A boring hum for soundtrack, and all the graphics are in gray?

Not that that might send the wrong message to the kids or anything :-)

Great ideas, thanx all! I was thinking of boredom myself, things slow down, nothing happens, grayscale is nice. I also like the "hang over", however I think its bad to alter the controls to achieve that, you'll allways feel cheated.. how to do that properly? Then when the game is finally over, I like the realization it was all just a halucination!

Again, thanx for the input, really helps me!

Common sense.

If the character is not high, he gets his common sense back, so when the player tries to drive fast he can't (that wouldn't be prudent), and stuff like that. His personality stops him from doing the crazy things he needs to do in order to score high points and advance in the game.

Then you can "reward" the drug use in the game without sending a bad message.

shmoove

Blackouts (screen goes black) or nodding off to sleep (camera simulates eyes closing).

Yeah, make it really boring and cut any music that was playing. Grayscale sounds good too.

This sounds like an awesome idea for a game, hope you implement it well because it would be something I'd love to play.

of course the character also just simple "believed in" doing drugs ... in the same way that other peopel believe in going to work on time, getting good grades, or going to church ...

so it's not purely an "addiction" kinda thing, as it is a habit / pattern / disposision kinda thing in many cases (like why people drink when they go to a bar - even if they don't at other times).

the idea of making the normal world super boring is really cool ... but another possibility is just making the normal world TOTALLY normal ... make the car accelerate slow like a real (standard) car ... make driving off the road cause bad accidents and mortal injury ... make getting arrested cause you to be harassed, put in the back of a police car, and taken to the drunk tank to sit for 4 hours (now anyone who thinks being in a totally normal first person shooter simulation of a standard jail drunk tank isn't boring, has never been there) ... and of course let the restart "fresh" (as in freshly drugged in a random location) whenver they get bored of the game ...

so like a real drug user in many cases, they just get a "hit" cause they'd rather be doing that than what they would otherwise be doing.

And in "drug mode" you of coruse have all sorts of fun / weird stuff. I'm sure you've already thought of strange controls, wierd perceptions, time distortion, etc ...

and you can be lienient on the drug version for things like wrecks and cops ... like in the drug version, many wrecks just leave you dazed walking around the side of a road, (the game blacks, comes back, and your character is a mile down the road from where his car was wrecked - or he's in the nearby bushed playing with a dog, or in an ally pissing) ...

and getting arrested can be fun, cause it can just fly through the whole process with cool music, psycadelic effects, and funny voices talking to you ...

What I would do would be to have the driver actually fall asleep or keep looking away from the road when they're not on drugs.

Or you get crap scores for driving sober. The more wasted you are, the higher your score multiplier, but you have to be careful how much you do so that you don't go comatose. At that point it's a careful balance between how high you can get and how well you can drive.