CLASSIC: Is the Military on Drugs?

From the old stories of Viking Berserkers to the rise of the Assassins and more, humanity has spent millennia using drugs as a way to explore spirituality, repair the body -- and, sometimes, to gain an edge in combat. But how prevalent was this practice? How does it continue in the modern day?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So this is a classic episode that we had a
ball with. It's a it's a story that is older
than you might expect. It's the story of super soldiers
of military drugs. You've probably heard accounts of World War

(00:20):
two military members from various countries using methamphetamine, which is true.
You've also probably heard legends about assassins and legends about
Viking berserkers. While this is the episode where we dive
deep into these stories, separating fiction from fact and finding
a few conspiracies on the way. From UFOs to psychic

(00:41):
powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn the stuff they
don't want you to know, and then we welcome back

(01:04):
to the show. My name is Max, my name is Noah,
and call me Ben. You are you that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. We're getting closer
and closer to the end of the year, you guys,
this is the last month of sea. The holiday tree
is up in the office. Looks real pretty, It's a
Christmas tree, but it's very considerate. We also have a

(01:26):
video on the origins of Christmas. If you're wondering, hey,
what does why is there a tree in my house? Now? Uh,
the answers, the answers may interest you, but as we
as we round this out, I don't want to start
start at the top and say that we had some
folks ask us about our Halloween special. We've been doing

(01:46):
some longer projects that you'll begin to see more and
more of in in the coming years. And we're not
done with We're not done with the occasional special, not
the coming years, the coming year when we're gonna we're
gonna get him on before the next several years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
in three years we will from complete our first project

(02:07):
force going seven years from now. But today we are
talking about something that may affect some of our listeners
in a in a personal way. Uh. Today we're talking
about the military and drug use, a specifically drug use
as sanctioned by military forces. So, for instance, not the

(02:31):
illegal use of marijuana or opiates, heroin, et cetera in Vietnam,
for instance, more like the state sponsored use of speed
by several different militaries during World War Two. Using drugs
to enhance one's performance is an ancient, ancient capital letter,

(02:53):
ancient practice, and over the centuries, institutions encourage the use
of all sorts of drugs, from shesht alcohol, to emphetamines,
to opium, and to hallucinogens in experimental settings. It seems
like some of those who just kind of make you
sit there slack jawed and not do much for your

(03:14):
you know, murder, murderous rage. Down mean the we're specifically
talking mostly about uppers in this episode, well that those
are the ones that make sense to me. You know,
they kind of give you that they enhance that fight
or flight mentality and kind of like a tune your
reflexes a little bit, whereas things like marijuana and um,

(03:36):
you know, downers, it seems to me would possibly make
you more sluggish and not necessarily be much help in
combat situations. But I don't know, let's explore Well. It
reminds me of the YouTube video series that I was
super fan of for about a week, which was the
doing x on Salvia series. Have you ever seen that? Yeah? Yeah,

(04:00):
Big Money Salvia. Yeah, we were you and I watched that.
I think Matt you may have introduced me to it.
I'm a huge fan of the gentleman that makes the videos.
He's got a razor wit so uh so, Yeah, to
your point, Noll, that reminds me of those video series,
because the entire point or bit of that, uh that

(04:21):
series is that when people do salvia there physically useless
for a minute. M. There's a song by the band
oyster Head which was a combination of Primus Fish and
Stewart Cope in the drummer from the Police. It's called
Armies on Ecstasy, and it makes me think of this
line says the Armies on ecstasy. So they say, I

(04:42):
read all about it in the USA. Today they stepped up,
you're in testing to make it go away because it's
hard to kill the enemy on old M D M A.
And uh, that's that's a great quotation. I will I
will follow that up with a quotation from William to
Kumpster Sherman, who said, who is the person we most
often attribute with the saying war as hell? Unfortunately, during wartime,

(05:07):
individuals on all sides, every side, will tend to commit
crimes and atrocities. This includes stuff like assault, yes and
theft and murder of innocence, and of course drug use
to either numb the mind or as an attempt to
self medicate. And what we're exploring today is a long established,
often unacknowledged pattern in military history. We Matt Nolan, I

(05:32):
are not in any way condoning the use of performance
enhancing drugs or the possibilities for addiction inherent in these substances.
Drugs do not care whether you are a civilian, a veteran,
or currently serving in the armed services of any nation.
There is help available in people that you can reach
out to if you feel that there is a problem

(05:54):
where you feel yourself headed in that direction, and we
guarantee you your life is worth it. That's our disclaimer.
But uh, instead of just going into the usual facts
or statistics today, let's just admit the the amount of
drug use and militaries is insane. This is already where

(06:17):
things get crazy. Well, we said this was an ancient practice,
but we didn't say how ancient it was. That's because,
oddly enough, drug used in past civilizations was not treated
the way it is in the modern day. It was
not condemned and vilified. It was like far for the
course Moore or less sure and and various different drugs
were treated in in this way. Um. Part of that's

(06:41):
likely because modern science has kind of showed us what
the dangerous effects of drugs can be if like you
take too many too much of a drug, or if
you take drugs and combination with one another, or if
you have certain other health risks and then you take
a drug, whereas in olden times it was more like,
oh I chewed this leaf and now I can see
around corners. Well, yeah, and it could also be treated

(07:04):
as medicine, and it was often in the past. Here's
this mushroom that taught me about religion or consciousness, right,
So the that that's a really good point because first,
not all drugs are created equally. Not all of these
external substances applied to the human body have the same effects,
nor they have the same um dangers, right, dangers or

(07:28):
short term benefits. But we do know it goes way way, way,
way way back, and of course, as you know, the
further back in time we go, the more difficult it
is to discern, parse, and ultimately to cipher the the
evidence that we find. Right, We do know though, that

(07:50):
the earliest records of drug use in general go back millennia.
So in five thousand b C. We have record that
the Samarians used opium, and this is strongly indicated by
the fact that they had an idiogram for it, which
translated to something meaning joy or rejoicing. Yeah. I think

