Angry Planet - From Vikings to Zombies: A History of Drug Use in the Military

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

Why do soldiers fight? Maybe it’s patriotism. Maybe it’s comradeship. Maybe it’s fear of their own side.Or maybe it’s the drugs.For as long as there have been people, there have been people trying to get high. It’s no different in warfare. Fighters have used drugs to make themselves bloodier, stronger, more able to go without sleep. Lukasz Kamienski, author of "Shooting Up: A Short History of Drugs and War," joins us.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Intoxicants quite often enable better training, better fighting, and also better killing. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields.

And I'm Matthew Galt. Why do soldiers fight? Maybe it's patriotism. Maybe it's comradeship. Maybe it's fear of their own side. Or maybe it's the drugs. For as long as there have been people, there have been people trying to get high. It's no different in warfare. Fighters have used drugs to make themselves bloodier, stronger, more able to go with. without sleep. And for all those reasons, the people calling the shots have given them the drugs. Lukash Kamyanski, author of Shooting Up, a History of Drugs in Warfare, joins us to talk about this underreported side of warfare. So, hi, Lukash. How are you?

Hello. I'm very well. Thank you. Do you think you can give us a very brief summary of how drugs are used in war? What are they used for? When we look at the effects of drugs, you'll see that most of them, you'll see that most of them, are highly desirable for increasing military effectiveness, especially stimulants help to provide what every military organization has tried to achieve, basically for training. So stimulants enhance performance, they reduce stress,

can eliminate hunger, fuel courage, depressants can also induce numbness. So from the military point of view, intoxicants quite often enable better training, better fighting, and also better killing. There are basically few purposes that drugs have been used throughout the centuries in war. And I would say that firstly, it's to keep personal awake and alert, and hence also often alive. So in short, drugs, stimulants are performance enhancers. Secondly, drugs has also been used to inspire courage and provide relief from the stress of battle.

Also, drinking and dragging rituals helped soldiers bond and create trust, therefore primary group relations, the Shakespearean bond of brothers, if you like. And trust and those in-group bones are crucial for group co-heaval. motivation and also good performance. Then something which is very important from the individual level, that is to say individual soldier, intoxicants enabled warriors to cope with the traumas of war, with the horrors of combat.

So drug use was quite often simply a response to hardships and horrors of combat. And finally, something that may often be overlooked, is quite common and often, drugs were often taken to kill boredom. Soldiers reached for intoxicants because they simply had not much else to do. Let's keep in mind that monotony is one of the features of modern war, particularly vivid, for instance, in Vietnam. There's a passage in an outstanding war memoir by Philip Caputo, a rumor of war which goes something like that, that nine-tenths of war is waiting around for the remaining one tenth to happen. So in some, drugs have been used for different purposes

in order to make units more ready and more effective for combat. On the other hand, there were also some attempts and ideas of using drugs as a weapon of war in a more offensive way. The idea was to either subvert the enemy by supplying drugs to undermine the fighting power and morality, both of the enemy troops and its society, but also to incapacitate by using a kind of non-lethal psychochemical weapons. You said building comradeship? I'm wondering, do you mean the same thing as a bunch of people in a – I'm thinking of like a – Viking, you know, hall where everybody's getting drunk together and having a good time. Is that the kind of bonding that you were talking about?

That's right. That's right. I mean, you know better your companions and you can trust them more. And it's a kind of icebreaker as well. So this kind of group rituals that can help people from different backgrounds and different stories come together and form a unit. which is important at the very low level of military organization, like Platoon, I say. In the ancient world, who used drugs?

Was it everyone if you include, let's say, wine and beer as drugs? Well, that's a tricky question because we do not know much about the use of intoxicants by airy warriors. There are no records, obviously. There are only myths, legends, and works of literature. So much of our knowledge can only be speculative. However, there are some clues, okay, that opium and alcohol and toxic mushrooms, some potent herbs, indeed found their way to the pre-modern battlefield. And I guess the very first reference to the opium poppy in Greek literature occurs in Homer's epics.

There is this passage in the Odyssey describing how grief and sorrow for companions who died in that region were drowned by or the drink of oblivion. The guess is that it was opium dissolved in wine, kind of mixture that later became to be known as Laudanum and was invented by Paracelsus. So in a word, the warriors, the ancient warriors, use intoxicants, but not on the exclusive way. I mean, those substances were in common almost everyday use within the societies, and they also found a way to the battlefield. However, depending on the region and society, there were some substances that were perceived. as special or divine and where only their use was only limited to the social elites, including the warriors, which was the case, for instance, with co-coliffs in the Inca empire or toxic mushrooms in the Siberia, but also perhaps in the Nordic countries.

