Read Online Nick Reding by Methland: The Death, Life of an American Small Town - Free Book Online
Tags: General, Social Science, Psychology, Sociology, Criminology, Psychopathology, Drug traffic, Addiction, Rural, Methamphetamine, Methamphetamine - Iowa - Oelwein, Methamphetamine Abuse, Drug Abuse and Crime, Methamphetamine Abuse - Iowa - Oelwein
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depression, anxiety, the common
cold, hyperactivity, impotence, fatigue, and alcoholism. In a world in which the winners were defined by the speed with which
they could industrialize, meth suppressed the need for sleep, food, and hydration, all the while keeping workers “peppy,”
as the ads read. The miracle cure could even aid in the nightmare of war, once the industrializing nations of Germany, Britain,
Japan, and the United States began fighting for world dominance.
According to a presentation given by former Harvard sociologist Patricia Case, reports authorized by the U.S. government in
1939 suggested that meth had “psychotic” and “anti social” side effects, including increased libido, sexual aggression, violence,
hallucinations, dementia, bodily shaking, hyperthermia, sadomasochism, inability to orgasm, Satanic thoughts, general immorality,
and chronic insomnia. Nonetheless, Japanese, American, British, and German soldiers were all given methamphetamine pills to
stay awake, to stay focused, and to perform under the extreme duress of war. Methedrine, according to Case, was a part of
every American airman’s preflight kit. Three enormous plants in Japan produced an estimated one billion Hiropon pills between
1938 and 1945. According to a 2005 article in the German online news source Spiegel , the German pharmaceutical companies Temmler and Knoll in only four months, between April and July 1940, manufactured thirty-five
million methamphetamine tablets, all of which were shipped to the Nazi army and air corps. A January 1942 doctor’s report
from Germany’s Eastern Front is illuminating. Five hundred German soldiers surrounded by the Red Army began trying to escape
through waist-high snow, in temperatures of sixty degrees below zero. Soon, the doctor wrote, the men began lying on the snow,
exhausted. The commanding officers then ordered their men to take their meth pills, at which point “the men began spontaneously
reporting that they felt better. They began marching in an orderly fashion again, their spirits improved, and they became
more alert.” In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1985, one of Hitler’s doctors, Ernst-Günther Schenck, revealed that the Führer “demanded interjections of invigorating
and tranquilizing drugs,” including methamphetamine. It’s widely believed by many that Hitler’s subsequent and progressive
Parkinson’s-like symptoms, if not his increasingly derelict mental state, were a direct result of his meth addiction.
Even into the 1980s, methamphetamine was widely prescribed in the United States. Ads for “Methedrine-brand Methamphetamine—For
Those Who Eat Too Much and Those Who Are Depressed” appeared all during the 1960s, largely in women’s magazines. Obedrin Long-Acting,
according to another ad, was there to help a woman “calmly set her appestat,” a particularly apt pun given that meth is well
known to raise one’s body temperature to dangerously hyperthermic levels. In 1967 alone, according to Dr. Case, thirty-one
million legal meth prescriptions were written in the United States. In Dexamyl ads in Life magazine throughout the 1970s, a woman wearing an apron could be seen ecstatically vacuuming her living room carpet. How much
legal pharmaceutical methamphetamine was being sold illegally, or without a prescription, during the period from 1945 to 1975
is hard to imagine. Headlines from the New York Times circa 1959 give some indication, however, citing multicity FBI stings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, Denver,
Indianapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.
Curiously, the fate of towns like Oelwein, which for one hundred years had been places of great prosperity, began to change
at just about the time that meth’s reputation began to disintegrate. Even as those towns started feeling the early effects
of changes to the food-production industry, which would all but
cold, hyperactivity, impotence, fatigue, and alcoholism. In a world in which the winners were defined by the speed with which
they could industrialize, meth suppressed the need for sleep, food, and hydration, all the while keeping workers “peppy,”
as the ads read. The miracle cure could even aid in the nightmare of war, once the industrializing nations of Germany, Britain,
Japan, and the United States began fighting for world dominance.
According to a presentation given by former Harvard sociologist Patricia Case, reports authorized by the U.S. government in
1939 suggested that meth had “psychotic” and “anti social” side effects, including increased libido, sexual aggression, violence,
hallucinations, dementia, bodily shaking, hyperthermia, sadomasochism, inability to orgasm, Satanic thoughts, general immorality,
and chronic insomnia. Nonetheless, Japanese, American, British, and German soldiers were all given methamphetamine pills to
stay awake, to stay focused, and to perform under the extreme duress of war. Methedrine, according to Case, was a part of
every American airman’s preflight kit. Three enormous plants in Japan produced an estimated one billion Hiropon pills between
1938 and 1945. According to a 2005 article in the German online news source Spiegel , the German pharmaceutical companies Temmler and Knoll in only four months, between April and July 1940, manufactured thirty-five
million methamphetamine tablets, all of which were shipped to the Nazi army and air corps. A January 1942 doctor’s report
from Germany’s Eastern Front is illuminating. Five hundred German soldiers surrounded by the Red Army began trying to escape
through waist-high snow, in temperatures of sixty degrees below zero. Soon, the doctor wrote, the men began lying on the snow,
exhausted. The commanding officers then ordered their men to take their meth pills, at which point “the men began spontaneously
reporting that they felt better. They began marching in an orderly fashion again, their spirits improved, and they became
more alert.” In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1985, one of Hitler’s doctors, Ernst-Günther Schenck, revealed that the Führer “demanded interjections of invigorating
and tranquilizing drugs,” including methamphetamine. It’s widely believed by many that Hitler’s subsequent and progressive
Parkinson’s-like symptoms, if not his increasingly derelict mental state, were a direct result of his meth addiction.
Even into the 1980s, methamphetamine was widely prescribed in the United States. Ads for “Methedrine-brand Methamphetamine—For
Those Who Eat Too Much and Those Who Are Depressed” appeared all during the 1960s, largely in women’s magazines. Obedrin Long-Acting,
according to another ad, was there to help a woman “calmly set her appestat,” a particularly apt pun given that meth is well
known to raise one’s body temperature to dangerously hyperthermic levels. In 1967 alone, according to Dr. Case, thirty-one
million legal meth prescriptions were written in the United States. In Dexamyl ads in Life magazine throughout the 1970s, a woman wearing an apron could be seen ecstatically vacuuming her living room carpet. How much
legal pharmaceutical methamphetamine was being sold illegally, or without a prescription, during the period from 1945 to 1975
is hard to imagine. Headlines from the New York Times circa 1959 give some indication, however, citing multicity FBI stings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, Denver,
Indianapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.
Curiously, the fate of towns like Oelwein, which for one hundred years had been places of great prosperity, began to change
at just about the time that meth’s reputation began to disintegrate. Even as those towns started feeling the early effects
of changes to the food-production industry, which would all but
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