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Legal status[edit]

Adrenochrome is unscheduled by the Controlled Substances Act in the United States. It is not an approved drug product by the Food and Drug Administration, and if produced as a dietary supplement it must comply with Good manufacturing practice.^[9]

Author Hunter S. Thompson mentioned adrenochrome in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The adrenochrome scene also appears in the novel's film adaptation. In the DVD commentary, director Terry Gilliam admits that his and Thompson's portrayal is a fictional exaggeration. In fact, Gilliam insists that the drug is entirely fictional and seems unaware of the existence of a substance with even a similar name. Hunter S. Thompson also mentions adrenochrome in his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. In the footnotes in chapter April, page 140 he says, "It was sometime after midnight in a ratty hotel room and my memory of the conversation is haze, due to massive ingestion of booze, fatback, and forty cc's of adrenochrome."
The harvesting of an adrenal gland from a live victim to obtain adrenochrome for drug abuse is a plot feature in the first episode "Whom the Gods would Destroy", of Series 1 of the British TV series Lewis (2008).^[10]
In Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, "drencrom" (presumably the Nadsat term for adrenochrome) is listed as one of the potential drugs that can be added to Moloko Plus (milk laced with a drug of the consumer's choice) at the Korova Milk Bar.
In Fear The Walking Dead season 3 episode 14, "During the show, Nick and Troy took a very strange drug. It was described as an actual human brain stem that contained chemicals from the adrenal gland."^[11]