GR, history and Cryptonomicon

Wed May 29 11:05:48 CDT 2002

Thought this might resonate with Pynchon-ites

Dr. Con

--- Peter Webster <vignes at monaco.mc> wrote:
> To:
>
drugnews at yahoogroups.com,drugnews at psychedelic-library.org
> From: Peter Webster <vignes at monaco.mc>
> Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 12:24:24 +0000
> Subject: [drugnews] Finland: History: Amphetamine
> Overdose In Heat Of Combat
> Reply-to: drugnews-owner at yahoogroups.com
> 
> Pubdate: Tue, 28 May 2002
> Source: Helsingin Sanomat International Edition
> (Finland)
> Copyright: 2002 2000 Helsingin Sanomat
> Contact: international at sanoma.fi
> Website: http://www.helsinki-hs.net/
> Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1158
> Author: Miska Rantanen
> 
> HISTORY: AMPHETAMINE OVERDOSE IN HEAT OF COMBAT
> 
> Many of today's illegal drugs were used in Finland
> well before the
> hippie era - the country was full of them during the
> war
> 
> The day is March 18, 1944.
> 
> A Finnish ski patrol in the terrain of Kantalahti in
> Finnish Lapland
> is on the third day of its mission behind enemy
> lines when the group
> is ambushed by Soviet forces at the foot of
> Kaitatunturi fell. During
> an intense firefight, the men manage to slip past
> the enemy who are
> trying to encircle them.
> 
> What ensues is a wild pursuit on skis.
> 
> Aimo Koivunen, who opens the track in the virgin
> snow, feels his
> energy slipping away. The Russians are gaining on
> them until Koivunen
> remembers that he has the group's entire supply of
> Pervitin in his
> breast pocket.
> 
> Before that he has taken a suspicious view of the
> strong stimulant
> that was given out to commando forces operating
> behind enemy lines,
> but now the situation is serious.
> 
> The men have to ski fast and it is not easy to dig
> out just one pill,
> so he dumps the whole supply - 30 pills - into his
> mitten.
> 
> Soon Koivunen's skiing gets a new boost, and the
> whole patrol moves
> forward at a much faster pace.
> 
> This lasts for just a short time. Soon Koivunen
> notices distortions
> in his field of vision, and his consciousness begins
> to fade. The
> overdose of methamphetamine contained in the pills
> puts Koivunen into
> a state of delirium lasting several days, with
> alternating phases of
> wakefulness, sleep, and hallucinations.
> 
> His next recollection is from the next morning. He
> is 100 kilometres
> away. He has lost his patrol, and has no more
> ammunition, or food.
> Now he faces a real ordeal just to survive.
> 
> During the days that follow, Koivunen successfully
> flees Russian
> partisan forces, is injured by a land mine, and lies
> for a week in a
> pit in the snow waiting for help to arrive. He skis
> for more than 400
> kilometres in temperatures of -20  C. During two
> weeks the only food
> he has are pine buds and a Siberian jay that he
> catches and eats raw.
> 
> When he is finally rescued and taken to a hospital
> his pulse rate is
> nearly 200 beats per minute and his weight has
> dropped to 43 kilos.
> 
> Aimo Koivunen's adventure story is part of the
> history of Finland's
> wartime commando forces. But it is historical in
> another sense as
> well: Koivunen became one of the first Finns to
> overdose on speed.
> 
> The arrival of mind-altering drugs in Finland is
> generally seen to
> have taken place in the mid-1960s when psychedelic
> substances -
> especially cannabis - first came into the country
> along with the
> hippie movement.
> 
> However, drugs were by no means unknown in Finland
> before the 1960s.
> Already in 1922 the first statute was given in which
> opium, morphine,
> cocaine, and heroin were declared intoxicant drugs.
> 
> The reason for the move was not an out-of-control
> drug problem, but
> rather an international treaty signed in The Hague
> in 1912. Alcohol
> was still Finland's main intoxicant - in spite of
> prohibition.
> 
> However, the use of narcotics was increasing. In the
> 1920s and 1930s,
> drugs were used mainly by those who had access to
> them. Many doctors,
> nurses, and pharmacists could not resist the
> temptation to try their
> substances in their free time. One in four abusers
> were doctors.
> 
> Not all substances were even perceived to be
> dangerous. There was
> plenty of legal morphine and heroin in Finland,
> which was used in the
> manufacture of cough medicine.
> 
> In fact, in the 1930s Finland was the number-two
> country in the per
> capita use of heroin - right after Japan. The
> consumption rate was
> about seven kilos per one million inhabitants.
> Because of this
> Finland got a number of warnings from the
> international opium control
> monitors.
> 
> As a result of the incautious dispensing of opiates,
> addiction often
> began from what seemed like innocent medication. For
> instance, the
> 18-year morphine habit of composer Aarre Merikanto
> started with opium
> that he took for a stomach disorder.
> 
> As the drugs were easily available, there was little
> crime connected with them.
> 
> The dangers of the chemicals were apparent, though:
> in the 1930s
> hospitals regularly treated opiate addicts, although
> the number of
> new cases in a year could be counted on the fingers
> of a single hand.
> 
> Drugs were mainly a problem of the higher social
> classes; two thirds
> of habitual users were among the well-to-do, and
> opiate addiction was
> actually referred to as upper class morphine
> dependency.
> 
> There were not many drug references in the Finnish
> literature of the
> time. One of the few that did appear was in The
> Great Illusion, the
> first novel of writer Mika Waltari. In it the main
> character and his
> academically educated friend Hellas try to get some
