Blitzed Baby! Psychedelic Marines, Subterranean Dreams & the Heroin Epidemic

3 of Wands | Shadow Warrior Tarot | © 2018 Lavavoth Stuart

Hilarious two-minute clip of British Marines in 1964 after secretly being

administered LSD-laced water.

"Don't listen to me. I'm on mescaline. I've been spaced out all day."

Fictitious author, Eli Cash played by Owen Wilson in The Royal Tenenbaums. 

Mescaline was the first hallucinatory substance that I tried in my youth.

From Drugstore Cowboy (1989), starring Matt Dillon.

Velvet Underground's iconic "Heroin" for punk rock romantics.

"You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday

you'll join us, and the world will be as one."

Blitzed

In the fascinating and mind-boggling topic of drugs and the Nazis, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler takes readers through the murky details of the Third Reich’s complex relationship with mind-altering substances. The book reveals the regime’s hypocrisy—publicly condemning drug use while secretly feeding its unrelenting appetite for crystal meth (methamphetamine). A reference-filled narrative, Blitzed is at times darkly humorous, at times serious, and packed with insights on a topic that has long remained largely unexplored.

Prior to reading Ohler’s book, I came across several reviews of Blitzed that criticized it for taking creative liberties with history and presenting a version of events that may not be entirely accurate. However, as I’ve written previously, history is arguably one of the most difficult subjects to approach, given the multitude of angles and perspectives through which it can be interpreted. For instance, I own books on the Normandy invasion that present both German and American viewpoints—each shaped by its own frame of reference and priorities. Ohler acknowledges this challenge in Blitzed as well. He critiques earlier biographies of Hitler for overlooking or downplaying the dictator’s extensive drug use, and he details the difficulty of navigating the fragmented, chaotic archives in both the U.S. and Germany. These archival complexities add yet another layer to the already fraught task of writing historical narrative.

The synergistic effect of the Pervitin high and what has been described as "autotelic violence“ enabled soldiers to detach from the psychological consequences of war—killing for its own sake and for the gratification of mowing down civilians.

Pervitin (crystal meth) would eventually plunge the Werhmacht into withdrawal and dysphoria, but at the start of the war, the "snow-white splendor"—distributed in pill form and sometimes infused into chocolate (known as Panzerschokolade, or tank chocolate, produced by Hildebrand chocolates)—was in high demand. Marketed as a miracle drug, Pervitin was used to treat everything from fatigue to low libido and countless conditions in between.

For soldiers in particular, fatigue was the primary adversary. Otto Ranke, a defense physiologist for the Third Reich, “declared a war on exhaustion” and quickly embraced Pervitin as a panacea. Those who consumed it praised the drug’s ability to suppress sleep for 24 hours or more. Pervitin could induce euphoric states, often lowering inhibitions and transforming soldiers into jacked-up “animated engines” responsible for executing Blitzkrieg with ruthless efficiency.

The synergistic effect of the Pervitin high and what has been described as "autotelic violence“ enabled soldiers to detach from the psychological consequences of war—killing for its own sake and for the gratification of mowing down civilians. Pain from battlefield injuries was dulled by the drug, while fear of death was almost entirely suppressed.

Hailed as a gift from the gods, the drug’s true cost would only become clear with time.

"Damn girl, you have gorgeous veins!": From Heroin Dreamscape to Heroin Epidemic

I was in my early 20s in the early 1990s, during what I saw as a revival of the Subterranean lifestyle—marked by uninhibited, hallucinatory ways of living a Kerouac-inspired existence. I longed to cross the American landscape with friends, from Orlando to Seattle, stopping to connect with other neo-hippie punks chasing creative aspiration—girls with shaved heads, boys with long hair—hooked on music, rejecting responsibility, and fully escaping reality. Looking back, I don’t regret a moment of it. I was free, creative, passionate, and constantly testing the limits of my own existence.

But despite my bohemian lifestyle, I never tried heroin. I had friends who shot up—sometimes right in front of me. I remember one moment in particular, when I received the strangest of compliments.

"Damn girl, you have gorgeous veins," one of my heroin-addicted friends once said—admiring the strong, branching vessels beneath my skin, that interior beauty, blood-red and bulging.

At the time, I romanticized heroin. My idols had all used it—William Burroughs, Kurt Cobain, and my friend Jack, whose poetic brilliance, Gatsby-esque wealth, and James Dean looks made him the demigod of our group. Heroin-laced films reigned supreme. Drugstore Cowboy was one of my favorites—the junkie posse, that scrawny blond boy tanked on meth.

Then Jack fatally overdosed in his girlfriend’s arms, marking my first real reckoning with heroin. More deaths followed. Before long, my adopted home state of Vermont—like much of New England—was overwhelmed by the heroin epidemic.

In my day job, many of my clients are personally entangled with heroin in one way or another. The stories of death are endless. If I don’t know the victim directly, I know someone who does. In this once-bucolic town, heroin has dismantled everything that once made it a peaceful escape from the concrete sprawl. Community is nearly nonexistent now. We’ve all grown too suspicious of each other.

Gone are the days when heroin felt like a distant muse—something I experienced vicariously through films, music, and friends. Gone too is the fearless intoxication of youth, fueled by mind-altering substances—though I still consume marijuana edibles occasionally, and in moderation. What remains is my ability to slip out of the present and drift into the past—to a time I still regard as less dangerous, when I was young and naive, and unaware of what was coming.

Blitzed Baby!

To bring this full circle, I have to ask: What might’ve happened if WWII troops had taken LSD instead of amphetamines in the UK and methamphetamines in Germany? If the top video in this post is any indication, I’d like to believe Blitzkrieg would’ve become Blitzedbaby!, and soldiers from both sides would've collapsed in fits of uncontrollable laughter. And if John Lennon's "Imagine" had existed back then, maybe its lyrics would've formed the foundation of a peace treaty—scrawled out on acid.

Sources:

Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler.

Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying, the Secret WWII Transcripts of German POWs by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer.