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| U.S. Pilots Stay Up Taking 'Uppers' |
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Posted by CN Staff on August 03, 2002 at 12:08:54 PT By William Walker, Washington Bureau Source: Toronto Star 
U.S. jet fighter pilots, responsible for at least 10 deadly "friendly fire" accidents in the Afghanistan war, have regularly been given amphetamines to fly longer hours.Then when they return to base, the pilots are given sedatives by air force doctors to help them sleep, before beginning the whole cycle again on the next mission, often less than 12 hours later. The exact drugs pilots are given and how they're taken is outlined in a 24-page document obtained by The Star, produced by the Top Gun fighter training school and the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory in Pensacola, Fla. A spokesperson for the U.S. Air Force Surgeon-General's Office in Washington confirmed pilots are given the stimulant Dexedrine, generically known as dextroamphetamine, to stay alert during combat missions in Afghanistan. Pilots refer to Dexedrine as "go-pills." The sleeping pills they are given, called Ambien (zolpidem) and Restoril (temazepam), are referred to as "no-go pills." "When fatigue could be expected to degrade air crew performance, they are given Dexedrine in 10 mg doses," air force spokeswoman Betty-Anne Mauger told The Star. It is not known whether Dexedrine was involved in the friendly fire incident in which an American fighter jet dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers early on April 18. But the possibility did come to the mind of one defence analyst. "Better bombing through chemistry," remarked John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a Washington-area defence policy think-tank. "This was certainly one of my first thoughts after the Canadian friendly fire accident," he said in an interview. "The initial depiction made it seem as if the pilot was behaving in an unusually aggressive fashion." Illinois Air National Guard Maj. Harry Schmidt was piloting the F-16 supersonic fighter that dropped the bomb. Maj. William Umbach was flying with him in another F-16 that night. "I don't know the answer," Schmidt's lawyer, Charles Gittins, responded last night about whether Dexedrine was involved. "I never asked my pilot if he was medicated. But it's quite common. He's on vacation now, so I'll check with him about it when he gets back." Pike said there's little controversy among politicians or the American public about the use of amphetamines by the air force because "I don't think anybody even knows about it. "The aviation community and the air force community certainly don't like to talk about so-called `performance enhancing' drugs," he said. There have been reports that Schmidt and his fellow pilots — originally deployed to patrol the U.S.-enforced no-fly zone over southern Iraq from an American base in Kuwait — had complained of fatigue since they were also ordered to fly combat missions over Afghanistan. Gittins said he was not aware of such complaints. Schmidt and his fellow pilots had to fly for three hours to arrive at the combat zone. An F-16 mission to Afghanistan from Kuwait routinely takes nine hours including three hours over the target area plus the trip back. Pilots also attend pre-flight briefings and debriefings after they return. Mauger said Dexedrine is commonly used by pilots on missions of more than eight hours' duration, or when pilots get less than the recommended 12 hours' rest between missions, as was the case for the pilots on double duty from the Kuwait air base. The 24-page Top Gun document, entitled Performance Maintenance During Continuous Flight Operations, reports that in an anonymous survey among pilots who flew in Desert Storm, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, 60 per cent said they used Dexedrine. In units that saw the most frequent combat missions, usage was as high as 96 per cent. During that war, Dexedrine was administered in doses of 5 mg each, as opposed to the 10 mg pills now offered to pilots in Afghanistan. So far, amphetamine use has not been mentioned in the summaries made public of either the Canadian or U.S. probes into the accident, which killed Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry soldiers Sgt. Marc Léger, Pte. Nathan Smith, Pte. Richard Green and Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer. But according to a leaked transcript of radio communications, Schmidt — after reporting that he was being fired at from the ground but being told by air controllers to "hold fire" — suddenly declared he was "rolling in" and dropped the bomb. It was only after Schmidt hit his target that he asked the controllers to confirm he was being fired at. The dispatcher responded: "You're cleared. Self-defence." The U.S. military appears to view pilots as machines. Under the heading "Basic Principles" in the Top Gun document, it says: "We manage maintenance, we manage fuel and weapons; we can also manage fatigue." Pilots are allowed to "self-regulate" the amounts of Dexedrine they take. They carry the pills in the single-person cockpit of their F-16s and take them as they wish. As one unidentified Desert Storm squadron commander said of his pilots in the document: "You must give them guidelines and then let them self-regulate. If you can't trust them with the medication then you can't trust them with a 50 million dollar airplane to try and go kill someone." Retired Col. Richard Graham of Plano, Texas, who logged 4,600 hours of flight time in the U.S. Air Force, including 210 combat missions in