What about the Wormacht? The Nazis ran on speed, right? They took a lot of meth. That's right. In fact, The Nazis were those who pioneered the whole scale and, let's say, systematic military doping. So what used to be a kind of chaotic or unorganized becomes a very part of the war machine with the Nazi introduction of methamphetamine. The pill that was in use was called perviting. It was 3 milligrams of methamphetamine produced by the Berlin-based pharmaceutical company, Temler and Verke, was introduced to the market in 1938.

Following the initial experiments with Pervitin on students and also some unauthorized experiments conducted by German soldiers, the Perviter. Pervitin was introduced as a cold assault pill. It was highly institutionalized because in April 1940, the army's commander of the in chief, Walter von Browchich issued the so-called stimulant decree, which set up the optimal doses and frequencies of perviting. and for example it's recommended one tablet of per vitin per day and two tablets at night, if necessary, another one or two tablets after three or four hours.

So the stimulant decree is the very beginning of formal administration of methamphetamine in the German military. The decree is sent out to more than a thousand medical officers. And in fact, between April and December 1939, the Temler-Verker company supplied the German military with something like 29 million perviting pills. Many of those tablets were used experimentally during the campaign against Poland in September 1939, which is something that you will not read in history textbooks and the fact which is completely unknown in my home country, Poland. And after the drug proved useful, it helped the German soldiers keep going for hours and days non-stop.

Those decree was introduced and at the peak of Blitzkriek in spring 1940, German troops were regularly being issued Pervitian. During the Blitzkriek in Europe, some 35 million pills were consumed. So, yes, in a way, Blitzkriek was significantly fueled by Pervitian. It was believed to give soldiers nearly superhuman ability. And in fact, one can think how was it possible? that, for instance, a tank unit could move for two or three days nonstop, or an infantryman could make 1,600 kilometers a day.

The army on meth could fight longer with little rest. This is quite well described by Norman Oller, the German writer in his recent book, Blitz on the history of drugs in the third wave. Overall, it's estimated that during the Second World War, the German armed forces consumed some 200 million methamphetamine pills. It's an estimate, right? What about the Allies? The Allies, yes. The Third Reich was the first to introduce this kind of deliberate military doping, but soon Britain, the U.S., and also Japan followed suit.

And they also began administering methamphetamines to their troops. It was methamphetamine in Japan and amphetamine in Britain and the United States. So the British soldiers, mostly pilots, consumed about 72 million benzodiain amphetamine tablets. When it comes to the American war effort, it's very difficult to say. because what we know is the value of government contracts. We have the drug manufacturer, Smith, Klein and French company. Those contracts amounted to almost $900,000. But what we do not know is the government procurement price,

which was definitely, certainly much lower than the market one. So the American soldiers used between 2,500 and 3,000. 500 million benzate-draint pills during the Second World War, pills commonly known as Venice. When it comes to Japan, the emperor's army handed out tablets known as Nekomo Yo, which is to say, Katzai's, and perhaps the most famous amphetamine consumers in the Japanese armed forces were Kamikaze, who departing for their final flight, were not only given a ship. shot of rice wine, sake, but also methamphetamine mixed with powdered, green tea, tablets known as Tokuyo. What about side effects? I mean, none of these drugs really are magic, right?

That's right. And what happened in the war was that the guidances on the use of amphetamines were hardly met. They were quite liberally dispensed and used. And of course there are some repercussions to prolong it and excessive use. More painful when it comes to methamphetamine, less when it comes to amphetamine, but still, so we've got mood swings and depression. There can be when overdosed this amphetamine psychosis, which includes paranoia, hallucinations, delusional thinking. Of course, there are some physical side effects like high blood pressure, and with continual use of amphetamins, the physical collapse can come within days. So in a way, the most challenging was the amphetamine hungover.

So a soldier taking a drug was perfectly fit, but after the drug's effects faded away, he had to rest and was dysfunctional unless he continued taking the drug, which was quite severe in the opening days of the Blitzkriek for the German military. Many instances of undesired effects were recorded, which apparently led the authorities to introduce a more cautious and strict policy on the administration of methamphetamine. All right, well, that covers World War II,

but soldiers don't stop using drugs after World War II. I think what sticks in most people's mind is American drug use during Vietnam, especially more downers like heroin, marijuana, that kind of thing. Can you speak to that? I think this is more about in line with the escapism that you were talking about. The use of stimulants didn't end up.

with the Second World War. And when it comes to the Korean War, the Americans continued to boost their troops and the administration of dextra amphetamine became commonplace. So unsurprisingly, when we jump to the Vietnam War, we'll see a kind of an overall pharmacological war with drugs both prescribed and self-prescribed by soldiers.

