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?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic 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

(00:23):
then we welcome back to the show. My name is Max,
my name is Noah. They 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 you have. The
holiday tree is up in the office. Looks real pretty,
It's a Christmas tree, but it's very considerate. We also

(00:45):
have a video on the origins of Christmas. If you're wondering, Hey,
what 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 us start
at the top and say that we had some folks
ask us about our Halloween special. We've been doing some

(01:06):
longer projects that you will 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 them done before the next several years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
in three years we will from complete our first project

(01:27):
for scoring seven years from now. But today we are
talking about something that may affect some of our listeners,
uh 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

(01:51):
the 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

(02:12):
capital letter ancient practice, and over the centuries, institutions encourage
the use of all sorts of drugs, from hashishta 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

(02:34):
for your you know, murder, murderous rage. 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,

(02:56):
you know, downers. It seems to me would possibly make
you or 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,

(03:21):
money sala? 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

(03:41):
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 Copel 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

(04:02):
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,

(04:26):
during wartime, 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,

(04:52):
I 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

(05:14):
a problem where you feel yourself headed in that direction,
and we guarantee 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

(05:37):
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 a far for
the course, bore or less sure, and and various different
drugs were treated in in this way. Uh um. Part

(06:00):
of that's 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

(06:23):
be treated 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,

(06:43):
nor they have the same um dangers, right dangers, or
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

(07:08):
evidence that we find. Right. We do know though, that
the earliest records of drug use in general go back millennia,
So in five thousand b C. We have record that
the Sumarians 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

(07:31):
for the Sumarians 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 because

(07:52):
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 leaf,

(08:16):
like to your earlier example Noll and going whoa, this
knocked me on my keyster. 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
to 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, And

(08:38):
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,

(08:59):
I've heard of spoons, 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 scientific discovery, where

(09:21):
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 pop up overnight. You know, but you know,

(09:42):
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, wait, 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

(10:03):
or something like that, and then you can 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

(10:23):
note 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

(10:48):
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 hallucinogens

(11:09):
or magic mushrooms in particulars thought 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

(11:31):
the deities people worship, or the origin of what we
call consciousness, to Matt's point, comes from the intense introspection
brought on by hallucinogenics. 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

(11:51):
some people thought Jesus was actually a magic mushroom. It
was all an allegory for magic mushrooms, right, Yeah, that
people were commune muicating in these sort of anthropomorphic uh
symbolic terms. And speaking of chewing leaves, evidence shows that
people have been chewing and eating the leaves of a

(12:12):
plant called the beetle since at least twenty sixty bc um.
This particular plant contains chemicals that are 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

(12:35):
in ancient fighting forces, which is which is a fascinating topic,
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, Uh,
do you guys each one to do one? Can I start? Yeah?

(12:56):
Please do so. Many of you out there have probably
heard of zerkers, maybe from a video game like myself,
or from reading historical documentation, or from that song in
Clerk's the movie Bazaka Do Do Do Doe Doe Dope bezacka.

(13:16):
So historical berserkers were infamous Viking warriors, and there were
these fearsome guys who would dress in skins of animals
like bears, and according to history, they would attack friend
or foe with this insane verocity in tenacity of just

(13:37):
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 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 wielding this giant absurd club. Then only like a

(14:00):
superhuman mutant could wield or you know, a viking on
drugs or 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
were under the influence of some kind of substance, some
kind of drug, although experts who believe this theory they

(14:23):
aren't conclusively sure what sort of drug this would have been.
My mind 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 U.

(14:46):
What's interesting there is 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

(15:08):
accounts that people would fall into these states when they
were doing non war like behavior, so just fixing, doing
some blacksmithing work, fixing, ship carving, Fixing Ship is a
great example. And one of the other explanations was that
maybe there was self induced hysteria or epilepsy or mental illness,

(15:32):
which is disturbing and fascinating implications, but by far the
most popular theory is that there was some sort of
drug involved, maybe a combination. Maybe a combination for sure.
And then we have another example of fighting force, the
infamous Assassins. More video game stuff. Yes, yeah, that movie

(15:59):
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 adaptations, so I think we're do one. Well, there
was Tron. There was also a pac Man the movie.

