The Vietnam War began in 1955 and lasted nearly 20 years. The United States was involved in the war on the side of the South Vietnamese. During the war, American soldiers used drugs to cope with the extreme war conditions that were physically and mentally devastating. The government contributed to the extensive drug use during this time as it offered soldiers stimulants to increase their performance. The adverse effects of drug usage during was addiction that affected many soldiers even after the war.
The current paper examines drug usage in the army during the Vietnam War by exploring the reasons soldiers used drugs extensively and the available programs to help the heavy drug users.
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Different reasons explain why soldiers used drugs during the Vietnam War. About 15 per cent of the Vietnam veterans were addicted to drugs, which included mostly heroin (Thean, 2014). 51 per cent of them used marijuana, 31 percent used psychedelics, while the rest used heroin and cocaine. Studies suggest that drug usage increased due to ready drug supply and the low morale of the army (Kamienski, 2016). The civil war in Cambodia also led to the free movement of drugs to Vietnam (Janos, 2018). Many veterans, however, used drugs to help them forget about the events that they went through during battles. Another contributing factor to drug usage among the veterans was the lack of support from people including the army department that could have helped them deal with their issues (loneliness, shock, and anxiety) (Janos, 2018). In turn, most soldiers avoided speaking about traumatizing events when attempting to live civilian lives. The failure to express themselves forced them to turn to drugs to cope the burdens in their heads.
Drug usage among veterans also increased due to the rapid reduction of military forces in Vietnam following war settlement negotiations (Robins, 2019). Most of the soldiers were sent home and discharged immediately to civilian life, which together with the issue of drug usage during the war exacerbated substance abuse among veterans as most of them had already started using drugs before being discharged. At the battlefield, soldiers used drugs to cope with the stressful war conditions (Janos, 2018). The conditions on the battlefield were mentally devastating, physically exhausting, and severe. In these conditions, soldiers depended on drugs to cope and escape from the brutality, tragedy, and the hopelessness of the battlefield. They had to increase dosages regularly to attain the same effect. Drugs also assisted soldiers to survive in the face of disillusions caused by the war given that the soldiers had low morale due to the lack of a clear objective about the war from the army leadership. In such a situation, soldiers just focused on surviving. The adverse effect of this is that the underlying issues that caused the different mental issue was suppressed and remained in their minds (Kamienski, 2016). The issues later emerged after the effects of the taken drug had disappeared, which forced those who could not cope to turn to drugs for assistance.
Drug use experience also contributed to extensive drug usage in the army. For example, nearly 50 percent of the enlisted soldiers had used one kind of an illegal drug before joining the army. Most of them had used Marijuana except 30 percent of the soldiers who used civilian drugs including Amphetamines and Barbiturates. The army also lacked clear rules regarding illegal drug usage, which encouraged soldiers to use them freely. Besides, the army offered some drugs, such as the amphetamines, to enhance the performance of soldiers on the battlefield. For example, the army had given 225 million pills of stimulants beginning from 1966 to 1969. These drugs were also used to help soldiers reduce anxiety and hinder mental breakdowns, and they were effective (Janos, 2018). In turn, this spread the use of drugs and drug addiction among soldiers (Kamienski, 2016). The most commonly abused drug was heroin due to its low cost and availability followed by marijuana. By 1971, nearly 50 per cent of the soldiers had used opiates in which half of them reached the point of addiction. Two-thirds of them also used marijuana (Robins, 2019). Given the increased drug problem in the army, approaches had to be developed to address the issue.
Various strategies were used to reduce drug usage among soldiers. The army, for example, attempted to deal with the issue after news about drug usage in the army emerged by searching out drugs, arresting users, and destroying drugs (Janos, 2018). The army also introduced an education program regarding the dangerous and addictive effects of marijuana. These programs were compulsory for all soldiers and were in the form of cautions from doctors and chaplains; pamphlets, radio broadcast, and lectures. The programs were, however, ineffective since the army mainly focused on marijuana during this crackdown, which compelled soldiers to shift to heroin that was harder to detect as it was odorless. Another approach that the armed forces used to help heavy drug use included combining amnesty with military discipline in which drug users were court-martialled and dishonorably discharged from serving in the military. Drug users who sought assistance voluntarily, nevertheless, were briefly treated and offered amnesty. The approach, however, did not have any impact as drug usage escalated. Later, the army adopted another approach that entailed urine testing to identify drug use, which was followed by treatment instead of a court-martial (Kamienski, 2016). It was unclear whether the program was effective or not given the lack of information.
The government also established different programs to help addicted veterans to deal with their drug issues, such as at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital, Ward 4B2. These programs, however, lacked clear approaches that could help veterans. For instance, at the Palo Alto hospital, doctors used the synthetic opiate methadone to interrupt drug usage among veterans while trying individual and group therapy (Thean, 2014). Barriers such as forcing patients to demonstrate their commitment to their recovery also prevented many addicts from seeking help due to the difficulty of dealing with the underlying issues that compelled them to use drugs (Thean, T. (2014). While other programs similar to the one at the Palo Alto were established later, they all lacked a clear approach that could assist addicts to abandon drugs. The contributing factor to this issue was the lack of a clear understanding of substance abuse and psychological health during that era. The adverse effect of heavy drug use included death in which most users died due to overdose. Nearly 112 soldiers died due to drug overdose from April 1970 to January 1973 in which half of the deaths were due to heroin overdose. Another effect was the potential for addiction. Of the 85 percent of heroin users in the army, nearly 20 percent of them became addicted (Kamienski, 2016).
Drug usage in the army mainly emerged due to the absence of clear rules regarding illegal drug abuse, the ready availability of drugs in the battlefield, the issuance of drugs by the government to increase the performance of soldiers, and the severe war conditions that compelled soldiers to cope using drugs. The programs that both the army and the government created to deal with the issue were ineffective in helping soldiers stop illegal substance abuse because they did not address the underlying issues that forced soldiers to use drugs.
References
Janos, A. (2018, April 18). G.I.s’ Drug Use in Vietnam Soared—With Their Commanders. pdf.
Kamienski, L. (2016). Shooting up: A short history of drugs and war . Oxford University Press.
Robins, N. L. (2019). Vietnam: Drug Use. pdf.
Thean, T. (2014). The War Within: 14 Powerful Portraits of Vietnam Vets Fighting Heroin Addiction. pdf.
