amphetamines and war

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watching the war on TV yesterday, it suddenly became clear to me that the majority of those 'embedded' journalists, sleepless and harried and fucking around with satellite phones and the like as they were, had to be out of their minds on like, trucker speed. too quick and shifty-eyed

there is a long history of amphetamine use by the military, i think, no? and i assume that U.S. soldiers must be jacked up at all hours..

so is this true? and what are the implications, then?
can a soldier who's been up for 40 hours, head buzzing and eyes burning, behave like a human being with memory and compassion when confronted by, say, a little girl and her father in his rifle sight?

― gabriel (gabe), Friday, 28 March 2003 12:52 (twenty-three years ago)

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/DailyNews/2020_pilotpills021220.html

"Yet not only is the Air Force making the amphetamines widely available to combat pilots, it also has informed them they could be considered unfit to fly certain missions if they don't voluntarily take the amphetamines."

― gabriel (gabe), Friday, 28 March 2003 13:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Dude, go watch Jacob's Ladder.

The scary thing is, that actually Ecstacy was developped as a drug for exactly what yer talking about... heh heh.

― kate, Friday, 28 March 2003 13:10 (twenty-three years ago)

as far as I know, yes, soldiers are issued with amphetamine.

in the second world war they used to give ketamine to soldiers. there is a bit in the Bridge Too Far book where one of the paras is so whacked on ketamine that he hallucinates that the allied tanks have arrived to relieve them, and then turns angrily on his colleagues when they contradict him.

as to your question about how the soldier will react in the situation you describe... a lot of this might depend on training. I gather soldiers are trained in such a way that they respond to situations without thinking about them, because if they thought about things too much only about 1 in 5 soldiers would ever shoot to kill at the enemy (this was the case in the second world war, and presumably earlier ones, across all armies). so if the training is done well, even a groggy soldier will have been "programmed" not to blow apart some guy carrying his daughter in a suspicious manner. If not...

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 28 March 2003 13:11 (twenty-three years ago)

And the military is actively researching other ways to stay awake and alert for as many as seven days without speed or other drugs known side effects.

― j.lu (j.lu), Friday, 28 March 2003 13:39 (twenty-three years ago)

amphetamines war hmmmm well it would seem 2 be at cross purposes because while altering neurotransmitters to maximise processing of information and enabling the autonomic nervous system to operate far above and beyond the capacity parameters applied to a normal existence ie one where the levels of input and necessity for reacting to same w/out recourse to the default noradrenalin position relatively constant notwithstanding psychological capacity adapting to fluid environmental conditions premise being cortical spheroid duality reflected balance equilibrium necessary for condition beneficial for limbic system bio-imperatives despite macro-situation referred to implicitly counter to ingrained systematic conditioning replicating pos-neg molecular activity enabling amino acid reactions tessarating carbon ring organic analogue which bring me back to the original point re circular movement form of eco-stasis parallelled via medulla sim. reflected oblongata reifying 'conflict' and while all this is going on you're trying to figure out how to fire some huge piece of metal they just gave you unconditionally external criteria redefined on basis coded by alphanumeric hierarchy system and that's how they got to be 'embedded' in the first place but do they know it themselves? Got any gum?

― dave q, Friday, 28 March 2003 14:49 (twenty-three years ago)

They call them "Go Pills." It's a well-documented fact that they give them out to soldiers, especially Air Force pilots when they're flying 20+ hour missions.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 28 March 2003 14:53 (twenty-three years ago)

http://www.hillcity-comics.com/role_play/pal/pal820.jpg

― gabriel (gabe), Friday, 28 March 2003 15:10 (twenty-three years ago)

I've heard mention in the last week of soldiers being up for as long as 60 hours. is it any wonder why there is so much friendly fire?

