Addicted Leaders, Oceans of Blood
How has addiction influenced history?
According to eyewitness reports, Adolf Hitler was wired during his last days on earth. This wasn’t surprising, since he had been taking a variety of drugs for many years. Along with regular shots of vitamins, steroids and cocaine, according to his doctor, perhaps 200 varieties of pills and injections were put into the former corporal’s bloodstream. Perhaps the worst, though, was methamphetamine, something with which we’re very familiar today.
Hitler certainly took huge quantities of powerful drugs, right up till the end of his life, but the real question is the degree to which these drugs influenced his decision-making. Meth in particular is known to seriously impair judgement, and this may help explain some of his more irrational military decisions — and he was perhaps taking enough of the stuff to have reportedly developed a case of “meth mouth” (don’t google that: it’s a condition where your mouth dries up, allowing your teeth to rot). Meth was also issued to the German Army, in pill form, in vast quantities. Today historians are beginning to connect the use of amphetamines, or “speed,” with the intensity and rapidity of the vaunted German Blitzkrieg — and perhaps its atrocities too. After all speed doesn’t just give you energy, it makes you high, and of course is highly addictive.
Two decades later, the Vietnam War took place in one of the biggest drug-producing areas on planet earth, the Golden Triangle. Very early in the conflict, marijuana use became incredibly widespread among the American soldiers in Vietnam. However in the late 1960s, as the war became incredibly ferocious, marijuana gave way to heroin, which was absurdly cheap and at the same time extraordinarily pure — and therefore very powerful. Addiction was rife, its use reaching epidemic proportions. A survey by the US Army in 1971 found that just under 50% of returning soldiers had at least tried it.
In Vietnam, drug use frequently took the form of (or was a reflection of) a breakdown in military discipline. A rash of “fraggings” (murders of officers by their own men), desertions and shooting at helicopters tasked with taking soldiers out on missions, among other phenomena, became shockingly common. There has long been speculation that drug use played a role in the widespread killing of Vietnamese civilians. This of course can never be proven. However it can be accepted that a drug that is used in massive quantities by a military organization will have some impact on how it fights. The debate, really, is in the degree of its influence.
Few human beings have more blood on their hands than Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Between intentional famines, ghastly purges of biblical proportions, mass employment of slave labor (with high death rates) and often disastrous military decisions, tens of millions died. Stalin also drank massive amounts of alcohol. He would keep his inner circle up late at night, insisting they keep up with his legendary tolerance for vodka. One by one his colleagues would vomit and/or pass out, but Stalin prided himself on being the last man standing.
As a child, Stalin had an alcoholic father who subjected both he and his mother to vicious, frequent beatings. In that sense, therefore, we can say with confidence that Stalin was powerfully affected by alcoholism in his formative years. At the same time we must accept that his own drinking later in life influenced the man and his decision-making to a degree that is, unfortunately, hard to specify.
In China, Mao Zedong lived like a Chinese emperor of old, especially when it came to sex. Members of his inner circle, especially his doctor, would later recount tales of hundreds, even thousands of young women being brought to Mao for his pleasure. Wherever he went, it is said, women were brought to him. It’s said there was even a room at the National People’s Congress set aside for Mao to use for his assignations in between meetings and speeches. Sex addicts can become preoccupied with thoughts of sex, to the point where other matters get crowded out. And if that wasn’t enough, Mao’s doctor later recounted prescribing powerful drugs to Mao and members of his inner circle. Does this help explain his more disastrous policies? The Great Leap Forward, which killed upwards of 40 million people, or the Cultural Revolution, which devastated the party and resulted in the mass destruction, ISIS-style, of Chinese cultural treasures?
We cannot treat as fact the idea that Adolf Hitler was a drug addict. Nor can we assume that Stalin and Mao were addicts, or that the US Army in Vietnam became a mad machine of wildly-stoned mayhem. We cannot factually state the degree to which addiction has played a role in the often-horrific history of the past century. If we care about facts, we cannot ever be specific. However we can say for certain there has been some effect. We can say for certain that removing the undue influence of sex, drugs and alcohol would probably have resulted in a very different 20th Century.
And today? Today the use of drugs, particularly in combat, remains very common. It’s known that ISIS is a massive user of speed, in pill form, for its soldiers. And in his recounting of the takedown of Osama Bin Laden, SEAL Team Six member Matt Bissonnette described the reliance of SEAL troopers on the use of Ambien, a powerful sedative. The men had trouble getting to sleep, it seemed, so began using the pill. But Ambien is strong stuff, with side effects that can include erratic behavior, hallucinations and sleep-walking. It is rather troubling to imagine fighting men still doing their jobs while on drugs — but it seems to be an inevitable part of the trade.
While it is difficult to be precise, it is still dreadful to imagine how much death and destruction has been wrought on society by chemicals flowing through the bloodstreams of decision-makers and order-takers, and enticing to imagine what might have been (and might yet be) if substance abuse were no longer to be a part of politics and war. But of course substance abuse is still a big part of society as a whole, influencing the lives of countless millions of people.
It is just another example of why civilization needs to change its approach to addiction— because avoiding discussion of mental health, or reducing it to stereotypes, cliches and judgement, has killed too many people. And will continue to do so.