(08:11):
for the Samarians it was for people who could afford it,
a a social wide thing, so it's it was almost
like uh not, it wasn't just a military use, and
it may have been sort of an off time or
off off mission thing for militaries if they used it.
We're just amazed that they had opium at that time,

(08:32):
because I think I know the three of us have
talked about it off air. I don't know if we
ever talked about on air, but I've always been just
flabbergasted and in a way impressed or at least fascinated
by the mechanisms that humanity has discovered to do drugs.
Like I would understand, you know, I understand eating a

(08:55):
leaf like to your earlier example noll And going whoa,
this knocked me on my keaster. But the idea of
someone saying, like, hold on a second, you know, those
uh those things growing out outside, I'm gonna cut them,
not not not not like chop them up. I'm gonna
cut them and let them bleed the sort of LATEXI
substance for a little while and they're like, oh why,

(09:18):
and they're like, hold on, I'm not done. Then I'm
gonna scrape it off of the thing, and then I'm
gonna like through uh, through a process of drying, distillation,
and concentration. Oh and I'm also gonna invent a syringe.
And they're like wait, what's that And they're like to
hold on, hold on, let me keep going. It's like
and then I'm gonna take a spoon and they're like, oh, yeah,

(09:38):
I've heard of spoons. And they're like, yeah, one of those.
And I'm gonna heat it up, heat up this substance
I made, and I'm gonna put it in the syringe.
And they're like again with the syringes, what are you
talking to me. He's like, look, I'm not done yet.
I'm gonna put it in my veins. That's a lot
of work to figure that out. It seems like the
same kind of process you would go through for any

(09:59):
sign tific discovery, where it's sort of piggybacking, where like
maybe one person ate the poppy and then they realized
that it had a quality, but they thought maybe I
can get more out of it. Somebody down the line
is like, maybe I can get more. There's a more
perfect way to extract whatever it is about this that
makes me feel the way I feel. And then over
the years, I mean, I'm sure that process certainly didn't

(10:20):
pop up overnight, you know, but you know, the first
person that ever sniffed a drug that was accidental, right,
there was some kind of dust in the air and
they just went, I mean, nobody does nobody did that
on purpose? And like that's a good point. Yeah, no,
I agree, I agree. But it's like, you know, the
same way you accidentally figure out how to make fire

(10:43):
or something like that, and then you figure out the
best method of delivery over time, and you try to
gradually make the process more refined. Yes, just like a
d n A. It's it's a glorious string of accidents
that occurred and then got refined, and I'm sure a
lot of people died along the way. Uh. Editorial note

(11:03):
for everybody. We're using heroin as an example, injectable heroin,
but injectable heroine was not invented until eighteen seventy four,
so these folks were doing just some form of opium. Uh.
And weirdly enough, this predates uh, the earliest historical record
of alcohol, which comes from Egypt. That comes from it's

(11:28):
uh from Yeah, Egyptian papyrus shows that there is a
brewery that's kind of cool. Yeah, and until it's essentially fermentation, right,
So we have to wonder yet, maybe opium at that
point was an easier drug to consume or an easier
substance to consume. We also know that use of lucinogens

(11:49):
are magic mushrooms in particulars thoughts to date back thousands
of years. This relates to another theory which we know
a lot of you love out there, folks. Uh. It's
the idea that civilization itself or numerous religions were founded
or discovered during these ritualized drug trips. The idea that

(12:11):
the deities people worship, or the origin of what we
call consciousness, to MAT's point, comes from the intense introspection
brought on by hallucinogenics. Yea. The stone tape theory, I
think is what they call that. There's we won't go
into it now, but there were some I remember reading
that some people thought Jesus was actually a magic mushroom.

(12:34):
It was all an allegory for magic mushrooms, right, Yeah,
that people were communicating in the sort of anthropomorphic uh
symbolic terms, and speaking of chewing leaves, evidence shows that
people have been chewing and eating the leaves of a
plant called the beetle since at least sixty bc um.

(12:57):
This particular plant contains chemicals that at have stimulant effects
and of euphoria inducing properties, sort of like maybe a
coca leaf, and these days are mostly consumed in Asia.
And this brings us to the allegations of drug use
in ancient fighting forces, which is which is a fascinating topic,

(13:20):
and a lot of it is difficult to prove. So
we're entering the area of professional academics arguing with each
other back and forth against conferences. You have been warned,
h do you guys each one to do one? Sure? Yeah?
Can I start? Yeah? Please do So. Many of you
out there have probably heard of berserkers, maybe from a

(13:41):
video game like myself, or from reading historical documentation, or
from that song in Clerk's the movie besacka do do
do do Doe Doe doe bezacka. So historical berserkers were
infamous Viking warrior ars and there were these fearsome guys

(14:02):
who would dress in skins of animals like bears, and
according to history, they would attack friend or foe with
this insane verocity and tenacity of just like they're gonna
go at anything that's near them that they can perceive
as possibly a threat. If anyone's been watching Westworld, there's

(14:23):
a great example of a berserker I think in two
episodes two or the episodes from the last one. UM
a guy and a huge, huge, hulking guy with like
a like a mask on with horns and like wielding
this giant absurd club. Then only like a superhuman mutant
could wield, or you know, a Viking on drugs or

(14:46):
a host. But one of the one of the more
popular theories about these berserkers, well the strength and the
frenzy that they could muster, was that they're under the
influence of some kind of substance, some kind of drug,
although experts who believe this theory they aren't conclusively sure
what sort of drug this would have been. My mind

(15:07):
goes to PCP, but I'm fairly certain that that's not
what they were on. Um who knows what they could
have been ingesting If they were in fact doing so,
they've been Yeah, the guesses range from hallucinogenic mushroom m anita, muscaria,
or massive amounts of alcohol. Um. What's interesting there is

(15:28):
that some of that would fit in with practical usage
or ritual usage. Excuse me, but when we think of
hallucinogenic trips or or the behavior that sort of stuff induces,
it creates a trance like state, but not typically a
violent one. Also, there have been accounts that people would

