What do I do about a guy with chemical hunger?

[Joshua]

What do I do about a guy with chemical hunger? I'm very new to the game and only just finished the tutorial. Not sure how to even make drugs or which ones are the easiest to make or if I should make them at all.

[Penguol05]

Ah yes the newbie rimworld experience is something you wont forget.

Leave him be, if I do recall its just a -8 mood debuff
The probably easiest drug in the game is pyshich tea, you make it on the grill and it requires: 4 pyshich plants each, you gain these by planting them.

[TwoTonGamer]

Chemical Fascination trait...Oh, boy.

I keep mine zoned out of any room that contains drugs and keep him on a strict no drug policy. I didn't follow this when I first recruited him and he eventually developed an addiction to the smokeweed joints I had conveniently placed in the dining area.
He effectively became a useless hindrance for a year as I helped get rid of his addiction.

[flu007]

I'm assuming you mean someone with the "Chemical Fascination" trait.

What that trait does:

It gives a colonist who hasn't had any "drugs" for a while a mood debuff upto -9. This deduff can be reduced if they take drugs, even turned into a positive mood buff.

It also makes them occasionally "break" and go on a drug binge. This break is unrelated to their mood, it happens randomly because of the trait. (Obviously this can only happen if you have drugs in your base.)

How to handle it:

If you do not have drugs, you can try to counter the mood debuff by making sure they have a few positive mood buffs. Fine meals, impressive bed- and dining rooms, etc. You basically want to avoid their mood getting so low that they'll get a mental break (which can come in various forms, from benign to destructive.)

Giving them access to some drugs is also an option. Though most drugs are addictive, so this requires some care. The way this trait works changed a bit recently, so I don't have a huge amount of hands on with it yet, but I've found just giving them access to beer seems to be the most effective, and even gave the colonist a positive mood buff most of the time. (I just set a drug policy where the colonists are allowed to use beer for recreational purposes. Best not to use the "one per day" option though, as then they're sure to drink one per day, which leads to addiction over time, while if you let them free, they seemed to stay below the addiction limit.)

[~Black Cat~ [EH]]

Most of the time I ignore the chemical interest people(or kill them if they cause too much trouble).

But if you want to make drugs you need to research making drugs, plant some and keep a production going with a drug workbench, it's fun to make it sometimes, but read the wiki because each drug has different effects and drug addiction is a thing so you need to know what you are getting into(just like in the real world).

If you end up doing it I would advise to don't let people take drugs when you get the first harvest. Save it and when the second one is almost ready, enable it in the drug policy so you don't fall short of stock and suffer with breakdowns because sometimes colonists can get drug binges(same as food). And always limit the intake in the policy so they don't go too crazy on them.

[Rianith]

If you are a newcomer to the game, then having a potential junkie as one of your founder colonists is hard work, and he may well bring about your early downfall, but persevere,
it's not the worst flaw, just look after him,
and second game, avoid any colonists with chemical interests or addictions.
Much easier to handle when you've got more understanding of all the other basic stuff.

[KPJFormat]

I assign the colonists to take no drugs except penoxicycline every 5 days. For people with chemical interest or fascination I'll manually get them to smoke a joint and drink some psychite tea before bed every few days.

To make joints you have to grow smokeleaf (place growing zone, select crop to be smokeleaf), then roll them at a crafting spot (place a crafting spot and make a bill for make smokeleaf joints; set to 'drop on floor' instead of 'take to best stockpile', and set to forever. For added efficiency make a storage zone that is the preferred place for smokeleaf right beside the crafting spot for quick rolling). Psychite tea is similar but if you aren't tribal you need to research it, then you make it at the stove after it's harvested.

With more research you can get more drug options but I find them to be too dangerous as far as addiction goes. Addicts are hard to deal with as even if you get them a decent supply their tolerance continues to grow, best way to deal with addicted colonists is to capture them until they go through withdrawal. Psychite tea and smokeleaf joints are not very addictive, I don't think I've seen an addiction to those used sparingly but I haven't looked into whether that's a possibility. Smokeleaf joints can cause cancer if used too much.

[Foedreyn]

You can luck out and also have some ambrosia sprout just for him, could save you the trouble of making drugs for him lol.

[Gamefever]

With Chemical fasination,

Its really about creating zones, zones can make it so that your colonists and animals have areas that they are not allowed to enter.

It can prevent a lot of problems with item consumption.

Animals tab has a create zone button, Zones are then laid out in the same area as crops.
Restrict tab should allow you to assign colonist their zone.

From there you just select the colonist now and then to force them to use an item in a restricted zone when they need to.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by phototropic:

You can luck out and also have some ambrosia sprout just for him, could save you the trouble of making drugs for him lol.

If this does happen, I recommend creating a Growing zone underneath the Ambrosia, and then select that field and turn off Allow Sowing. That way they'll harvest the Ambrosia when it's ready, same as any other farm crop.

[Qiox]

Penox also satisfies the chemical hunger and has the added benifit of preventing disease, and does not cause addiction.

[Hades]

Wow, I did not know that penox satisifes chemical hunger... gotta try that now.

Some pro tips on handling chemical fascinations:

1. In the Assign tab, I make my chemical fascination pawns teetotaller so addictions are less likely to get triggered (and dealing with the withdrawal symptoms debuffs)

2. I make a small room where all the hard drugs are located, and I have a single stack of wood outside it. If any pawn breaks (including chem fascination on an addiciton) I quickly build a wall to stop them getting into the drug room. Once the go back to normal I deconstruct the wall. Just make whatever pawn is closest to the drug room a construct skill to get the wall built to intercept the addicted pawn.

[The Nut Champ]

i find it effective to have them drink/smoke psychite/smokeleaf every 3 days and beer every 2 days i put this on a scheduled consumption and i restrict them from using those during recreation to avoid addictions.

[Swirler]

Pawn causing problem?
Remove pawn.

Repeat as desired.

It's why you'll hear a lot of people complain about having to reroll colonist traits in the world creation screen. It's because traits like chemical interest/pyro and various health disabilities exist, which effectively gimp your early game playthrough and slows gameplay down as you try to figure out how to deal with the suddenly mental breaking pawns during a raid.

Tried and tested, remove pawn.

Once your colony is up to say, mid-game and you have a nice supply of everything and a good number of fighters to pick up the slack during raids you can afford to take on chemical interest/gourmand trait pawns who would otherwise be totally unusable.

Pyro is always unusable now they have a higher chance to burn your valuable items. Instant remove.
Before the recent updates even before release you could manage their mental breaks with a little babysitting.
But their increased odds of rushing to an ammo stockpile and sudokuing themselves means they're instant remove/imprison/harvest/sell/delete from world.