So apart from stimulants issued by the military, which was basically dextramphetamine, American soldiers were heavily self-medicating themselves with any intoxicant that they could found. And Vietnam was a real drug paradise. The most popular intoxicant of war, non-alcoholic intoxicant of war, was marijuana. However, because of the media hype that generated back home in the late 1960s, the military felt pressure to take some anti-Marina-Oana actions. So the story went that we are not winning the war. We are doing not our best because our soldiers are doping. So let's do something with this.

The military introduced controls and arrests and confiscations and so on and so on, which didn't result an overall decrease of drug use, but in soldiers changing the substance. So they moved to heroin, heroin, which was very pure, the one available in Vietnam. It was 194, 98% pure. It was called white snow. And it was apparently produced in the laboratories set up in Vietnam, operated also by the Chinese chemists.

The idea was to supply American soldiers with as much heroin as possible and at the end undermine their fighting capabilities. There are official estimates that say that half of men who did drugs in Vietnam took heroin and opium. And overall, and these are Department of Defense features, while in 1968 some 50% of soldiers in Vietnam took drugs in 1973, the year of U.S. withdrawal. all this jumped to 70%. And the question is how to explain such a high rate of drug use and the most reasonable answer is, I guess, that drugs helped soldiers to bear the burden of the war,

cope with stress and trauma and the feeling of senselessness of the conflict, which points towards the contextual reasons of heroin use. In fact, the research conducted on the veterans back home in the 1970s revealed that most of the soldiers, the veterans who used heroin in Vietnam, stopped using the drug back home. And the overall rate came back to the normal 10% of the population,

of the military population. It's interesting that people didn't use it when they came home. Well, the other story, a different story, is the rise of drug use afterwards among those veterans who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. But it's often the case that they start taking again because they cannot cope with war trauma. There's no psychocratic help. and the condition as such is not recognized as the medical condition until 1980 as the PTSD. So there is no help. They have to help themselves, and so they turn to alcohol and drugs. But there is no direct connection between, you know, being in war and then, you know, being addicted or having heroin habit.

What's going on today, you know, is our modern army still using these drugs? Is it mostly uppers? What about the Air Force? The modern regular armed forces, it's only the U.S. military that allows for controlled pharmacology-assisted combat or pharmacological management of fatigue. And this practice is limited to pilots only and perhaps special forces. As for the present day,

US fighter and bomber pilots embarking on missions, there are longer than eight hours for one-man flights, or exceeding 12 hours for two-person cruise, can each time, well, if all required procedures are met, and those procedures are quite complicated and well prepared, can each time obtain 10 milligrams of dexed acidrine pills, so that is to say dextramphetamine. I don't want to get into the details because, you know, it's quite complicated. It's only for a special particular mission or operation. It requires the approval not only from the wing commander, but also from sergeron, etc., etc. Anyway, it's up to the pilots, whether they decide to take pill or not.

So they keep it into the cockpits and it's up to them whether they decide to reach for pharmacological support. Usually the drug is taken after the mission was accomplished on their way back. Let's keep in mind that flight services can be extremely long, like 30 hours or more. and the most risky part of the mission is coming back, return, and the landing maneuver. That's why the suggestions or guidances are for taking those drugs, for taking dextronphetamines, continuously once a pilot decides to take the first pill until the mission is accomplished. The pills are known among pilots of go-pills. They've been quite extensively used during the Gulf War, 1990, 1991.

It's been reported that 15 or 17% of pilots during Operation Desert Storm regularly flu on Go pills. And there were some unions that most pilots used pharmacological support, which generated kind of anxiety among commanders. those pills may be habit-forming and the pilots may be overusing them. There was some media interest. So in 1991, after the Gulf War, the chief of the Air Force introduced the ban on the go pills. And this gap in the use of dextramphetamine by US Air Force lasted in 1996. The practice was reintroduced with the beginning.

of operations during the Balkan War. So overall, historically speaking, the practice of using gopills was very well, has been very well established in the US military back to the 1950s and 60s with a very short period of discontinuity in the 1990s. There is another drug that has been introduced in 2003 because, you know, there is this confusion and more about issuing substances that are controlled drugs, officially dextramphetamine is a schedule two controlled drug. So you are not allowed to take it without medical prescription, right? And it might be kind of uneasy for the military to say that what civilian pilots are not allowed

to and forbidden the military pilots are encouraged to do. So the military is, looking for safer and non-amphetamine stimulant drugs. One of them is modafinil. It's marketed in the US as ProVigel and under many other different trademarks. It's actually not a new drug because it was discovered in 1970s in France, but it's a new class of drug. It's an eugoric psychostimulant, which means it's stimulant. without having all this bad side effects, which are usually caused by amphetamine.

