I feel the punkishness of pharmapunk can be found in the Straight Edge Punks a rebellion against the overwhelming usage of drugs and alcohol in punk music culture and concerts. groups making the concious decision to not take the drugs that either level off their emotions or promote unthinking bliss/happiness bringing deciding to be the beauty or ugliness in the world that the rest of society ignores. their rebellions seen in graffiti and protest art splashed across buildings in the dead of night.
One franchise that I think is a little Pharmapunk is Limitless. Bradley Cooper(?) plays a guy that meets another guy that has an experimental drug that supposed to optimize everything about you. After taking it, the protagonist gets his life in order and becomes a genius. Parent corpoation finds out about this and hunts protagonist to find out how it works. There was a season of the series version where another guy gets sucked into the movie protagonist's drama with the corpooration.
I think "Mother Russia bleeds" is a good example of this genre, it's a lot different to the examples in this video, but with the main plotpoint i think it fits!
This makes me think of Synanon, a drug rehabilitation program that started up in the 60’s that went absolutely balls deep into becoming a cult. It was founded by Charles Dederich who became a raging alcoholic as a teenager before weaning himself off with AA and also acid. He liked the decentralized structure of mutual support that AA provided for its members, but saw it as fundamentally flawed due to the lack of a central figure leading everyone. So he started up what would come to be known as Synanon so he could be dictator of a drug rehab program. One of the most fucked up practices he had was called “The Game” where all participants would sit in a circle and hurl insults and other kinds of verbal and emotional abuse at other members (excluding Charles of course) tearing them down so “they can be built up again” The game was mandatory and done 3 times a week. Eventually the authorities went after Charles for running an unlicensed hospital and sentenced him 25 days in jail but this only boosted Synanon’s signal. This caused it to rapidly spiral out of control to the point Charles became obsessed with building a new society and eventually trying to get Synanon legally recognized as a religion. There’s a 2 part series on it on Behind the Bastards, it’s an increasingly unhinged story that’s definitely worth listening to.
@@Steelstriker I’ll be honest I kind of doubt government take over will be on the form of mind altering pills when social media already does that job well enough
