There is always a stack of research left lurking in computer folders and squatting in random drawers after any novel is sent to print. It was this fact-finding that gave me the idea to pen this blog: I’ve never researched a novel so much in my life. The reason for this (and the reason I thank the universe I studied biochemistry) is that the plot is intertwined with both licit and illicit drugs: there’s no escaping their use and abuse in my storyline.
On the illicit side, I write about cocaine and crystal methamphetamine – two habit-forming drugs, both stimulants, and considered party drugs or street drugs depending on whether they are snorted, swallowed, smoked or injected. But during my research, I came across both these drugs in terms of warfare: they were drugs used to keep fighters fighting. Both cocaine and crystal methamphetamine, synthesised by pharmaceutical companies in the 20th Century for medicinal reasons, had been galvanised for combat. This deep dive into the current literature on warcraft and pharmacological substances startled my eyebrows. Nowadays, both licit and illicit drugs are used by militaries to protect countries and belligerents to destabilise them. But before this, well, let’s take a look at what got it all started.
World War I. The first true world war. At this time, there was no need for drug trafficking as an anaesthetic called cocaine, medically developed for localised surgery, was legitimately being produced by German pharmaceutical company Merck. Merck was a forerunner in cocaine manufacture, but production halted when an international blockade made access to raw materials like coca impossible. But this export ban created a booming Dutch cocaine industry since the Dutch, being neutral, could sell to both the Allied and Axis Powers. They were the first to put cocaine into pills named ‘Forced March’ (when cocaine is swallowed in pill form, it travels directly to the stomach, is absorbed into the blood stream and acts as a stimulant rather than an anaesthetic). Not the most encouraging of brand names for a soldier off to the trenches, but they marketed them as ‘lessening the appetite and increasing endurance’ and sales took off. These cocaine-containing pills were bought in bulk by leaderships, rationed and then self-prescribed by fighters. The dosage for each pill was ‘one tablet dissolved in the mouth every hour when needed’, making them easy to access for air force missions and gruelling marches towards the Western Front.
But cocaine does not just affect appetite and endurance: it rushes through the blood stream, affecting the whole body including the brain, mentally preparing a fighter for combat. In a fighter’s cocaine-stimulated mind, this psychoactive rush makes a homemade brain chemical, dopamine, cause euphoria and, as Robert Browning poeticised, gives the feeling that, ‘God's in His heaven; All's right with the world!’ We now know dopamine affects the pleasure centres in our brain: two cheeseburgers doubles the amount of dopamine; cocaine increases it over three times. But what goes up must come down. In these cases, within minutes for the cheeseburgers; within one to two hours for cocaine.
I can only imagine the necessity for troops to rely on cocaine in the trenches in order to endure the agony of a war of attrition that lasted over four years. But not all soldiers became addicts (only half of us are more likely to due to our genetic makeup). We now know cocaine is a habit-forming drug as it increases activation of dopamine (a lab mouse has been known to starve to death rather than eat and give up its cocaine-dopamine addiction). Seeing drug paraphernalia is also known to trigger an addict’s desperation for a cocaine-dopamine high. This is why it’s so hard to quit cocaine. This is why addicts are created. But the cocaine doled out in the trenches was not the only reason addiction spread like machine gun fire.
We could give governments and commanders the benefit of the doubt if they hadn't begun to distribute cocaine in massive amounts before offensives. The psychoactive components of cocaine were being used to make fighters lethal – and addicted – as the euphoria they experienced from taking cocaine at that level increased cravings. Mass addiction and a scramble for more became rampant as repeated cocaine use raises the threshold necessary to not just get high but to feel normal. This addiction devastated fighters and the societies they returned to costing them their jobs, freedom and even their lives. After a ban on cocaine in 1920, black markets took off with criminal enterprises erupting to supply the addicted. These black markets became linked to organised crime and the narcotrafficking of cocaine took off.
In World War II, the Wehrmacht, or German military, used blitzkrieg – meaning ‘lightning war’ – to occupy Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France in just eight months. Blitzkrieg offensives were rapid assaults using all the tools of war: aircraft, tanks, artillery and infantry, to focus attacks and besiegements. But how did they achieve this destruction so efficiently? By doping the German forces with Pervitin tablets aka ‘tank chocolate.’ Pervitin, medically developed to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), narcolepsy and obesity, was a new drug more powerful than cocaine: it contained crystal methamphetamine – a psychoactive substance that increases the effects of dopamine four times more than cocaine and lasts for up to 12 hours. This gave commanders, what they thought, was the perfect pharmacological tool to weaponise. Pervitin made Blitzkrieg offensives possible since fighters, when high on crystal methamphetamine, could stay awake for three days and march 60 km at a time.
For the Wehrmacht, the upside to crystal methamphetamine was ideal for the soldier in combat: it increased alertness, aggression and decreased appetite and sleepiness. The state of euphoria it induced, due to the high levels of dopamine, allowed most of the German military to be involved and complicit in criminal conduct. They committed atrocities seemingly without conscience and took these atrocities to another level. I’ll stop at mentioning these hideous war crimes aside from The Holocaust when soldiers were ordered to commit the most heinous of acts against the Jewish people. However, the upside for the victims of the Wehrmacht was that these same German soldiers were dying from heart failure or committing suicide due to psychotic phases brought on by Pervitin. The use of this drug was also a factor in the poor strategic choices made by the Wehrmacht Commanders – including Hitler. Germany’s secret weapon, crystal methamphetamine, a success at the beginning of the war backfired and Nazi Germany fell defeated.
There was also a legacy, however. The dopamine rush from cheeseburgers and cocaine does not change the way a brain works but crystal methamphetamine does. It causes structural changes to a point where dopamine release from the drug has zero effect. This creates a compulsion to use the drug to a point where death from overdose is likely else it’s time to get sober. This is tough. When a crystal methamphetamine addict detoxes, dopamine levels plummet. Detox takes a week but the brain takes months to heal and the dopamine segment is so beat-up that depression arises. A tough pill to swallow.
But crystal methamphetamine lives on. In its licit form, it is manufactured in pill form by big pharma to still treat ADHD. But in its illicit form, it is easily cooked in meth labs (there is an individual known as the ‘Pied Piper of Meth’ who has published cookbooks and put tutorials up on YouTube teaching how to make meth). The Czech Republic is well-known for its many small-to-medium scale meth labs and the Netherlands for its medium-to-large scale meth factories. Crystal methamphetamine is produced and trafficked as a drug of choice for abuse, again, creating addicts and undermining societies. Its continuous illicit production and distribution has resulted in a global drug epidemic; Germany poignantly being named the crystal methamphetamine capital of Europe.
Just using the examples of cocaine and crystal methamphetamine in World Wars I and II indicates how dependent combatants are on drugs to make them willing fighters. Will an impending World War III be reliant on the most recent concoctions? Captagon or ‘chemical courage’ in the Gaza-Israel conflict; Flakka or ‘bath salts’ in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Both illicit but both trafficked to complicit war zones. The nexus between political power and organised crime will keep fighters fighting. Not just physically with drug-addled minds on the frontline, but mentally fighting for ways to survive the nightmare of war.
