This Is Your Brain on Drugs

This Is Your Brain on Drugs was a large-scale US anti-narcotics campaign by Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) launched in 1987, that used two televised public service announcements (PSAs) and a related poster campaign.^[1]

1987 version

The first PSA, from 1987, showed a man who held up an egg and said, "This is your brain," before picking up a frying pan and adding, "This is drugs." He then cracks open the egg, fries the contents, and says, "This is your brain on drugs." Finally he looks up at the camera and asks, "Any questions?" A shorter version of this, simply showing a close-up of an egg dropping into a frying pan, was used a few years later. ^[2]

The PSA was so popular that Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare spoofed the PSA with Johnny Depp. The PSA goes on as normal until Robert Englund (Who plays Freddy Krueger) hits Johnny with the frying pan and says "Looks like a frying pan and some eggs to me"

1998 version

The second PSA, from 1998, featured actress Rachael Leigh Cook, who, as before, holds up an egg and says, "this is your brain", before lifting up a frying pan with the words, "this is heroin", after which she places the egg on a kitchen counter - "this is what happens to your brain after snorting heroin" - and slams the pan down on it. She lifts the pan back up, saying, "and this is what your body goes through", in reference to the remnants of the egg now dripping from the bottom of the pan and down her arm. She then says, "It's not over yet" and proceeds to smash everything in the kitchen with the frying pan, each time saying, "and this is what your family goes through", "and your friends", et cetera. She finally drops the pan on the counter of the now-wrecked kitchen, and says, "Any questions?"^[3]

Robot Chicken Version

Basically the same as the 1998 one but as she starts smashing the house up (Including her cat and her Grandma), she then heads outside and begins smashing up cars and trash cans while talking about getting "a stupid tattoo of a unicorn on your left asscheek that was supposed to be a bitching firebird, but you were too strung out to notice at the time". She then picks up a puppy and hits it over a house with the pan. The police show up to try and calm her down, they tackle her, but she overpowers them with the frying pan. Suddenly she ends up on the side of a building, where she finally stops and says "Any questions" in a more aggressive way than in the commercial, as a bunch of people watch her from below. She then hits herself in the face with the frying pan, causing herself to fly off the side of the building.

Impact

TV Guide went on to name it as one of the top one hundred television advertisements ever.^[4] Cult Internet comedian Nostalgia Critic poked fun at both advertisements in his Top 11 Nostalgic Drug PSAs video. In response to the girl destroying the kitchen, he answers the question by asking one of his own: "Yeah what the hell kind of drugs are you on?!"

Bill Hicks referred to it as 'that damn egg commercial' in his show Relentless, saying: "I've seen a lot of weird shit on drugs, I have never ever ever ever ever looked at an egg and thought it was a fucking brain, not once, all right?"

See also

• "Just Say No"
• "I learned it by watching you"
• Public service announcement
• Partnership for a Drug-Free America
• War on Drugs

External links

• The original PSA
• The second version of the "This Is Your Brain On Drugs" ad, featuring Rachael Leigh Cook.
• Official PDFA website
• PDFA Fried Egg Webpage including videos and spoof information

References

1. ^ "PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS". The Museum of Broadcast Communications online archive. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/P/htmlP/publicservic/publicservic.htm. 
2. ^ "The Partnerships "Fried Egg" TV Message". Drugfree.org press release. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America. October 24, 2006. doi:August 13, 2007. http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/About/NewsReleases/Fried_Egg_Message. 
3. ^ "The Partnership's Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Creation of Campaign Advertisements" (press release). National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. January 24, 2005. http://web.archive.org/web/20060114023517/http://www.mediacampaign.org/newsletter/spring98/update-04.html. 
4. ^ CNN report on the commercial