(15:50):
fall into these states when they were doing non warlike behavior,
so just fixing, doing some blacksmithing work, fixing, ship carving
fiction ship is a great example. And one of the
other explanations was that maybe there was self induced hysteria
or epilepsy or mental illness, which is disturbing and fascinating implications,

(16:16):
but by far the most popular theory is that there
was some sort of drug involved, maybe a combination. Maybe
a combination for sure. Uh. And then we have another
example of fighting force, the infamous Assassins. More video game stuff. Yes, yeah,

(16:38):
that movie looks good. Assassin's Creed movie. I don't even
want to talk about it. It seems like the stuff
of movies. Yes, it is the stuff of movies, and
I mean it's not like, we've had a single good
video game to movie adaptation, so I think we're do one. Well.
There was Tron. There was also Pacman the movie be

(17:00):
I'm kidding, that's not real. There was there was Battleship,
which is based on a board game. Ever since Ui Bowl,
my my heart is just h he's my boy. But yeah.
Assassin's um Marco polo Uh was the originator of many
of the reports of assassins from his travels in the Orient.

(17:25):
Let me say Orient, Is that okay to say? I
think in this stage? Yeah? Alright? Cool? Um? So yeah,
he talks of he tells a tale of the Old
Man of the Mountain, or Saba, who would drug his
young followers sort of like almost like a shaolin like
monk fighting instructor um. He would drug them with hashish,

(17:48):
lead them to paradise, and then claim that only he
had the means to allow for their return. So, perceiving
that Saba was either a profit or some sort of
demon magician, his disciples, believing that only he could return
them to paradise, were completely committed to his cause. Would
you whatever it took to get that feeling again? And

(18:09):
we're willing to carry out his every wish. And this
is mentioned in Bodelino, which is a fiction but you know,
with some historical truths peppered in there. Yeah. Bodolino is
by a an author named Umberto Echo, and it's about
this guy who's just an absolute dirt bag, but he

(18:32):
rises to fame and examined some of the Oh, the
way that a grain of truth would give would give
rise to an entire world of rumors and lies. But
that one of the things they do mention in that
book is the the paradise of the assassins where they're

(18:56):
wherein there's a character who says, you know, I saw
these guys saying that when to paradise, But what they
were doing was just sort of standing there and chains
doped up. So it's interesting the idea of compelling people
to fight through what may have been some sort of
psychologic psychological manipulation obviously, but it sounds to me like

(19:17):
it would have been more like something stronger like opium, right,
I mean, there would have to be some kind of
dependency for them to have been so worried about getting
back to that state that they would kill, you know,
and follow blindly. Well, how she doesn't seem like it
would have as as as much of a hold. But
that's just you know, yeah, it's like that joke and
half baked when that guy goes to rehab from marijuana.

(19:38):
Maybe it was a crazy strain, you guys. Perhaps, Well
we we know that, Okay, So the origins of the
Assassins can be traced back to like ten eighty or
so ten a d. Common era. Um, and most of
most of the early sources of this movement, unfortunately, we're
written by people who were enemies. They were and based

(20:00):
on stuff sort of like the Templars had a lot
of stuff written by their enemies. Uh. And a lot
of the stuff that dealt with the order's inner workings
were destroyed in twelve fifties six. But like Noel said,
we we know that the originator of the cult uh,
and the I guess the progenitor or the patriarch of

(20:21):
the movement was the Grandmaster Hassan E. Sapa. We also
know that meso American cultures have a long and storied
history of seeking enlightenment and enhanced performance through the ingestion
of drugs. However, and perhaps surprising for some people, most
documented use was either completely ritual or spiritual stuff or

(20:43):
medicinal In that climate, there was just a preponderance of
differing drugs that people could use. And this this use
of drugs despite changing cultural opinions, like, we live in
a pretty prohibitive society now, uh, partially to partially because

(21:04):
of health concerns, but I would also argue more so
to control the flow of money and to control the
status quo or hierarchical system that's been set up here.
Some people might disagree. I'm fine with that because it
is just my opinion. If you if you feel that, uh,
if you feel that prohibition despite the overwhelming evidence that

(21:29):
it in no way works to the benefit of the public.
I mean, like, if you choose to believe that despite
the evidence, that's your opinion, and you're welcome to it.
Pardon my rant. The drug the connection between drug use
and militaries, though, has continued, albeit widely unacknowledged our current era,
It was widely understood in uh in past eras right

(21:52):
in recent centuries. I mean, there's that time that Britain
got drunk and took over the world. Well I'm being flippant,
but you know, I mean they were drunk already they
just also took over the world. Yes, there is a
noted historical industrial level advocacy of alcohol by the British Empire.

(22:17):
One example comes from the Napoleonic Wars. During these wars,
alcohol use was encouraged among British troops as a way
to guard against disease allegedly and to boost moral I mean,
I can imagine it doing that, right, poor little alcohol
on it'll kill all the germs. Yeah, sure, because we
we do know alcohol was used as almost a pain

(22:39):
killer at the time when there was some kind of
issue going on in the battlefield you needed to be
stitched up. Well, not to mention you think of like
the officers class in there. You know clubs, they're they're
kind of private clubs with their brandy and their cigars,
with their epaulets and all of their medals and stuff.
Is just part of the culture, um, you know, both
all in and off the battlefield. It seems sure. Speaking

(23:00):
of that, some soldiers were known to spend a month's
worth of wages on alcohol in one sitting, like just
go and go all out, drink your a whole paycheck
and one night at the bar. Well, yeah, because you
gotta to go, you might as well go large, so
large and go hard, and you gotta buy around for
the whole pub. Also, teetotal ers were reviled, known as

(23:24):
I take offense to this. By the way, Methodists, why
do you take offense to this? Because I was a
Methodist growing up. I was also a teetotal right, But
you're you're drinking now I'm drinking at this moment. Yes,
we each have a yard of ale in front of us.
And it's funny that you mentioned the idea of officers
clubs because there was a hierarchy there. Yes, officers had

(23:46):
standing orders to avoid any drunken privates, the lower ranking
members of the military, because they often attacked their superiors. Well,
you know, if you're drunk and you're upset with your
higher up because he made you do some things you
didn't want to do, go a head full esteem. I
can imagine that leading to some bad situations. Well, let's

