Vampirism and Medication

[InfectedFox]

I tried searching through the rest of this subforum, but I didn't find any discussion of this aspect of the novel. After Eli feeds on the older woman who had cancer, from her perspective, she feels the pain medication and chemo the woman was on.

This is an interesting concept to explore - I was expecting it to come up again when Eli fed on Johan, because he had been huffing glue fumes (it could have been and I'm just misremembering). Outside of the obvious, with illicit drugs and pain meds, what if she were to feed on someone who was on medicinal estrogen or testosterone? Unintentionally receiving gender-affirming medication, basically. I believe it was subtly implied vampires don't need to relieve themselves (when Oskar sees Eli's emasculation and wonders how they pee), so these drugs would just stay in them? Imagine how full of microplastics and toxins modern vampires would be!

I also had the idea of a vampire therapist who consumes therapeutic psychedelics, then lets their patient feed on their blood.

[Siggdalos]

It's not mentioned in regards to Tommy's glue sniffing, but it is mentioned that Eli becomes slightly intoxicated by the alcohol in Lacke's blood (Part Five, "Monday 9 November"). It's possible that Eli was also affected in Tommy's case but that it happened and wore off off-page (there's a gap of several hours between the blood-buying scene and the next time we see the two of them).

I never gave the detail too much thought, personally, but your ideas are interesting. I don't know nearly enough about the IRL science of it to speculate, but it could be fun seeing it explored in detail in a fanfic (or in other original vampire fiction, for that matter).