(16:21):
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 broken. 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.

(16:45):
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,

(17:08):
lead them to paradise, and then claim that only he
had the means to allow for their return. So, perceiving
that Sabah was either in 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

(17:29):
we're willing to carry out his every wish. Uh. And
this is mentioned in Boudolino, which is a fiction but
you know, with some historical truths peppered in there. Yeah.
Bodelino is by a an author named Umberto Echo, and
it's about this guy who's just an absolute dirt bag,

(17:51):
but he 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

(18:16):
there wherein there's a character who says, you know, I
saw these guys saying they went 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 psychology psychological manipulation obviously, but it sounds to me

(18:37):
like 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. 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. Maybe

(18:58):
it's 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 based on stuff sort

(19:21):
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 the movement was

(19:43):
the Grand Master 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 document to deduce
was either completely ritual or spiritual stuff or medicinal. In

(20:05):
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 of health concerns,

(20:25):
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 it in no

(20:49):
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. Uh.
The drug the connection between drug use and militaries that
has continued, albeit widely unacknowledged in our current era. It
was widely understood in uh in past eras right in

(21:12):
recent centuries. I mean, there's that time that Britain got
drunk and took over the world. I love that. Well,
I 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

(21:36):
by the British Empire. 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

(21:58):
a pain 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 it off the battlefield, it seems sure.

(22:20):
Speaking 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

(22:43):
as 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 teetotaler. 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.
It's true, and it's funny that you mentioned the idea
of officers clubs because there was a hierarchy there. Yes,

(23:06):
officers had 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 a head full steam,
I can imagine that leading to some bad situations. Well,

(23:27):
let's 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 ft 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

(23:47):
a conversation with my my friend the other night. Um there,
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, to early Kubrick movie, and
it's sort of deals with it deals with questions of
morality when taking orders, and it's it's fabulous, very very

(24:08):
ahead of its time. Like, honestly, it's almost a 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 is 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

(24:29):
it's an interesting film. From the upstairs downstairs, 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,
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

(24:50):
lights on. And we talked a 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.

(25:15):
One of the first that historians typically point to be
the series of conflicts known as the 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

(25:41):
the British Empire wanted. China for one, yes, absolutely, However, Uh,
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,

(26:02):
stop pushing opium on our people. It's doing terrible things.
And then they fought a series of wars for that
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

(26:26):
you're interested in the 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, and it goes through all the history of it.
We also notice, right and you noticed this too, that
cocaine has been used as an income stream for various
militias and militaries, including facets of the US military. Uh

(26:47):
shout out to Oliver North and the Nicaraguan contras. Yeah,
and farc Uh. So. Morphine was also used in the
US 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

(27:07):
at that time, and apparently opiate 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
weren't as aware of the side effects were the highly
addictive nature. So hundreds of thousands of people returned from

(27:30):
the war with with an addiction. Well, it's funny. It's
it's like we're 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, 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,

(27:51):
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 late there that you have to then deal with.
You've kind of created an epidemic and hopefully hopefully learned
from the past, which Princess do The story of the
bell of the ball when it comes to military sponsored

(28:15):
drug use, and that's speed ice, meth amphetamine, Uh, the
Heisenberg Blue. I'm just making words up now at this point,
no could could you break down a little bit of
the invention of m amphetamine for us so amphetamine was

(28:36):
first synthesized in eighteen eighty seven in Germany by a
Romanian chemist by the name of Lazar Adeline who named
it let me see if I can get this right
fenal isopropyl amine UM. And then in eighteen ninety three,
a Japanese chemist named Nagai Naga Yoshi synthesized methamphetamine from

(28:57):
eph adrine, which is still I think one of the
main precursors used today to make amphetam, which is why
people used to buy those. People used to buy those
over the counter pills that contain the fedrian and use
it to create meth amphetamy. And now if anyone you
know watches watches breaking bad knows this, or anyone who's

