Berserkers, Drugs and War

slowburner

From Cúchulainn's and the Vikings' possible use of Fly Agaric, Bog Myrtle and alcohol, to the prescription of Prozac to US troops in Afghanistan; psychoactive drugs have played a part in the performance of fighting forces.

EFFECTS OF AMANITA MUSCARIA #
Before proceeding it will be useful to review the main symptoms of Cú Chulaind's two maladies. Those exhibited during his warp spasm are: agitation (manic behavior, bristling hair); visual distortions (one eye protrudes, the other recedes); facial distortions (he grimaces and gapes, a thick "warrior's moon" projects from his forehead); tachycardia (booming heartbeat); blood rushes to his head (a drop of blood at the tip of each hair, a geyser of it spurts from his crown); light rushes to his head (a spark of fire appears at the tip of each hair, the "warrior's light" from his crown); he becomes very strong and very limber. He also becomes very hot, needing three successive dousings in vats of cold water before his temperature returns to normal. The symptoms of his wasting sickness are: sleepiness, vivid dreaming and prolonged lassitude.

http://www.erowid.org/plants/amanitas/amanitas_writings5.shtml

Kopék’s toadstool epiphany was widely reported, and it began a fashion for re-examining elements of European folklore and culture and interpolating fly agaric intoxication into odd corners of myth and tradition. Perhaps the best example of this is the notion that the berserkers, the Viking shock troops of the 8th to 10th centuries, drank a fly agaric potion before going into battle and fighting like men possessed. This is regularly asserted as fact not only among mushroom and Viking aficionados but also in text-books and encyclopaedias; nevertheless, it’s almost certainly a creation of the nineteenth century. There’s no reference to fly agaric, or indeed to any exotic plant stimulants, in the sagas or eddas: the notion of mushroom-intoxicated berserker warriors was first suggested by the Swedish professor Samuel Ödman in his Attempt to Explain the Berserk-Raging of Ancient Nordic Warriors through Natural History (1784), which was simply speculation based on eighteenth-century Siberian accounts. By the end of the nineteenth century scholars like the Norwegian botanist Frederik Christian Schübeler had taken Ödman’s suggestion as proof. The rest is history – or, more likely, urban myth.

http://mikejay.net/articles/mushrooms-in-wonderland/

In some ways, the prescriptions may seem unremarkable. Generals, history shows, have plied their troops with medicinal palliatives at least since George Washington ordered rum rations at Valley Forge. During World War II, the Nazis fueled their blitzkrieg into France and Poland with the help of an amphetamine known as Pervitin. The U.S. Army also used amphetamines during the Vietnam War.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1812055,00.html

pedroeibar1

Not just in wartime - see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html

The Aztecs also had their shrooms.
Rs
P.

slowburner

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Not just in wartime - see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html

The Aztecs also had their shrooms.
Rs
P.

Methinks the mouldy bread explanation is more likely. Full marks for an imaginative compo claim all the same
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/history/ergot.htm

pedroeibar1

slowburner wrote: »

Methinks the mouldy bread explanation is more likely.

Possibly, but the world loves a conspiracy.:D Ergot is one one the key theories also for the demise of the crew on the Marie Celeste.
Rs
P.

Wibbs

slowburner wrote: »

Methinks the mouldy bread explanation is more likely. Full marks for an imaginative compo claim all the same
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/history/ergot.htm

Maybe not. Very few societies in history haven't used drugs of some nature and knew how to do so. tribal societies in particular usually have a list of such compounds. Usually restricted to a priestly class, but also sometimes trickling down to the warrior class.

ReacherCreature

Just to place this in a historical frame. It was said that German and Allied pilots from 1942-1945 had some form of similar drugs and even the application of LSD. They were used during the intensive and devastating bombing offensive as a physical motivator of pilots.

slowburner

This video is too well known to need any introduction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-rWnQphPdQ