Vietnam, said pilots in that war routinely took Dexedrine. The air force approved its use in 1960. "We would be tested for uppers and downers and if we tolerated them okay, we went forward," he said in an interview. As long as nobody is abusing it, I think it's okay. "I'm not a big fan of anybody taking medication in the flight business, but sometimes situations call for it in combat. I never had any bad effects from it and it served me well." But medical literature indicates that amphetamines can have severe side effects. The worst is called "amphetamine psychosis." It causes hallucinations as well as paranoid delusions. "Dexedrine also leads a person to build a tolerance level for the drug and when higher doses are offered, anything at that level develops addictive tendencies among those who continue to use it regularly," said Dr. Joyce A. Walsleben, director of the Sleep Disorder Centre at the New York University School of Medicine. "The threat of abuse and addiction is definitely higher with Dexedrine." Pilots, after being tested for drug tolerance, are also asked to sign a consent form, which was also obtained by The Star. Entitled "Informed Consent For Operational Use of Dexedrine," it begins by saying: "It has been explained to me and I understand that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the use of Dexedrine to manage fatigue ... (and) I further understand that the decision to take this medication is mine alone." Air force insiders say the pilots really do not have a choice in taking the drug. The form states that "should I choose not to take it under circumstances where its use appears indicated ... my commander, upon advice of the flight surgeon, may determine whether or not I should be considered unfit to fly a given mission." Source: Toronto Star (CN ON) Related Articles: Drug's Effect on Brain Is Extensive, Study Finds The Brain: The Origins of Dependence Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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Comment #12 posted by kaptinemo on August 05, 2002 at 13:09:20 PT:
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| If he's willing, that is. And you won't be disappointed. Pills galore, my friends...and the vast majority are 'speed'. 'For medicinal purposes, only', they used to say about alcohol... [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #11 posted by p4me on August 04, 2002 at 23:01:53 PT |
| Cannabis Culture has an article on this same subject that came from the UK Independent titled FRIENDLY FIRE DEATHS LINKED TO US PILOTS ON SPEED: http://www.mapinc.org/newscc/v02/n1449/a01.html?397 1,2 [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #10 posted by firedog on August 04, 2002 at 09:25:18 PT |
| Available for your review at http://www.aerospacemed.org/downloads/gopills.pdf Always amazes me what you can find on the net... [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #9 posted by Zero_G on August 04, 2002 at 08:53:35 PT |
| Somewhere there is an old, musty, irrelevant document. It says Congress shall have the power to declare war. No matter. The war in Iraq never ended, and it continues apace, we are only dicussing escalation. Among those now debating whether the Iraqi people should be cluster-bombed or not, incinerated or not, you are unlikely to find the names of Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who have done the most to break through the propaganda. No one knows the potential human cost better than they. As assistant secretary general of the UN, Halliday started the oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Von Sponeck was his successor. Eminent in their field of caring for other human beings, they resigned their long UN careers, calling the embargo "genocide". Their last appearance in the press was in the Guardian last November, when they wrote: "The most recent report ofthe UN secretary general, in October 2001, says that the US and UK governments' blocking of $4bn of humanitarian supplies is by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food programme. The report says that, in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution of humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory...The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad." They are in no doubt that if Saddam Hussein saw advantage in deliberately denying his people humanitarian supplies, he would do so; but the UN, from the secretary general himself down, says that, while the regime could do more, it has not withheld supplies. Indeed, without Iraq's own rationing and distribution system, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, there would have been famine. Halliday and von Sponeck point out that the US and Britain are able to fend off criticism of sanctions with unsubstantiated stories that the regime is "punishing" its own people. If these stories are true, they say, why does America and Britain further punish them by deliberately withholding humanitarian supplies, such as vaccines, painkillers and cancer diagnostic equipment? This wanton blocking of UN-approved shipments is rarely reported in the British press. The figure is now almost $5bn in humanitarian-related supplies. Once again, the UN executive director of the oil-for-food programme has broken diplomatic silence to express "grave concern at the unprecedented surge in volume of holds placed on contracts [by the US]". By ignoring or suppressing these facts, together with the scale of a four-year bombing campaign by American and British aircraft (in 1999/2000, according to the Pentagon, the US flew 24,000 "combat missions" over Iraq), journalists