(29:19):
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 no limits on how much one person could buy,
and then in some states people were driving around and

(29:39):
buying it and multiple you know, gas stations and pharmacies
and yeah, they call them smurfs and uh and Breaking Bad.
The people that go around and get the pseudoephadrine, 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
forgot about that. They call them smurfs. What does this
show you? Guys keep talking to out you know Breaking,

(30:00):
you did see Breaking Bad? Breaking? It's like, uh, you
liked friends, right, Yes, it's like friends, but with whoa yeah,
met friends, met friends the best friends. Uh. In four uh,
company Smith Klein and French began selling emphetamine as an
inhaler under the trade name benz adrine and was designed

(30:24):
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 necessarily bad people in any way. They're just perhaps
not as aware of the possibilities of what could happen. Uh,

(30:47):
and there's lots of profit 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 during
World War Two. Yeah, there's a substance that was used
under the brand name. It sounds a little strange, purveting

(31:09):
pervteing y 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,
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

(31:32):
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.
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

(31:55):
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 four right. We know that
we we know that in many civilian occupations where there's
a large amount of time that requires some sustained focus,

(32:17):
uppers of one 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. Uh. The difference
here is that this was a military condoning it, enforcing

(32:38):
it in private partnership. The people in charge of private 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 all,

(33:00):
so could you send me some more of this stuff
or some money to buy it. We also know from
nineteen forty two to nineteen Hitler himself was given meth injections.
This is a fact that many historians have argued contributed
somewhat to his increasingly erratic behavior over time. Um It's
also known that he used cocaine and heroin, so he

(33:22):
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 in

(33:43):
many of the many of the upper spears 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. And

(34:06):
and also in this regard, we have to point out
that the at least one of the Allied forces, Winston Churchill,
was off as gore 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, people like,

(34:29):
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. Uh 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 of methamphetamines.

(34:53):
It was sold under the registered trademark of Philopon by
a company called Dinepon Pharmaceuticals, and they exist today, by
the way, under a different name, and estimated one billion
philip On fills were produced between nineteen thirty nine and
nineteen forty five. Japan, unlike other countries, supplied this substance

(35:17):
not just to their military but also to 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. And here's when you may have
heard of. Emphetamine was also given to Allied bomber pilots
during w W two. The Laurier Military History Archives in Ontario,

(35:40):
Canada contain records that suggest soldiers um should were recommended.
They ingest five milligrams to twenty milligrams of benza drine
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. And then paratroopers also were allegedly

(36:04):
using uh emphetamines during the D Day landings, while U
S Marines relied on it for the invasion of tarawaw
in Oh and if it continues today. Actually, I wanted
to recommend um stuff to blow your mind. Our sister
podcasts recently did an episode called Combat stems UM. A

(36:25):
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 kind of fictional drugs that are based
on real things. But star Crum they got a letter
from a listener that um who who was who served
recently overseas, and he said it was a very common

(36:50):
knowledge that there was plenty of sanctioned use of adderall um,
which is a form of methamphetamine. It's not really methamphetamy.
Minutes and analogue would say it has very similar effects
UM and things just like nicotine for example, is very
much par for the course. UM. So I recommend you
guys check out that episode if you want to catch
a little supplement for some of this stuff. Right, and

(37:11):
we this brings us to the present. Uh, here's the name.
One of the common names for the modern day 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

(37:32):
by military personnel. Period these uh these individuals are often
tasked with excessively long missions, some of them might last
upwards the 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

(37:54):
enough after tiredness and fatigues would have started driving their
mental form its 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? I do that still, how long did you
make it all night? So twenty four hours? Remember staying
up all night A handful of times where I really

(38:15):
really tried and felt good about it, like I kind
of cheated death in some way. My my longest, I think,
is around thirty seven hours. But then at that point
there was nothing I could do. But after a certain
point you begin to hallucinate, us lose dexterity, and I
would say you lose your mental agility as well. It

