Killer High

A History of War in Six Drugs

By: Peter Andreas

Narrated by: Shawn Compton

In his path-breaking Killer High, Peter Andreas shows how six psychoactive drugs - ranging from old to relatively new, mild to potent, licit to illicit, natural to synthetic - have proven to be particularly important war ingredients. This sweeping history tells the story of war from antiquity to the modern age through the lens of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, opium, amphetamines, and cocaine.

Beer and wine drenched ancient and medieval battlefields, and the distilling revolution lubricated the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the New World. Tobacco became globalized through soldiering, with soldiers hooked on smoking and governments hooked on taxing it. Caffeine and opium fueled imperial expansion and warfare. The commercialization of amphetamines in the 20th century energized soldiers to fight harder, longer, and faster, while cocaine stimulated an increasingly militarized drug war that produced casualty numbers surpassing most civil wars.

As Andreas demonstrates, armed conflict has become progressively more drugged with the introduction, mass production, and global spread of mind-altering substances. As a result, we cannot understand the history of war without including drugs, and we similarly cannot understand the history of drugs without including war.

©2020 Peter Andreas (P)2020 Tantor

Good Overall Work, But...

As a retired law enforcement professional and military veteran, I again learned much from the author, but...

The author ignored US drug related corruption. Personnel practices, lack of internal investigative and other public corruption resources and political indifference led to major US law enforcement corruption problems.

The author noted some of the problems associated with drug related asset forfeiture, but ignored asset forfeiture related to other crimes. Had it not been for the Treasury Asset Forfeiture Fund, early DHS investigative efforts would have collapsed as a result of inherited INS budget practices.