Heya Ash -
I'm Slither. I want to start by saying that, as the person who coded the system you're discussing, I agree with a fair amount of your points. A search of the website with our handy search feature would show you a bunch of places where we discuss improvements that we have/plan to make to this system.
Many of these scripts were written by players, in the past. They were written at a time when we were seeing tons of people taking drugs for the benefits and then completely ignoring the side effects and emotes that were visible to only them. As a community we agreed that it would be better to make not taking drugs when you were addicted, a really visible and horrible thing. It was a big correction, at the time.
These are super drugs after all, developed and produced by mega-corps that don't have to obey basically any laws. Think Big Tobacco times 1000. They want you addicted and so they make the drugs as addictive as possible.
That being said, a bit of research like I pointed to early, will show that generally, as a staff and as a community we think that we went prettttty overboard with some of the scripts. Heck, the ones you're seeing are the toned down ones we rolled out a while back that don't even have you blatantly attacking everyone around you when you want a fix.
As was mentioned earlier by someone else, we do have plans and some initial code and scripts for a system that handles drug addiction and drug interactions in a way that we think will be much better. Alas, as was also mentioned, there are only a few coders, and the system is complex enough that a junior coder won't be able to manage it. So it means a senior coder, which means me, or Johnny. Johnny is busy with real life things, and I have a real job and also spend a lot of my free time doing free technical work for local charities.
The time I have left is split pretty evenly between doing things only a senior admin can do, fixing bugs, and honestly, dealing with posts/emails/xhelps like this.
Now, all that being said... you came in pretty hot with your post. You're playing a free game, made and maintained by volunteers. This isn't Steam. You didn't pay for a game and then not get what you paid for.
If you look at our Ideas section, you can see we take player feedback very seriously, and encourage it often. If you want to be a part of our community, and offer feedback, we welcome that. But you need to do it with respect, and not lash out just because you don't like the way something in the game works. That, is not welcome here.
Hope this clears some things up for you, and others who find this post!
-- Slither
