Audiobook10 hours
Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs
Written by Peter Andreas
Narrated by Shawn Compton
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this audiobook
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 twentieth 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.
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 twentieth 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.
Related to Killer High
Related audiobooks
Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Opium's Orphans: The 200-Year History of the War on Drugs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOpium: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lessons From a Drug Lord: The Most Unexpected Lessons from the Most Unexpected Person Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Changing Your Perspective: The Science of Drugs, the Brain, and Behavior Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Opioid Epidemic and the Addiction Crisis Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing Season: A Paramedic's Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Opioid Epidemic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It's So Hard to Stop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Fentanyl: Ending the Opioid Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Drug Hunters: The Improbable Quest to Discover New Medicines Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions and Why They Went Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dopeworld: Adventures in the Global Drug Trade Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pothead: My Life as a Marijuana Addict in the Age of Legal Weed Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Opium: Pain, Pleasure, and Other Matters of Substance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Fix: Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis - and How to End It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost in Ghost Town: A Memoir of Addiction, Redemption, and Hope in Unlikely Places Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Reports from Hell Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Narco Wars: The Gripping Story of How British Agents Infiltrated the Colombian Drug Cartels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Pain: A Bioethicist’s Personal Struggle with Opioids Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sparrow in the Razor Wire: Finding Freedom from Within While Serving a Life Sentence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Opioid Epidemic: What Everyone Needs to Know Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
History For You
The Book of Five Rings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hell's Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Korean War: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Palestine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Endurance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize): An American History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Killer High
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
1 rating0 reviews