There’s been a lot of talk over the years about performance enhancing drugs and what their use stands to mean for competitive sports.

As a sideline thought to the main action, I’ve also realized that the majority of performance enhancing drugs would be entirely useless during the context of the average bridge game – and most of them are equally bizarre to try and imagine.

I recently discovered on reading the story from the start that James Bond was – for lack of a better term – high for the bridge game during Hugo Drax. The book says as much, and plainly.

It worked great for fictitious effect, but it wouldn’t have translated nearly as well to a real bridge game.

Drugs would never take off around the bridge table. At least not these…

Methamphetamine

If news headlines from all over the world are to be believed, methamphetamine doesn’t make anyone smarter. What it can do is make someone slightly more awake (though not necessarily alert) and far more aggressive.

Eventually, any capacity for rational thought goes out the window and I doubt anyone who was high enough would be able to figure out what the card deck was for: Instead, they might try to eat the convention cards when it’s their turn to bid.

Cocaine

If there’s one thing I know about cocaine, it’s everything I saw in the movie Blow starring Johnny Depp. And that’s about it. I also happen to know that it was probably bigger a few decades ago in the times of louder wallpaper than it is today.

It’s one more drug that I imagine wouldn’t be helpful at the bridge table, either.

It’s on the list of performance enhancing drugs. I’ll admit that it might, at least physiologically, turn someone into a faster runner for a short sprint. But it’s not going to make you a safer pilot, and it’s not going to make you a better bridge player.

If anything, the only thing cocaine would allow for would be bad decisions made faster.

(And if you see your bridge partner trying to scrape together lines of powder with their cards while not in play, you might want to find another partner…)

Psychedelic Mushrooms

I’ve always loved how people call them “psychedelic mushrooms” or “shrooms” in casual conversation, as though you’re somehow going to confuse these with the Denny’s you’re cooking up for breakfast.

Aside from this fact, the use of psychedelics is legal in some parts of the world and highly illegal in others. And it goes without saying that you can’t (and shouldn’t) attempt to take it for things like bridge games, D&D matches or, well, driving.

It’s another drug that you’ll find on the list of banned substance for most sports.

While there’s some research showing promise for some types as a treatment for depression and other conditions, psychedelic mushrooms are another drug that I’d imagine wouldn’t do a thing to help your bridge game.

You might, however, end up with the White Rabbit as your bridge partner, playing against Tweedledum and Tweedledee. But would mushrooms make you win? I’d say I doubt it.