(38:36):
was during the forty film fest when I was in college.
That's when it happened. I tried to make it forty eight,
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

(38:57):
fighter pilots took amphetamines during Does 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 hyperactivity in children and narcilepsy, and

(39:21):
arcilepsy 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,

(39:42):
Klein and French that we began that we mentioned in
N four. And the US has a unique history with
a lot of with a lot of these drugs, just
because so many wars dry of innovation or drive that
cycle of trial and error into a at a much

(40:06):
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 seeing
entire nations and cultures pour all of their energy into something.
According to an author named David Grossman, Vietnam was the

(40:27):
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, that's the first time we see

(40:48):
potent antipsychotic drugs being prescribed. And these are things that
are also manufactured by Glaxo Smith Klient, such as thorazine.
The mass of 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, there's another

(41:12):
conspiracy here. A lot of it was swept under the
rug by the US government. And when we say like
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 imagine your your

(41:33):
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 going to be at
best a very unpleasant experience. Thinking about these antipsychotic drugs,
I'm imagining everything that we've learned over time about how

(41:55):
certain drugs that are meant to treat that kind of
thing or or are anti psychotic, 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

(42:16):
any effect, and I'm going to 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,

(42:38):
and 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,

(43:00):
an 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.

(43:21):
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

(43:42):
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 bad ry of overseas practical experiments in which LSD

(44:06):
was tested and enhanced interrogation. That should probably that as
well on poor on helpless, unwitting subjects. Yeah, and just
to note b Z might be unfamiliar to some of us,
was unfamiliar to us when we were first looking into this.
It's real name is three quino cladonal benzolate. Uh. It

(44:31):
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

(44:57):
absolute madness. It's it's not a 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 pretty it's
like speed It's pretty much a speed um and we've

(45:21):
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
captagon and amphetamine that's allegedly fueling serious civil war. Last November,
eleven million pills were seized by Turkish officials at the

(45:43):
Syrian Turkish border, while this April one point five million.
We're 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 chip. But there's one user of this
drug who was saying, quote, there was no fear anymore

(46:05):
when I took Captain on. 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 somewhat
aware of your surroundings. Either of you watch Jessica Jones,
remember the character who was on some sort of experimental
drug based on Nuke from the comic book, right right,

(46:29):
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 is that this popped up in

(46:50):
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 finn Athyline. And this the way Captagon works

(47:12):
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. You say, Captagon
is really a combination of two drugs, theophiline and emphetamine.
Instead of combination is inactive in the body, but when
the body breaks down into the two components, each part

(47:33):
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 they say that,

(47:55):
like adderall, captagon was once used to treat behavioral problem
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 that this use

(48:17):
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 by wouldn't they continue using it? I don't see why.
And we have another of course, we have a should

(48:40):
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 host of Mockingbird I think was

(49:03):
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 Manchurian candidates or sleeper agents, or if they
could create a truth serra for interrogations, if they could

(49:26):
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 see the effect it would have

(49:50):
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,
would forcibly not give them any And I believe that,
I believe that morphine is one of those drugs where
the withdrawal symptoms alone can actually take your life. Is

(50:13):
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

(50:33):
this also involved you know, tricking people into having bad trips.
LSD famously, right and famously that's one of the only
documented m K ultra deaths. Allegedly again, the only documented
one is someone who while on LSD, jumped through a

(50:55):
window to their death. And we still haven't done a
full episode on this we on mk Ultra have we not?
I feel like we haven't. I don't know where if
we have not, we're going to Okay. It's just mk
ulture is seems to cast its shadow over so much stuff.
Whenever ever we get into this sort of water, this
murky water, it feels like mk ulture has just always

(51:19):
sort of been 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, UH, 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

(51:39):
that stands for Freedom 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

(51:59):
the use of drugs that 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,

(52:24):
it's kicking into overdrive 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,

(52:47):
the Peak 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 has 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.

