Adolf Hitler, amphetamine addict
NOVEMBER 2004
Book Review:
The Medical Casebook of Adolf Hitler, by Leonard L. Heston, M. D., and Renate Heston, R. N., with an introduction by Albert Speer, published in 1979. Available used, unfortunately out of print.
Book Review: Adolf Hitler was variously diagnosed as bipolar, schizophrenic and paranoid schizophrenic. He was also diagnosed as having had Parkinson’s disease, which Yasir Arafat reportedly suffered from. Yet Hitler had none of these disorders: he was an amphetamine and barbiturate addict.
This marvelous little book, which reads like a medical mystery novel, slowly dismantles every other explanation for Hitler’s increasingly reckless behavior. We can conjecture that he may have triggered barbiturate addiction long before amphetamine addiction. However, the reader is left with no doubt that injections given to him by the doctor without whom he “could not live,” Dr. Morell, included large quantities of amphetamine, beginning by 1937. (Because Hitler can be seen moving his hands back and forth on his upper legs in a way consistent with amphetamine use, called “stereotypical behavior,” in 1936 Olympic Games videos, use likely began a bit earlier.)
The authors offer numerous clues to addiction. When injections, widely believed to be multi-vitamins “specially compounded for the Fuhrer,” ceased on occasion, Hitler experienced severe depression, a common symptom among newly abstinent amphetamine or cocaine addicts. He engaged in all-night monologues with an endless repetition of stories, along with increasingly disorganized thinking and confused syntax. The latter would not be expected of someone considered to have been a supreme orator. His mood swings became more volatile, paranoia increased (a common side effect of amphetamine addiction) and, while early on he accepted blame for tactical errors, he developed a tendency to project blame onto others.
Intravenous injections of the “special compound” increased from one to as many as five daily. While intravenous amphetamine use has the same effect as injecting cocaine, it is much longer lasting: the half-life of amphetamines is twelve times longer. He took barbiturates every night during WW2, no doubt needed to offset the effect of amphetamines to allow for sleep. Hitler also used narcotics from 1938 onward, in particular, Eukodal, an early version of Percodan. A potent mix of drugs such as this has adverse effects on a person’s personality, thinking, perceptions and behaviors.
Over-confidence and intoxication with his own early successes, common to early-stage addiction, fuelled a propensity to risk-taking and impulsive behaviors. As his use progressed during WW2 he experienced tremors, often attributed to Parkinson’s disease. However, heavy amphetamine use mimics Parkinson’s, probably because the neurotransmitter dopamine is affected by both. A stereotypical behavior very common to amphetamine addicts, an incessant scratching (the description offered by amphetamine addicts is “bugs are crawling under their skin”), began by 1943.
The fact that no one figured this out until 1979, 34 years after Hitler’s death, provides some of the most damning evidence ever of how completely unaware biographers and historians are of the role of addiction in determining the course of events. They don’t look for it because they don’t know it’s relevant. In my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits, I wrote that someday historians and biographers would view their subjects in a new light. Judging from the current treatment of Arafat, there is still a long way to go.
The only flaw in The Medical Casebook is that barbiturates are only mentioned in passing, explaining that Hitler didn’t take them in large enough pharmacologic doses for addiction to have occurred. However, the mix of drugs, the fact that drugs potentiate each other in remarkably potent ways (two plus two equals ten) and continuous use strongly suggests that this addiction intertwined with amphetamine use to create the most reviled monster in history. It is an irony of history that Hitler chose never to drink because of the vile effects that alcoholism had on others. However, barbiturates are alcohol in pill form for the alcoholic. Hitler, then, was likely an alcoholic who used only other drugs.