This is Your Brain on Drugs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

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?"

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 destroy everything in the kitchen, with each thing 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?"

The phrase, "this is your brain on drugs", was quickly popularised by teenagers and young adults during the period that these PSAs were broadcast.

Its use in the first PSA was also sampled in the parody song, 'I Can't Watch This', by 'Weird Al' Yankovic on his 1992 album titled Off The Deep End (alongside other US television advertising slogans from the time, such as "I've fallen and I can't get up").
It was also ridiculed by stand-up comedian & satirist Bill Hicks, as can be heard in his live performance on Relentless (album).
On the sitcom Married With Children, in the episode "What Goes Around Comes Around", Al takes an egg, says "This is your brain", then says "This is your brain on marriage", drops it on the ground, and asks, "Any questions?"
A poster produced in the early 1990s called "Famous Brains on Drugs" parodied the concept by having eggs appear in the frying pan in forms intended to remind the viewer of certain people. For instance, a pan labeled "Saddam Hussein" had an egg with a crosshair over it, and a pan labeled "Milli Vanilli" contained a box of imitation eggs.
The film sequel Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) also spoofed the original PSA by having Johnny Depp (whose acting career began with A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the first film in series) perform the skit, only to be hit in the face with the frying pan by the character Freddy Krueger.
Ska band Mustard Plug recorded a song entitled "Brain on Ska" on their 1993 album Big Daddy Multitude. Its chorus sings, "This is your brain/this is your brain on ska!"
The second PSA was satirized in the premiere episode, 'Junk In The Trunk', of the animated television show Robot Chicken, for which Cook reprised her role. In this one, instead of merely smashing plates and glass objects in the kitchen, she goes crazy with the pan, hitting old women, animals, passers-by, and, eventually, herself, screaming about consequences that are actually entirely unrelated to taking drugs ("And your boyfriend gives you Herpes simplex A!") or only marginally possible consequences ("And you get a unicorn tattoo on your left ass-cheek that was supposed to be a bitchin' firebird but you were too stoned out at the time to notice!")
The movie Scary Movie 2 also features a parody of the skit.
It also features parodies in form of T-shirts, such as versions based on The Simpsons ("This is your brain on donuts, showing a X-ray of Homer Simpson's head) and the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry (shirts targeted to both alliegiances of the famed rivalry), among others.
The title of the best-selling book, "This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession" (Dutton/Penguin, 2006) by Daniel Levitin was a nod to the first PSA.