Due to Brad's history of Joy and Alcohol abuse, if Brad doesn't take Joy for a period of time, he will suffer from withdrawal and suffer from decreased ability in battle. If Brad has recently taken Joy and is under the effects of it, this Withdrawal will be ignored.
The way this works is that while Brad can walk around, a timer ticks away every 300 frames (this is 5 seconds as the game runs at 60 fps) and adds to an addiction counter. Once the counter reaches a specified threshold, there is a 50/50 chance Brad will suffer from Withdrawal. This timer then resets to 0.
- This tick happens every 300 frames.
- It is not frozen by dialogue.
- The timer resets when leaving an area, meaning that you can technically never get withdrawal if you enter a room every 5 seconds.
Once obtained, Withdrawal can only be removed by taking joy, resting or fighting 20 - 30 turns of battle.
As the game goes on, this level of addiction gets worse and Brad will feel the effects of withdrawal more frequently. There are three levels of addiction, tied to the beginning of each area. As the timer can reset, the times below are minimum and apply if you stay in the same area for the duration.
| Area | Tick Threshold | Minimum time |
|---|---|---|
| Area 1 | 50 | 250 Seconds - 4 minutes~ |
| Area 2 | 40 | 192 Seconds - 3 minutes~ |
| Area 3 | 25 | 125 Seconds - 2 minutes~ |
There is also another 50/50 roll for a group of specific party members to also get Withdrawal all at the same time, giving a 25% chance that they will all get withdrawal at the same time. Along with Brad, the following party members have a 50% chance to become Withdrawn:
Bug: The code to deal with party withdrawal was supposed to roll another 50% chance for another group of party members to become withdrawn, however, the variable is never set correctly and so only the above are ever affected. The supposed party members were:
As of Definitive Edition, these party members suffer Withdrawal as normal.
Trivia[]
- Joy Addiction plays a lot like homesickness status effect in EarthBound, where Ness, the main character, will suffer from homesickness by random.