(24:07):
also consider it was not they didn't have the same
code of military behavior that exists today. Weren't these also
in the days of like being sort of a firing
squad for in subordination, Yeah, yeah, yeah, for treason, Yeah,
getting branded speaking what have you guys seen the film
Paths of Glory? I have not seen him up in
a conversation with my my friend the other night. Um there,

(24:30):
I only mentioned it because it does kind of show
some of this drinking culture in the British army. Um.
But it's a fantastic movie. It's an early Kubrick movie
and it sort of deals with it deals with questions
of morality when taking orders, and it's it's fabulous, very
very ahead of its time. Like honestly, it's almost a

(24:51):
precursor to Doctor Strange Love in in that it's sort
of lampoons sort of the military system and the way
people blindly take orders. And then there's one character who
kind of was a little different. But it shows that
hierarchy of the officers class and it shows that on
the ground drunkenness kind of vibe as well. So I
think it's an interesting film for the downtown abbey upstairs. Downstairs.

(25:13):
It is like that, but it's much more tongue in
cheek and it's very it's very sardonic. It's an excellent,
excellent film. We just you guys, but I think before
we continue with all of this debauchery talk we should
have a quick pause for the cause. That is the
advertisements what keep our lights on. So we talked a

(25:41):
little bit about the use of military military sponsored drug programs,
but we would be remiss if we didn't mention the
wars over drugs. One of the first that historians typically
point to be the series of conflicts known as the

(26:04):
Opium Wars. We talked a little bit about this in
our podcast on the Great Game, which you can check
out at our website. Stuff they don't want you to
know dot com. However, quick and dirty version. Uh, China
had many resources that the British Empire wanted. China from one, yes, absolutely, however, Uh,

(26:29):
the British Empire did not have very many resources that
China wanted. They did control opium productions, so they became
as an empire this huge drug pusher and China said,
stop pushing opium on our people. It's doing terrible things.
And then they fought a series of wars for that

(26:51):
because it was ultimately, as every single war has eventually been,
it's over resources. And they might disguise it as ideology
to sucker other people. Uh. Yes, and if you're if
you're interested in opium wars. Check out our videos that
we did on that topic. There are a couple of
rather extensive ones. I think one is almost eight minutes long,

(27:14):
and it goes through all the history of it. We
also notice, right and you notice this too, that cocaine
has been used as an income stream for various militias
and militaries, including facets of the US military. Uh shout
out to Oliver North and the Nicaraguan contras. Yeah, and
fark uh. So. Morphine was also used in the US

(27:38):
Civil War. It was the standout drug star of that.
It was used as a painkiller and get this to
stave off diarrhea. Yeah, because diarrhea was extremely dangerous at
that time. And apparently opia opiates give make people constipated
when they use it pretty regularly. Well there you go.
So so it worked in that regard. People just probably

(28:02):
weren't as aware of the side effects were the highly
addictive nature. So hundreds of thousands of people returned from
the war with U with an addiction. Well it's funny.
It's it's like we were talking about earlier, where you
kind of like you sort of plunge headlong into these
things because they have an immediate effect whether you're you know,

(28:23):
early man chooing that leaf and getting a burst of energy.
Even as as as recently as the Civil War. You
you have a drug that allows people to return to battle,
you know, returned to the battlefield. You're gonna use it
and you're not really going to think about the consequences.
And that is a whole another problem that then springs
up later that you have to then deal with. You've
kind of created an epidemic and hopefully, yeah, hopefully learn

(28:46):
from the past, which princess do. The story of the
bell of the ball when it comes to military sponsored
drug use, and that's speed I meth amphetamine, uh Heisenberg blue,
I'm just making words up now at this point, no

(29:10):
could could you break down a little bit of the
invention of m amphetamine for us. So, Emphetamine was first
synthesized in eighteen eighties seven in Germany by a Romanian
chemist by the name of Lazar Adeln who named it
let me see if I can get this right fenale
isopropyl amine um. And then in eighteen ninety three, a

(29:33):
Japanese chemist named Nagai Naga Yoshi synthesized methamphetamine from ephedrine,
which is still I think one of the main precursors
used today to make which is why people used to
buy those People used to buy those over the counter
pills that contained the federan and use it to create

(29:55):
meth amphetamine. And now if anyone you know, watch who
watches Breaking Bad knows this, or anyone who's tried to
buy some cold medicine, you sometimes have to sign a
registry and at the very least you've got to get
it from over the counter, from behind the counter, rather
just buy it and off the rack. Yeah, because apparently
people were driving around and buying. At first there were

(30:15):
no limits on how much one person could buy, and
then in some states people were driving around and buying
it and multiple you know, gas stations and pharmacis and yeah,
they call them smurfs and uh and Breaking Bad the
people to go around and get the pseudoepha draine. That's
their job is to like go to go all over
as far as they have to go to get the
right amount to make the batch that's needed. I totally

(30:37):
forgot about that they call them smurfs. What does this show?
You guys keep talking about you know, breaking, you and
see Breaking Bad, Breaking It's like Uh, you like friends, right, Yes,
it's like friends, but with but with whoa yeah, met friends,
met friends, the best friends. Uh. In four uh, company

(30:57):
Smith Klein and French began selling amphetamine as an inhaler
under the trade name benz Adrine and was designed as
a decongestant. Well and it it took off again. We
we have to remember it's one of the points you
made earlier that the people who are peddling these aren't

(31:19):
necessarily bad people in any way. They're just perhaps not
as aware of the possibilities of what could happen. And
there's lots of profits to be and there's a definite
profit motive there. Inarguable evidence indicates that both the Axis
and the Allied Powers used speed on a routine basis

(31:41):
during World War Two. Yeah, there's a substance that was
used under the brand name. It sounds a little strange,
perveting pervting p E r v I t I N.
Initially this was intended only to be dispensed to military
drivers on the front lines with Poland on the German side. Correct. Um,

(32:02):
guess what what? That didn't last Between April and July
of nineteen forty more than thirty five million tablets of
perveteen and Iso Fan. This was a slightly modified version
that was produced by another company. They were shipped to
the German Army and Air Force, so that's a lot
of them. And uh, just really fast before we move on.

