Innsmouthein is a hallucinogenic toxin produced by the bacterium innsmouth fasces albrechtia native to Planet Innsmouth in Catskills System of Phoenix Sector. Acute innsmouthein toxicity is noted for its persistent causation of disturbing mental imagery and night terrors - up to ninety days from the time of initial exposure. Long-term exposure causes, in many cases, mental illness and paranoia, but perhaps the most drastic symptom is irrevocable damage to developing nervous systems with even minute doses. Innsmouthein can be isolated from crops grown on the planet, and when potentiated by reaction with benzene, the resulting compound - phenylated innsmouthein - is even more potent in short-term toxicity, and an even greater potential for addiction and long-term breakdown. This has led the Republic Health and Safety Administration to assign the drug control code "phi" to the drug and assign its possession, manufacture and distribution as a Schedule I offense.
History
The native microorganisms on Innsmouth were not properly discovered or studied at the time of the colony's original discovery in 2162, and the presence of more habitable worlds made it a low colonization priority. Once colonists finally did set up their first homes on the planet they soon called Van Winkle for the long cryo-sleep they'd need to undergo during its terraforming, their concern was chiefly in infrastructure. When the colonists were awoken and began developing their new world in the late 2300s, a disturbing trend occurred: their children had a bizarrely high occurrence of mental illness. The horrifying nightmares that caused these complexes were of such unearthly and terrible nature that the later generations of colonists showed their gallows humor in renaming the planet after the titular hamlet of H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
The stigma of being an Innsmouthian found root after a number of well-intentioned aid programs to raise money for care of the afflicted backfired, showing Phoenix Sector (and later the whole Republic, after the advent of CoreNet) images of hospital wards full of mumbling, trembling people whose everyday life served as a bracing reminder of how fragile humans could be.
As such, Innsmouth was a pariah for many years until people - mostly children - off-world began showing signs of 'Innsmouth disease' sometime in the mid-2470s. It wasn't until 2483 that the source was discovered - a dormant bacterium in the Innsmouth soil, f. albrechtia, was contaminating virtually all parts of the planet's soil and the Terran crops the colonists exported and producing a neurotoxin. Later clinical trials established that this compound - innsmouthein - was the root cause of Innsmouth disease.
