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Hello and welcome to another episode of the World War II podcast.

I'm Angus Wallace.

It's a little known fact that during the war drugs were issued to those on active service on a monumental scale.

Hundreds of millions of pills were produced.

The drug of choice was amphetamines.

Stimulants used to help to push troops beyond their natural

endurance and keep pilots alert on long missions. In this episode of the show, I'm talking to

Lukash Kaminsky. Lukash is Associate Professor at the Facility of International and Political Studies

at the Yaglionian University in Krakow, Poland.

His new book, Shooting Up, investigates the long history of intoxicants and drug use within the military.

Lukas, thanks for joining me. Although I like to focus on the use of drugs during World War II. I think it's worth

framing our discussion insofar as we're looking at drugs prescribed or issued to the

troops. This isn't a modern phenomena, is it? How far back are we talking?

It's difficult to say because we should be aware that many things we don't know and we will probably not be able to find records right so but when you

look into left feature for example you can trunk back the use of intoxicants to the ancient creek culture if you look at the

Odysse for example you see Homer describing how the grief over the loss of companions of the

royal war was allocated by the substance he calls the penteth, which is kind of drink of oblivion.

Probably it was a mixture of wine and opium, something that later became to be known as Laudanum, very popular since the 17th century.

Everything depends on how to define drugs or intoxicons because alcohol is an intoxicons and there are many descriptions of poplids and Greek Warrior going to battle after drinking wine or drinking wine on their way to the battlefield.

Yeah and of course you've got Alexander, he's a famously heavy drinker.

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