. NPCs react. Expulsion follows. The sneering student points toward the Tattered Veil.
Chapter 3: The Descent Begins
The Tattered Veil is a den masquerading as a school. Crime magic taught alongside substances marketed as "magical enhancement." First arrival looks sketchy but intriguing. Someone offers something to take the edge off. "First one's free."
From here, the open world begins. But you're in the ecosystem now.
Childhood provides parents to disappoint, a home to lose, memories to corrupt. The college provides proof of potential, a fall from grace, the chip on your shoulder. The underworld provides community that accepts you, tools that help (at first), and the hook. The mom scene now hits different, because she's the woman from the childhood sequence. The player knows her. The player remembers being seven in that kitchen.
Part 6Environmental and Perceptual Systems
State-Linked Weather and Visuals
The world reflects internal state. Not through UI. Through perception.
| State | Weather | Lighting | Color Grade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sober (healthy) | Normal | Normal | Normal |
| High (peak) | Clear, sunshine | Warm, golden | Saturated, rainbows |
| High (nodding) | Soft, hazy | Dim, warm | Dreamy, soft focus |
| Comedown | Overcast | Flat | Desaturated |
| Hungover | Foggy, drizzle | Grey | Muted, slightly green |
| Withdrawal (mild) | Cloudy, wind | Harsh | High contrast |
| Withdrawal (peak) | Storm, unnatural | Flickering | Terrifying, shadows move |
| Psychosis | Impossible weather | Wrong | Everything wrong |
The Den Time Dilation System
Time moves differently in the den. You don't notice until you leave. Inside: sheets over windows, light/dark cycle visible through gaps but accelerated, NPCs don't change behavior (they're all high too), no hunger/thirst warnings, no fatigue, stats screen always shows full bars. Lying to the player.
The survival stats are actually tracking, going into negatives. Drugs suppress symptoms, not needs. Debt accumulates silently.
The Psychosis System
Triggered by certain combinations, extreme doses, prolonged use, or withdrawal peak. Four levels: mild (visual distortion, whispers, shadows moving), moderate (NPCs say things they didn't say, phantom sounds), severe (hallucinated NPCs, false quest objectives), and full break (reality replacement).
The Perception Stack
The player can never fully trust what they see. But they won't know that until they're deep in.
Appendix AReference Dialogue Concepts
The Psychosis Quest: "Protect the Innocent"
The Relapse Whisper
NPC Degradation
The Den Exit
The game never locks the door.