Truth Serum

[Spencer Thiel]

Hi Dad,
Last night on PBS there was an amazing episode of _The American 
Experience_ dealing with The Battle of the Bulge.  A good portion of 
the hour was devoted to soldiers that went mentally over the edge. 
They showed clips from an old Army training film with psychiatrists 
giving the mentally disturbed soldiers, you guessed it, sodium 
pentathal, aka "Truth Serum".  The psychiatrists thought that the 
soldiers who were mentally disturbed were in need of catharsis and 
that the Truth Serum would make them fit to fight.  Truth Serum 
caused the soldiers to have terrible nightmares and it was thought 
that if they relived these horrible battle experiences in their sleep 
that they would be a-okay.  One clip showed a soldier under the 
influence of the Truth Serum, while a doctor stood over him shouting, 
"You're in battle.  There's bombs falling everywhere!" while the 
soldier writhed around in his drug induced sleep.  I have to believe 
that Pynchon got his hands on this film reel some time prior to his 
writing of GR.


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