(32:26):
I'm just thinking about drivers using some kind of upper
in that way, and it just reminds me of tales
I have heard from truck drivers who have to go
cross country in a fairly short amount of time, or
at least as fast as possible. You have to stay
awake when you're driving twelve fourteen, sixteen hours, right, We
know that, We know that in many civilian occupations where

(32:52):
there's a large amount of time that requires some sustained focus.
Uppers of and sort or another or common you can
go to a truck stop across America's interstates and find
various things purporting to be legal speed. And the difference
here is that this was a military condoning it enforcing

(33:19):
it in private partnership. The people in charge of privor team.
We're making so much money hand over fist. And one
of the heartbreaking things about this is that you can
read letters from the front lines to you know, like
these are younger soldiers writing to their parents saying, I'm okay.
You know, war as hell, but here I am hey. Also,

(33:41):
could you send me some more of this stuff or
some money to buy it. We also know from nineteen
forty two to nine, Hitler himself was given meth injections.
This is a fact that many historians have argued contributed
somewhat to his increasingly erratic behavior over time. Uhm. It's
also known that he used cocaine and heroin, so he

(34:04):
was bouncing all over the place with different drugs. Yeah.
His personal doctor has has written proof of something like
eight hundred plus injections he gave the he gave the guy.
I'm referring to Aidolf Hitler as the guy. Uh he.
Also we also know that there was extensive drug use

(34:24):
in many of the many of the upper sphears of
the Reich organization. You can read a lot about this
in a book called Blitz, which will won't mention later
and further reading. Yeah, but it shows an inside look
at just how extensive drug use was amongst the Reich.

(34:47):
And and also in this regard, we have to point
out that the at least one of the Allied forces,
Winston Churchill, was off his goal for most most if
not all, of the war. He was stinking drunk for
a lot of important moments in world's history. You know,

(35:10):
people like, I'm not saying he did a bad job,
but it is ignoring the truth if we ignore that.
That is also a form of drug abuse. So Finland,
for the record, also used this stimulant, but as far
as we know, it was only issued to elite long
range commandos. Japan was also extensively involved in the use

(35:33):
of methamphetamines. It was sold under the registered trademark of
Philopon by a company called Dinipon Pharmaceuticals, and they exist today,
by the way, under a different name, and estimated one
billion Philipon fills were produced between nineteen thirty nine and
nineteen five. Japan, unlike other countries, supplied this substance not

(35:58):
just to their military, but all too industrial workers. So
imagine being at a factory and say, hey, you've got
eight hours, do you want to do twice the amount
of work? Jeez? Just keep going, man, keep going, keep going,
keep going. Here's when you may have heard of. Emphetamine
was also given to Allied bomber pilots during w W two,

(36:18):
the Laurier Military History Archives in Ontario, Canada contain records
that suggest soldiers UM should were recommended. They ingest five
milligrams to twenty milligrams of benzadrine sulfe every five to
six hours, and it is estimated the seventy two million
emphetamine tablets were consumed by the Allies during World War Two.
That is a mountain of speed all in one night.

(36:41):
And then paratroopers also were allegedly using UH emphetamines during
the D Day landings, while U. S. Marines relied on
it for the invasion of Tarawa in oh And if
it continues today. Actually, I wanted to recommend UM stuff
to blow your mind. Our sister podcasts recently did an

(37:04):
episode called Combat Stems UM. A lot of it had
to do with some science fiction use of drugs and
video games like Fallout, the Fallout universe where you have
like Jet and Psycho and a lot of these UH
kind of fictional drugs that are based on real things.
But Star Ground, they got a letter from a listener
that UM who who was who served recently overseas, and

(37:29):
he said it was a very common knowledge that there
was plenty of sanctioned use of adderall um, which is
a form of methamphetamine. It's not really methamphetamy minutes and ANALOGU.
I would say it has very similar effects, UM, and
things just like nicotine for example, was just very much
par for the course. UM. So I recommend you guys
check out that episode if you want to catch a

(37:50):
little supplement for some of this stuff. Right, and we
this brings us to the present. UH. Here's the name
one of the common names for the modern a speed
used by the U. S. Army. They're called go pills.
The U. S. Air Force has pilots, of course, and
those pilots use amphetamines and it's one of the most
widely documented examples of the use of performance enhancing drugs

(38:14):
by military personnel period these UH. These individuals are often
tasked with excessively long missions, some of them might last
upwards a twenty hours, and d O D scientists began
to issue what are called dextro amphetamines more commonly known
as speed but referred to as go pills in the
Air Force to the pilots to ensure they're alert long

(38:35):
enough after tiredness and fatigues would have started driving their
mental performance down. It's like the old thing, did you
guys ever do this when you were a kid, to
see do you ever see how long you could stay awake? Still?
How long did you make it? So? Twenty four hours?
Remember staying up all night A handful of times where

(38:55):
I really really tried and felt good about it, like
I kind of cheated death and m way my My longest,
I think is around thirty seven hours. But then at
that point there was nothing I could do. Right After
a certain point, you begin to hallucinate, used, lose dexterity,
and I would say you lose your mental agility as well.