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 28 March 2003 15:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Apparently the guys who are sleeping in the day are complaining that it's too hot and the guys who are sleeping at night are complaining about the huge munitions being fired near their tents. But hell's hell when you're in hell I suppose.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Friday, 28 March 2003 16:00 (twenty-three years ago)

War and drugs kind of go hand in hand... some of the worst war atrocities committed by the Nazis have been attributed to speed. Not to mention the fact that one of the highest rates of U.S. drug addiction occured after WWII when all the U.S. GI's came home addicted to Benzadrine (docs would freely prescribe inhalers).

Oh the few things one remembers from one's lost years...hahahaha...

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 28 March 2003 16:26 (twenty-three years ago)

I heard on the radio that neighborhood pharmacies in Iraq are all out of Vallium. Parents bought it up to give to their kids to try to calm them down. Isn't that depressing? Armies on speed and children on vallium?

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Friday, 28 March 2003 16:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Sam Stone to thread

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Friday, 28 March 2003 16:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I love it when everything people know about the military comes from what they've seen on television or movies and they expect to be taken seriously.

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 28 March 2003 22:15 (twenty-three years ago)

I love it when people express how much smarter they are than others but actually show their stupidity.

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Friday, 28 March 2003 22:25 (twenty-three years ago)

"Bruce Willis, who most recently appeared in a war movie called "Tears of the Sun", was reported by CBC News to have attempted to enlist in the United States army. When the 47 year old was told he was over the age limit, he gave President Bush a telephone call. Bush reportedly told him he could help out at home, that he was too old to fight in the Army."

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Friday, 28 March 2003 22:26 (twenty-three years ago)

ha! Riddick Bowe to thread!

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 28 March 2003 22:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Apparently it's not just the soldiers on speed. I got talking to a guy who was a weapons systems developer during the run up to the last gulf war and they got fed the shit in order to get the gear ready in time.

― Nathan Webb (Nathan Webb), Friday, 28 March 2003 22:37 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember when I was in C school I sure did drink alot of coffee!

― James Blount (James Blount), Friday, 28 March 2003 22:38 (twenty-three years ago)

dave q - your post left me breathless. I actually held my breath while reading, expecting to hit a comma or full-stop or something along those lines. You're responsible for me turning blue and burssting tiny little blood vessels in my eyes.

That aside, you've raised some good points, I think. Though I need to go and break-out some old medical textbooks.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Friday, 28 March 2003 22:46 (twenty-three years ago)

dave q's post makes sense.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Saturday, 29 March 2003 15:18 (twenty-three years ago)

when you're flying 20 hour sorties and operating on completely irregular sleep routines, 'go pills' make pretty good sense. For the man on the ground, the only uppers available are the more common variety - caffeine and sugar, readily available in MRE rations. Each MRE has 2000 calories in it, and it is not atypical for a troop to burn through three of these a day while maintaining weight.

Deltas and other special forces operators talk about something they call the 'drone zone', when you have been awake for over 24 hours and continue to fight. It is well known that Army Ranger training and the SERE school for aircrews both include long sessions of sleep deprivation.

Worst I ever had it was in BMT, going to bed at 2100, doing a guard shift for two hours in the middle of the night and then up at 0400 for rabbit aerobics. People did tend to drink a lot of coffee in tech training (up all night with a language textbook and a tape recorder, etc)

― Millar (Millar), Saturday, 29 March 2003 22:46 (twenty-three years ago)

It's America's war ON DRUGS!

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Sunday, 30 March 2003 03:21 (twenty-three years ago)

Didn't Elvis first get turned on to the joys of speed while he was in the army?

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Sunday, 30 March 2003 06:48 (twenty-three years ago)

Worst I ever had it was in BMT, going to bed at 2100, doing a guard shift for two hours in the middle of the night and then up at 0400 for rabbit aerobics.

I think its our ROT that includes a 72 hours on duty strech. Your given two days afterwards to recoup and fed well. Apparently the trick is to drink LOTS of water.

there is a long history of amphetamine use by the military, i think, no? and i assume that U.S. soldiers must be jacked up at all hours..

Stories about the pilots
who bombed and killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanstan.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Sunday, 30 March 2003 14:43 (twenty-three years ago)

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