And by the way, Modafinil, it's a very common lifestyle, smart drug in the societies, in the Western societies. 90% of the sale of Probegill is off-label. So as I said, officially, the US military is the only armed force that allows for the use of stimulants. However, we know that the Chinese army is reported. to introduce its own stimulant. It's known in the West as Night Eagle. If media reports are to be believed,

it is set to turn Chinese soldiers into night olds and able to stay awake for even up to 72 hours, which is kind of mind-blowing. There are also some speculations about the Russians. The Russian military is perhaps using neutropics. The drugs that are banned in sports are stopping, but have been quite popular in Russia.

Actually, at Russian pharmacies, there are plenty of quite easily available neutropics. They were originally developed for astronauts, back in the 1960s and 70s. They were used by the Red Army in the Afghan War, back in the 1980s, and are perhaps used by Russian Special Force Units today or rapid response units emergency situations. Those drugs are under different names, but most popular are Pentropil or Metroprode. Of course, this is unofficial because officially we have no data about the Russian military using any kind of intoxicants.

so far as the regular forces are concerned, because the irregular militants are an adverse story. Do you mean terrorists, or do you mean, yeah, actually, what do you mean? Non-national, non-regular forces, be it terrorists, insurgents, militias, child soldiers, so on and so forth. It appears that the use of intoxicants, especially by non-Western irregular, has become an inherent feature of the phenomenon. And there are plenty of examples. For example, Daesh, the Islamic State, had this substance of choice called Kaptagon, which is a powerful stimulant, known as fentanyl. It's after entering the body and after digestion, it splits into amphetamine and a caffeine-like stimulant called teophyllin. So it's basically the amphetamine-like stimulant.

Invented in the early 1960s became a lifestyle drug in the Middle East, but in the mid-1980s, it was recommended by the World Health Organization. to be removed from the prescription sale because of its side effects and habit-forming properties. Yet, it's the main lifestyle drug in the Middle East. So, Caphtagon was reported to be used in a very liberal way by ISIS fighters. The jihadists fighters have been reported to consume it provasively, which was seen, as one of the explanations of their savage and brutal behavior. It's also known that they've been taking opioid painkillers and hashish as well as cocaine and heroin. But I would be careful to conclude that it's only or it's mainly psychostimulants that make them into fierce fighters.

I would say that it's both jihad and psychostimulans, too powerful intoxicants that turn them into murderous and savage fighters. So fueled by captagon, they continued fighting, which was astonishing even after they were gravely wounded, so they kept going even being seriously injured. And this is precisely also what the US Marines experienced in the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004. So the insurgents they engaged with were, as we now know, heavily doped on amphetamines and cocaine. And they continued fighting despite getting severe injuries.

So when the standard firing procedure to aim at the body failed, the Marines were ordered to refocus on headshots, and then the tactics became more successful, which reminds his guides on the methods of fighting zombies, that you can kill zombie only by destroying its head. Apparently, jihadist fighters on captagon were quite often, referred to us zombies. However, let's keep in mind that, you know, the experience of fighting with fierce, irregular enemy who is pumped up on drugs is hardly new. When we look back to history,

we'll see the pirates of the South China Sea, who traditionally dose themselves with marijuana before attacking European ships, perhaps overriding emotional stress. When we look at the Anglo-Zulu war in 1879, we see great surprise, great tactical surprise experienced by the British, who didn't expect to encounter extremely determined enemy. Zulus fought with real fury and fanaticism. Of course, they were traditional belligerent warriors, but what made them truly furious fearless, fearless was not only tradition, but also pharmacopoeia. Their military doctors or shamans provided them with various herbs to eat, drink, inhale,

such as Daga, which is the South African variety of cannabis. Quite interesting, though, because it has a stimulating effect instead of depressing. they had medicated beer, perhaps also consumed magic mushroom known as Amanita Muscaria or fly agraric, which is a powerful stimulant. So the pharmacopoeia available for the Zulus was very rich. Back to the present times, the non-Western irregular, as I said, intoxicants and intoxications seem to have become inherent to terrorism in one way or another. And just to give you two further examples, the Chechens, who in September 2009 attacked and ceased Russian school in Vyazlan,

were heavy heroin and morphine users. Since the siege lasted for three days, they ran out of supplies, suffered from withdrawal symptoms, and turned extremely, extremely ruffles, killing almost 200 children at the end. In another example, the Pakistani-Lashya Taiba terrorist who conducted a series of attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 were found out to being high on cocaine and steroids. And this perhaps enabled them to hold out against Indian special forces for nearly 60 hours

with little foot and rest. So in a way, we are experiencing today the enemy who is making use of intoxicants, mostly stimulants, to compensate for the lack of better equipment or training. But let's keep in mind that this practice shouldn't be surprising because the Western regular militaries have been doing it for centuries. Lukash Kamyanski,

thank you so much for taking us through this. You went all the way from Vikings to Zombies. I think that's the title of the episode, from Vikings to Zombies, a history of drug use in the military. That's great. Thanks for listening to this week's show. If you enjoyed it, let the world know

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