(39:17):
It was during the film fest when I was in college.
That's when it happened. I tried to make it, but
I could not. Now the what's interesting here is that
the the Air Force admits prescribing what they call small
doses of these and similar substances to pilots on long
range missions. Surveys show that roughly half of American fighter

(39:39):
pilots took emphetamines during Desert Storm. Some commanders were so
alarmed by the what they saw as a growing addiction
to the pills that they ordered their subordinates uh not
to use them and this. This stuff is commonly known
by its brand name dexadrine. In civilian use. It's primarily
meant to treat hyperactivit and children and narcilepsy, and arcilepsy

(40:02):
of course being the being the disorder in which patients
fall asleep suddenly without warning. The drugs produced by Glaxo
smith Klein, which is based in the United Kingdom. And
that name might sound a little bit familiar because Glaxo
smith Klein is descended from the earlier company smith Klein

(40:23):
in French that we began with, that we mentioned in four.
And the US has a unique history with a lot
of with a lot of these drugs, just because so
many wars drive innovation, or drive that cycle of trial

(40:44):
and error into a at a much faster clip. Right,
So things that would have taken ten years to figure out,
take one, things that would have taken a hundred years
to figure out, take ten. Because the you know, the
clock is ticking, and we're seen entire nations and cultures
pour all of their energy into something. According to an

(41:06):
author named David Grossman, Vietnam was the first war in
which the forces of modern pharmacology were directed to empower
the battlefield soldier. So for the first time we talked
about speed being prescribed or or mandated in World War Two,
but for the first time in military history in Vietnam,

(41:28):
that's the first time we see potent antipsychotic drugs being prescribed.
And these are things that are also manufactured by Glaxo
Smith Klient, such as thorazine. The massive use of drugs
in Vietnam led to crippling UH, crippling PTSD post traumatic
stress disorder, and addiction among veterans, and a lot of this, unfortunately,

(41:53):
there's another conspiracy here. A lot of it was swept
under the rug by the US government. And when we
say like an addiction and an epidemic, to use Knowle's
earlier term, there were veterans that were dying of withdrawal
associated symptoms on the plane ride back from Vietnam. So

(42:13):
imagine your your hardcore addicted to a substance. You're on
the plane for what a thirteen fourteen hour flight. It
doesn't it doesn't look good, you know, Uh, it's gonna be,
at best, a very unpleasant experience. Thinking about these antipsychotic drugs,
I'm imagining everything that we've learned over time about how

(42:36):
certain drugs that are meant to treat that kind of thing,
or or are antipsychotic can actually enhance effects of feeling
depressed or um can exhibit violent behaviors and that kind
of thing. And I'm just imagining in the context of
the Vietnam War, if those drugs actually had any effect,

(42:57):
and I'm I'm gonna look more into that. Yeah, well,
we know that it did promote a huge, huge jump
in usage of these drugs. They were freely available. You know,
this is near this is near one of the epicenters
of heroin and opium production where this war occurs, and

(43:20):
of course use of methamphetamine is also present there. But
these uses of drugs were not restricted to wartime events
or front of line front of line phenomena. We also
know that various militaries, various governments have an extensive and

(43:41):
unfortunate history of conducting experiments on civilians and on soldiers,
and we will get into that immediately after another quick break. So,
for two decades during the Cold War, the U. S.

(44:03):
Army tested chemical weapons on American soldiers at a place
called Edgewood Arsenal, which was a secluded research facility on
the Chesapeake Bay where thousands of men were recruited to
volunteer um and were exposed to chemicals ranging from mustard gas,
saren gas, LSD, PCP, just a boatload of psychotropic and

(44:25):
pharmaceutical substances. So at the center of all this was
a man named Colonel James Ketchum who was conducting the
experiments UH, specifically one with a drug called b z um.
The Arsenal's chief scientist, Dr Van Murray sim instigated a
whole battery of overseas practical experiments in which LSD was

(44:49):
tested and enhanced interrogations that should probably that as well
on poor and helpless, unwitting subjects. Yeah, and just a
new b z might be unfamiliar to some of us,
was unfamiliar to us when we're first looking into this.
It's real name is three quino cladonal benzolate. UH. It

(45:13):
is a it was called substance seventy eight by the
Soviet Army and which is probably my favorite name there. UH.
It is a compound related to atropine, scope al amine
or a couple other deliriums, and the effects that I
have are inducing stupor confusion, illusions, hallucination. UH. And just

(45:39):
absolute madness. It's it's not a thing to put in
somebody's coffee and a surprise, which we're actually gonna get
to something kind of like that very soon after. We
talk about captagon, which is a I guess it's it's
like bead. It's pretty much a speed um and we've

(46:03):
seen its use in especially in Syria. This comes from
Al Jazeera from a recent article from in November. Middle
Eastern conflicts have seen an increase in the rise of
Captain Gone and amphetamine that's allegedly fueling serious civil war.
Last November, eleven million pills were seized by Turkish officials

(46:25):
at the Syrian Turkish border, while this April one point
five million were seasoned in Kuwait. And there's this BBC
documentary called Syria's War Drug that was in September, and
if if you watch that, I would say, if you
can find it, you should watch it. But there's one
user of this drug who was saying, quote, there was

(46:47):
no fear anymore when I took Captain Gone. You can't
sleep or close your eyes, forget about it. So this
is a drug that would just keep you going no
matter what. At all times. You're going to be aware
at least some wan aware of your surroundings. Did either
of you watch Jessica Jones, remember the character who was
on some sort of experimental drug based on Nuke from

(47:10):
the comic book right right, But like it seems like
this was in that vein where it sort of caused
him to just go almost as though he were like
a sleeper agent all of a sudden go into just
berserker mode where he had no fear and felt no
pain and only wanted to kill. And people say that
there's a I guess the best way to say it

(47:31):
is that this popped up in the news recently and
by recently with me a few years ago where there
were you would read stories of you know, like the
Middle Eastern officials private plane detained with thousands of Captagon pills.
And Captagon is a brand name for finnith thilein. And

(47:52):
this the way Captagon works is that it's a combination accord.
This is according to Nicholas Rasmussen, who's professor of History
and Philosophy of Science at uh New South Wales in Australia.
Is say Captagon is really a combination of two drugs,
theophiline and amphetamine. Instead of combination is inactive in the body,

(48:12):
but when the body breaks down into the two components,
each part becomes active. So captagon is relatively mild in
the world of emphetamines, and some people, including Professor of
psychology and psychiatry Carl Hart at Columbia University, went so
far as to call it an inferior phetamine amphetamine. So

(48:36):
they say that, like adderall, captagon was once used to
treat behavioral problems, but it is definitely seen as a
performance enhancing drug. People also say abuse of it has
been a problem in Saudi Arabia for over a decade.
It's it's big in the Middle East, and we know

