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Title details for Killer High by Peter Andreas - Available

Killer High

A History of War in Six Drugs

by Peter Andreas
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There is growing alarm over how drugs empower terrorists, insurgents, militias, and gangs. But by looking back not just years and decades but centuries, Peter Andreas reveals that the drugs-conflict nexus is actually an old story, and that powerful states have been its biggest beneficiaries. In his path-breaking Killer High, Andreas shows how six psychoactive drugs-ranging from old to relatively new, mild to potent, licit to illicit, natural to synthetic-have proven to be particularly important war ingredients. This sweeping history tells the story of war from antiquity to the modern age through the lens of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, opium, amphetamines, and cocaine. Beer and wine drenched ancient and medieval battlefields, and the distilling revolution lubricated the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the New World. Tobacco became globalized through soldiering, with soldiers hooked on smoking and governments hooked on taxing it. Caffeine and opium fueled imperial expansion and warfare. The commercialization of amphetamines in the twentieth century energized soldiers to fight harder, longer, and faster, while cocaine stimulated an increasingly militarized drug war that produced casualty numbers surpassing most civil wars. As Andreas demonstrates, armed conflict has become progressively more drugged with the introduction, mass production, and global spread of mind-altering substances. As a result, we cannot understand the history of war without including drugs, and we similarly cannot understand the history of drugs without including war. From ancient brews and battles to meth and modern warfare, drugs and war have grown up together and become addicted to each other.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 2, 2019

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780190463038

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780190463038
      • File size: 7238 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      October 15, 2019
      Since time immemorial, soldiers have consumed mind-altering substances; Andreas (International Studies/Brown Univ.; Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, 2013, etc.) delivers an impressive, often unsettling history of six. Alcohol has inspired soldiers since ancient times. Now frowned upon because it muddles their skills, it still remains popular. Opium has an equally long history and only fell from grace when, highly refined in the 19th century, its addictive properties excited moral condemnation. Nicotine has "lightened the inevitable hardships of war" so well that there were serious campaigns during both world wars to collect cigarettes to send overseas. Only after 1975 were they not included with soldiers' food rations. The only psychoactive that has never been condemned is caffeine, which has become a 21st-century essential for fighting troops and is not just administered through coffee or soda anymore, but also Red Bull and other energy drinks. Cocaine is not necessarily a soldier's drug, but its prominence as a target in the war on drugs makes it relevant to Andreas' study. Fighting illegal drugs is a police matter, but treating it as a war is politically popular and allows vast amounts of money to be spent. The author delivers a painful account of the failed five-decade war on drugs, now mostly directed against cocaine, which has destabilized many Latin American nations, especially Mexico. Cocaine now costs much less than it did decades ago. A product of modern chemistry, the first amphetamines appeared in the 1930s, and their fiercely energizing effect, similar to cocaine but much longer acting, made them the ideal battlefield drug. During World War II, military leaders loved their performance-enhancing qualities, and doctors prescribed enormous quantities, especially during the early years. Although now officially condemned, soldiers value them for duties requiring long periods of alertness. Fear, boredom, and fatigue are a soldier's lot, and this is a skillful account of how they have long dealt with it.

      COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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