> cocaine from a
> German ship at a pier in Katajanokka in central
> Helsinki. "It is pure
> reason, concentrated sunshine and the gleam of
> steel", Hellas says
> enthusiastically.
> 
> The description cannot be attributed to pure
> imagination. Young
> bohemians felt a certain amount of interest in the
> new intoxicants,
> and for instance, the young author Olavi Paavolainen
> experimented
> extensively with opium in the early 1920s.
> 
> The war changed everything. Large amounts of
> stimulant and narcotic
> drugs became available - especially in the trenches.
> Opiates were
> used to alleviate the pain of the wounded, and
> stimulants helped keep
> soldiers awake.
> 
> For instance, the Pervitin used by Aimo Koivunen was
> developed in
> Germany, and was used to keep soldiers alert during
> battle. The same
> substance was also popular among the military
> command and medical
> personnel; doctors needed more than just coffee to
> get through
> stretches of almost uninterrupted surgery lasting up
> to three weeks.
> 
> Nevertheless, Pervitin did not cause any serious
> problems in Finland,
> and its use was limited to the applications for
> which it was
> intended. The pills had such a good reputation that
> after the war the
> name Pervitin was used to market a cold remedy,
> which nevertheless
> did not contain any amphetamine.
> 
> Morphine and heroin used as analgesics helped
> establish Finland's
> first generation of opiate addicts. People bought
> the drugs far
> beyond medical necessity, and wartime heroin pills
> were to be found
> on the black market as late as the end of the 1960s.
> 
> Addiction usually set in after a war injury during
> convalescence.
> Getting hooked on opiates in the midst of war was
> seen as something
> of a routine event in the heat of war.
> 
> In a book on his wartime experiences, writer Jouko
> Teperi recalls
> once when the front lines were stable, how he went
> to see a film
> along with a second lieutenant from a neighbouring
> dugout. During the
> film Teperi's companion kept popping what appeared
> to be sweets. When
> Teperi asked if he could have some, the lieutenant
> apologised and
> said that he probably wouldn't like them, because
> they were heroin
> pills.
> 
> The war led to an increase in the use of drugs. It
> is estimated that
> there were about 500 addicts in Finland immediately
> after the war,
> most of them living in Helsinki. They would get
> their drugs with
> prescriptions, both genuine and forged. Gradually a
> black market
> arose. Heroin was sold at Finnish pharmacies until
> 1957.
> 
> In the trenches this vice of the upper classes had
> spread to other
> social classes. Soon more than two thirds of those
> seeking treatment
> for their addiction had a working class background.
> The drug addicts
> gradually began to form a separate subculture.
> 
> In May 1949 Helsingin Sanomat printed a story about
> a "ring of
> morphine addicts" in Helsinki. The paper interviewed
> one of the
> group's more prominent members, an academically
> educated woman about
> 30 years of age.
> 
> In the interview the woman said that the group
> included 115 morphine
> users, ten of whom were women. The roots of the
> addictions of most of
> them were in field hospitals during the war, but
> other types of users
> were also infiltrating the group.
> 
> "Unfortunately we have been getting real criminal
> elements among us",
> she said regretfully.
> 
> When tighter controls were imposed on Finnish
> pharmacies in the 1950s
> it became increasingly difficult to get hold of
> heroin and morphine.
> Opiates affecting the central nervous system no
> longer spread among
> the younger generation, and a shrinking older
> generation of wartime
> drug addicts were left to haunt the country's health
> statistics.
> 
> The number of "traditional" drug addicts is believed
> to have dropped
> to less than 100 by the early 1960s. However, a
> completely new class
> of users soon arose.
> 
> After the Second World War the pharmaceutical
> industry brought plenty
> of new substances onto the market, and many of them
> had effects that
> were not very well understood. For instance the diet
> pills favoured
> by housewives in the 1950s and 1960s contained large
> amounts of
> amphetamine derivatives.
> 
> These new pharmaceutical innovations were met with
> much hope. LSD was
> welcomed as a potential treatment for mental
> disorders. Even in
> Finland medical students experimented with the
> substance under the
> supervision of Dr. Asser Huttunen at the Lapinlahti
> mental hospital,
> but these experiments were discontinued in the
> mid-1960s.
> 
> In any case, the decreased use of opiates suggested
> that the drug
> problem was under control. This proved to be the
> calm before the
> storm. People soon learned about cannabis and the
> even stronger
> mind-expanders favoured by bohemians and jazz
> musicians of different
> countries.
> 
> The final moments of innocence were reflected in a
> Moomintroll comic
> strip in the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat in 1968. The
> strip, drawn and
> written by Lars Jansson, was entitled The Moomins in
> Torrelorca.
> 
> In it, the Moomintroll family are on a southern
> holiday when they
> happen to pop half a kilo of "LBJ pills" at a party
> thrown by young
> artists. As a result the whole family end up staring
> at the moon for
> a week.
>
__________________________________________________________________________
> Distributed without profit to those who have
> expressed a prior interest in
> receiving the included information for research and
> educational purposes.
> ---
> MAP posted-by: Josh
> 
> 

=====
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