Soldiers Have Used Drugs to Enhance Their Killing Capabilities in Basically Every War by Oscar Rickett, writing for Vice News, April 2016.
In his new book 'Shooting Up,' the Polish historian Lukasz Kamienski traces the history of drugs in warfare, from the Viking berserkers to the Mumbai attacks.
"In the 1980s, the military historian John Keegan responded to the question, "Why do soldiers fight?" with three answers: "inducement, coercion, narcosis." While Keegan later decided this theory was too simple, Kamienski argues that, on top of the inducement provided by dehumanizing training regimes and the coercion that sees nations force people to fight in their name, "narcosis" can be read literally: in order to kill other people, human beings need to put themselves in a different frame of mind. Drugs can make soldiers do things they otherwise never would: leave their humanity behind and becoming the fighting apparatus of an army."
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