(48:58):
that this use is is probably going to continue. If
people own the means to manufacture it, and it's seen
as providing uh, someone an edge when they're when they're
fighting in battle, then why wouldn't they continue using it?
I don't see why. And we have another, of course,

(49:21):
we have a should we call this the honorable mention
or human experimentation emeritus As far as drugs go, I
like it. You're talking about Ultra MK Ultra and all
the other experiments that went on around that time, all
the operations over the other ones Artichoke. I can't remember
the list of them, but there's there's a whole host

(49:43):
of Mockingbird. I think was one of CIA operations that
we're dealing with testing out drugs and what we can
do with these from an intelligence perspective, right to see
if they could if they could create man Enturian candidates
or sleeper agents, or if they could create a truth

(50:06):
serra for interrogations, if they could mess with people's memories.
And it is, as we know, disturbingly possible to manipulate
a person's memories, especially because they're using the whole host
of drugs. They were testing pretty much everything. One of
the things they did that I thought was really disturbing
was forced morphine addiction and then forced withdrawal, so to

(50:31):
see the effect it would have on someone who is
a POW or something. They would forcibly addict subject to
morphine and then they would forcibly, uh you know, once
they got them to the addiction stage, who would forcibly
not give them any And I believe that I believe
that morphine is one of those drugs where the withdrawal

(50:53):
symptoms alone can actually take your life. Is that correct?
I don't know. I mean, it's my understanding that very
very intense opium opiates rather withdrawals can cause you to
you know, experience cardiac arrest or you can you know,
have trouble breathing and things like and this this also

(51:17):
involved you know, tricking people into having bad trips LSD famously,
right and famously that's one of the only documented mk
ultra deaths. Allegedly again, the only documented one is someone
who while on LSD jumped through a window to their death.

(51:39):
And we still haven't done a full episode on this.
Have we on mk ultra? Have we not? I feel
like we haven't. I don't know where. If we have not,
where you're going to? Okay, It's just mk ultra seems
to cast its shadow over so much stuff. Whenever ever
we get into this sort of water, this murky water,
it feels like mkulture has just always sort of been

(52:02):
here with us. Yeah, and it's real. It's real. By
the way, if anyone ever tells you that the experimentation
done by the CIA with these drugs is not real,
you can send them some to some documentation that shows
that it is, uh, including including artichoke and some f
oy a documents that were released. That stands for Freedom

(52:23):
of Information Act. Now we cast our gaze to the future.
So it's surprises some people who have not had a
relative in the military or themselves been an active I've
been an active member of the military. It's it can
be surprising to learn that the use of drugs that

(52:43):
would get people arrested on the streets of the country.
You're they're defending, uh our par for the course when
they're out there on the front lines. But this isn't
just a past to the present thing. This is not
a plateauing phenomenon. Instead, if anything, it's kicking into overdrive

(53:10):
thanks to research by various think tanks across the world.
In the US, of course, we have the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency better known as DARPA, and DARPA is
pushing us closer and closer towards the creation of a
genuine super soldier. Yeah. In two thousand four, the Peak

(53:30):
Soldier Performance Program looked for a quote biochemical approach that
would allow a soldier to operate in theater for up
to five days without requiring sustenance. In pursuit of this,
no stone or genome was left unturned. Yeah, and that's
a that's a statement from some of the folks who
were liaising with the Pentagon and with DARPA. There there

(53:53):
has been extensive research into a life without sleep. We
know the nature approaches sleep in in many different ways.
You know, UH predators tend to sleep more than pray.
Certain animals are only awake at certain times a day,
or most active at certain times a day or night.

(54:14):
We know that some marine mammals sleep in a very
different way in comparison to terrestrial mammals. So DARPA and
various projects sponsored by a spearheaded or assisted by a
DARPA have dug into both of these things. Is there
a way to create human process to turn off part

(54:34):
of the brain to sleep the way that a dolphin
would sleep, for instance, or a cephalopod? Or is there
a way to take an anti narcolepsy drug like motor
finel and turn it into UH pill you take that
makes you never have to sleep again without racking up
sleep debt. You can read a pretty interesting article on

(54:56):
the fight against sleep over at our parent website how
Stuff Works dot com. And this this search continues today
because at this point, um we we see two concurrent
branches of research. One is how do we make someone

(55:16):
who doesn't need to sleep? And the other one is
how do we make something that doesn't need to sleep,
so like a drone or an automated robot. At different times,
Matt and Nolan I have hung out and just watched
pick watch video clips of DARPA robots, which are stranger

(55:38):
and stranger and stranger. I like the ones where they
slip on banana peals. Uh. You know, there's one that
really disturbed me, which I don't think was DARPA, but
it was a robot that was, you know, exhibiting walking
and negotiating obstacles, and the entire video was just this
human who was like pushing them down and three going

(56:00):
stuff at them. That was a Boston Dynamics robot, which
is now owned by Alphabet no Man, the parent company
of Google. Huh Alphabet Uh well uh. DARPA has also
done research on a pain vaccine. This comes from a
popular mechanics story. The idea is that when injected with

(56:20):
the vaccine, Let's say, let's say I'm a soldier on
the front line, I get shot in the gut. You know,
that's an ugly, dirty way to go right, Um, unless
I get immediate medical attention. Uh, so they inject me
with a vaccine because there's so much pain, the immediate
agony not only disappears, but apparently for a month that

(56:47):
I would not feel pain for thirty days. There would
be like it wouldn't register now. You would still have
the instinctual reactions of painful situations, Like if all three
of us had that vaccine now and we touched a
stove that was on our hands, would immediately recoil away.
We just wouldn't feel burned though obviously though there's you

(57:12):
still would have the issues associated with being badly burned, right.
You know, you could get an infection. There's any number
of things that could happen though, and this isn't always
you know not. Pain is ultimately a a resource for
us to allow us to know that that we are
messed up and we need to seek medical attention. If
you lack that, you could certainly be nursing a wound

(57:35):
that you wouldn't know much about and not get it
looked at, and possibly get sepsis or something and die. Yeah, exactly.
That's that's one of the dangerous parts. Because this is
meant to prolong fighting ability, which means that, yeah, somebody
horrifically burned would keep fighting, but their body wouldn't enter
shocked to save them, so they would just eventually die

