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Intoxicans quite often enable better training, better fighting, and also better killing. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts.

Matthew Galt. Why do soldiers fight? Maybe it's patriotism, maybe it's comradeship, maybe it's fear of their own side, or maybe it's the drugs. For as long as there have been people, there have been people trying to get high.

It's no different in warfare.

Fighters have used drugs to make themselves bloodier, stronger, more able to go without sleep.

And for all those reasons, the people calling the shots have given them the drugs.

Lukash Kamyanski, author of shooting up a history of drugs in warfare, joins us to talk about this

underreported side of warfare. So, hi Lukash, how are you?

Hello, I'm very well, thank you. Do you think you can give us a very brief summary of how

drugs are used in war.

What are they used for?

When we look at the effects of drugs,

you'll see that most of them are highly desirable for increasing military effectiveness.

Especially stimulants help to provide

what every military organization has tried to achieve basically through training.

So stimulants enhance performance, they reduce stress, can eliminate hunger, fuel courage, depressants can also induce numbness.

So from the military point of view, intoxicants quite often enable better training,

better fighting, and also better killing.

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