have prepared the ground for an all-out attack on Iraq. The official premise for this - that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction - has not been questioned. In fact, in 1998, the UN reported that Iraq had complied with 90 per cent of its inspectors' demands. That the UN inspectors were not "expelled", but pulled out after American spies were found among them in preparation for an attack on Iraq, is almost never reported. Since then, the world's most sophisticated surveillance equipment has produced no real evidence that the regime has renewed its capacity to build weapons of mass destruction. "The real goal of attacking Iraq now," says Eric Herring, "is to replace Saddam Hussein with another compliant thug." John Pilger from: http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/pilger_compliantpress.cfm ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Kinda puts a whole new meaning on "Speed Kills", doesn't it? Zero G [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #8 posted by John Tyler on August 04, 2002 at 07:12:34 PT |
| These were always popular at college especially during exams. I had heard that the military pilots used them in long flights, I'm surprised they used them soooo much. I wonder how much they budget for these? Doesn't the military have a "zero-tolerance" policy though? Drug free military and all that. Or am I missing something? [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #7 posted by FoM on August 03, 2002 at 22:40:30 PT |
| Split opens between Britain and US as White House targets dictator
Iraq: Observer Special
Peter Beaumont, Gaby Hinsliff and Paul Beaver President George W. Bush will announce within weeks that he intends to depose Iraq's ruler, Saddam Hussein, by force, setting the stage for a war in the Gulf this winter. Amid signs of active preparations for a war within six months, senior officials on both sides of the Atlantic have said that war against Iraq is now inevitable. 'The expectation is that President Bush will make a final decision on the timing of a war over the course of August. That would be followed by British-led efforts to get a mandate for action at the UN, either under existing resolutions or a new UN resolution,' said one senior source. Complete Article: http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,769064,00.html [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #6 posted by FoM on August 03, 2002 at 21:33:24 PT |
| Pill Probe Focuses On N.Va. Doctors
U.S. Agents Target OxyContin Sources By Josh White, Washington Post Staff WriterM A nationwide drug investigation is substantially focused on two Northern Virginia doctors who have written prescriptions for OxyContin, a powerful painkiller that has killed nearly 450 people, for patients from as far away as Oregon, California, Maine and Louisiana. More than a dozen federal agencies and scores of local and state law enforcement officials have been working for more than a year to build cases against doctors, pharmacies and patients who have been prescribing or selling OxyContin and other potent painkillers that are abused as recreational drugs. They are pursuing investigations in Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Maine, in addition to Virginia, as an epidemic of prescription drug abuse continues to grow. Complete Article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40957-2002Aug3.html [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #5 posted by FoM on August 03, 2002 at 15:36:14 PT |
| I believe it was mentioned in the special that was on the History Channel called: The History of The Drug War. I think that was the name. [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #4 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on August 03, 2002 at 15:29:58 PT |
| Didn't I read something recently about how the Nazi Blitzkrieg couldn't have been accomplished in such a lightning-quick manner without amphetamines? [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #3 posted by E_Johnson on August 03, 2002 at 13:15:03 PT |
| That should be next on the list. [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #2 posted by Dan B on August 03, 2002 at 12:48:10 PT:
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| As one unidentified Desert Storm squadron commander said of his pilots in the document: "You must give them guidelines and then let them self-regulate. If you can't trust them with the medication then you can't trust them with a 50 million dollar airplane to try and go kill someone." In other words, it's a-okay to be a self-regulated drug addict, as long as you are flying a $50 million aircraft for the U. S. Government. Everyone else is subject to arrests, searches, fines, forfeitures of property and children, loss of driving and professional licences, and, of course, imprisonment. This bit of "logic" brought to you by Uncle Sam. Do you know who's in bed with your Uncle? I'll give you a hint: they make Dexedrine, Ambien and Restoril. Dan B [ Post Comment ] |
| Comment #1 posted by xxdr_zombiexx on August 03, 2002 at 12:44:55 PT |
| I strongly suspected this after I read the first few reorts about all the people dying at Ft. Bragg. High levels and extended use of amphetamines - especially t cope with sleep deprivation, has always seemed to result in sloppy performance and outright paranoid pyshchosis. note that amphetamines are "drugs" on the street and "medications" when used to keep bomber pilots awake. medicated soldiers seems creepy to me. (Maybe I saw Jacob's Ladder 1 too many times....) [ Post Comment ] |
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