(53:09):
There there has been extensive research into a life without sleep.
We know that 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.

(53:31):
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 DARPA
have dug into both of these things. Is there a
way to create human process to turn off part of

(53:52):
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 urcalepsi drug like mota finil 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 the fight

(54:14):
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 who doesn't need

(54:35):
to sleep? And the other one is how do we
make some thing 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 Darper robots which are stranger and

(54:56):
stranger and stranger. I like the ones where they slip
on bananappeals. 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 throwing stuff at them. Was

(55:19):
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 the vaccine, Let's say, let's say

(55:40):
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

(56:02):
for a month that I would not feel pain for
thirty days. It 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,

(56:22):
would immediately recoil away. We just wouldn't feel burned though. Obviously,
though there's you 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

(56:43):
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 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 in the dangerous
parts because this is meant to prolong fighting ability, which

(57:05):
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 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

(57:28):
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, has uh an egregious wound, what if
the doctors could just chemically induce hibernation and like suspended

(57:51):
animation of sorts 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, conduct the surgery
to save their life. The idea here is almost the
opposite to keep them fighting. It's put them on ice

(58:12):
through the use of hydrogen sulfide and blood removal to
extend the golden period 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? 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

(58:35):
further future of pharmacology stuff that would be virtual reality,
augmented reality with focus drugs, so there's still speed equivalents,
but then there's also technology and 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

(58:58):
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 other global militaries are conducting
similar experiences. Both Russia and China are believed to be
experimenting with performance enhancing drugs and other techniques, including genetic modification. However,

(59:21):
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 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 gatica s thing people fear,

(59:45):
but it hasn't happened yet. And then, of course in
the corporate world 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 All Heart, who's a neuropsychopharmacologist UH at
Columbia University, and his career has mainly been dedicated to

(01:00:07):
studying the effects of drugs, um and drug policy on
the public and really 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

(01:00:30):
to methamphetamine. And anyone you know who's an adult who
has prescribed adderall, 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

(01:00:52):
don't know. I just think it's an interesting cultural disconnect
that we have when we have this war on drugs,
where we are 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 upperst Really, that's a great point, and it

(01:01:18):
goes the same way with any psychoactive substance. Like remember
the days when it became popular to prescribe riddling lithium,
zoloft and things like that to kids. There's some damaging
effects that's still a serious issue, not necessarily with those
specific drugs. But anti psychotics with children is a big

(01:01:40):
deal currently. Well, I mean not only that, I'm not
trying to get 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
a a stress, you know, he'll offer you um valium,

(01:02:04):
you know, without 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 pharma pharmaceutical 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

(01:02:26):
you look at it, the villains of 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, and it's also it's common

(01:02:51):
throughout demographics, throughout creeds, throughout genders, throughout socio economic 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 four are are on at

(01:03:12):
a ROLL or on some other performance enhancing thing. And
then a lot of professors or professional instructors apparently are
on it as well. And that's not even mentioned. New
tropics are the so called smart drugs. We we're gonna
have to end it here, I think UH in our examination,
but we want to end it with some further reading
to recommend. If you'd like to delve into this. There's

(01:03:35):
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 about pharmacology and Vietnam UH. And
instead of doing a shout out corner today, guys, what

(01:03:59):
if we you a call for stories for people who
have had experience with UH, with the state sanctioned use
of performance enhancing substances in the military, whether you are
a US citizen or it's in another military from a
different part of the world. We'd like to hear your story,

(01:04:20):
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 have to only be in
the military to write us. Let us also know if

(01:04:42):
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. I'm not going to do that joke again
because Matt, I see the look a you're giving me,
and we did it on a previous episode, but before
they stopped me, before they ripped me away from the microphone. You,

(01:05:03):
specifically you, let us know what we should cover next.
You can find us on Facebook and Twitter, where we
are conspiracy Stuff. We're also on Instagram where we are
Conspiracy Stuff show. And if you don't want to do
any of that stuff, and you just want to write
us some words, heading over to your email and shoot
us one. We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.