(58:01):
without feeling bad. That's I mean, that's the potential. It's
not there yet, but that's the potential. Or we don't
know if it's there yet because the only things that
we hear about are the unclassified research. Another thing is,
you know how bears hibernate, different animals hibernate. What if
people could do that? What if? What if if someone's wounded,

(58:23):
has uh an egregious wound, What if the doctors could
just chemically induce hibernation and like suspended animation of hyper sleep, Yeah,
and then just bring them back, uh bring them, bring
them back when they're in a operating theater and you know,

(58:47):
conduct the surgery to save their life. The idea here
is almost the opposite to keep them fighting. It's put
them on ice through the use of hydrogen sulfide and
blood removal to extend the golden pure after an injury,
like stopping their heart from beating, but somehow they're still
alive so that their wound doesn't continue to bleed out.

(59:07):
Is that the idea. I guess well, now, Matt, I've
never actually done it. I'm just saying it's just that's
that's incredible. And then further future of pharmacology stuff that
would be virtual reality, augmented reality with focused drugs, so
there's still speed equivalents, but then there's also technology and

(59:27):
erring in there, like transcranial direct simulation shocking your brain
to make you think better. We know also that I
know we're picking on the US a lot here, it's
just the US tends to have the best documentation of
this in recent years. We know that other institutions and

(59:49):
other global militaries are conducting similar experiences. Both Russia and
China are believed to be experimenting with performance enhancing drugs
and other techniques and including genetic modification. However, at this point,
aside from statements from Pentagon officials, there's very little in
the way of substantive proof, so we don't know how

(01:00:12):
much they are or are not doing. And people will,
you know, raise some pitchforks and torches over Crisper, but
Crisper's not there yet. Crisper has the potential two be
the dystopian gatticut s thing people fear, but it hasn't
happened yet. And then of course in the corporate world

(01:00:32):
there's cocaine, alcohol, and adderall. I had a little something
to say by adderall. There was a study published, um
I want to say it was this year by Dr
Carl Hart, who's a neuropsychopharmacologist at Columbia University, and his
career has mainly been dedicated to studying the effects of
drugs um and drug policy on the public and really

(01:00:56):
focusing on trying to put an end to what's been
deemed the war on drugs UM and in US. This study,
he basically determined that um adderall it's very very very
very very similar um effects wise to meth amphetamine. And
anyone you know who's an adult who has prescribed adderall,

(01:01:20):
if you know anything about the effects of speed, I
think it's not too much of a stretch to say
that adderall is definitely a form of speed and it
is still to this day prescribed to kids for um,
you know a d h D and I don't know.
I just think it's an interesting cultural disconnect that we
have when we have this war on drugs, where we

(01:01:42):
are you know, throwing grenades into baby's cribs in the
hopes of you know, catching some meth dealers. Um. And
yet we're feeding you know, school kids these very powerful
prescription uppers. Really that's a eight point And it goes
the same way with any psychoactive substance. Like remember the

(01:02:05):
days when it became popular to prescribe riddling lithium, zoloft
and things like that too. Kids, there's some damaging effects.
That's still a serious issue, not necessarily with those specific drugs,
but psychotics with children is a big deal currently. Well,
I mean not only that, I'm not trying to get

(01:02:25):
on a high horse here, and everyone has their opinions
as far as like Eastern versus Western medicine and and
you know, whatever it takes to get someone well, I
understand the desire to want to find that thing, but
I just, you know, it's so easy just by telling
a doctor that you're experiencing a little bit of stress,
you know, he'll offer you um valium, you know, without

(01:02:48):
you having to twist his arm at all. I mean,
it's just depends on the doctor obviously, but that is
definitely part of our culture. And I think a lot
of that is tied to our kind of you know,
marriage to the farm ofmceutical industry, and I just I
think it's not quite the way it should be. It's
it's very interesting and you know, and and when you

(01:03:08):
look at it, the villain into this conversation about you know,
using drugs um for military purposes, and how this attitude goes,
you know, infiltrates up to the highest levels of our
government and bureaucracy in the military. I just think it
is kind of a systemic problem that we need to address. Yeah,

(01:03:31):
and it's also it's common throughout demographics, throughout creeds, throughout genders,
throughout socio economic h status. In the world of academia,
of course, there was a study that found a quarter
of undergraduate students that sounds so high, right one and

(01:03:52):
four are are on at a ROLL or on some
other performance enhancing thing. And then a lot of professors
or professionals actors apparently are on it as well. And
that's not even mentioned new tropics or the so called
smart drugs. We we're gonna have to end it here,
I think, uh, in our examination, but we want to

(01:04:13):
end it with some further reading to recommend if you'd
like to delve into this. There's an excellent book called
Blitz by Norman Ohler, which is about the drug use,
the prevalence of drug use one should say in the
German side of World War Two. Another book on killing
by David Grossman. That's where you'll find some more information

(01:04:33):
about pharmacology and Vietnam. UH. And instead of doing a
shout out corner today, guys, what if we do a
call for stories for people who have had experience with
with the state sanctioned use of performance enhancing substances in
the military. Whether you are a US citizen or it's

(01:04:57):
in another military UH from a different part of the world.
We'd like to hear your story. And do not worry.
We will not reveal your name or rank or anything
like that. If you want to talk to us about something, UH,
don't be afraid of that. We we appreciate your privacy.
Let us know your story. As Matt said, we will
protect your anonymity. Let us also know, and you don't

(01:05:21):
have to only be in the military to write us.
Let us also know if you have an idea for
an upcoming topic, something we should cover in the future. Again,
this is your show and Our best ideas come from
listeners just like you, specifically you, and that's the end
of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or

(01:05:41):
questions about this episode, you can get into contact with
us in a number of different ways. One of the
best is to give us a call. Our number is
one eight three three st d w y t K.
If you don't want to do that, you can send
us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at
i heart radio dot com. Um Stuff they Don't Want

(01:06:02):
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