#pervitin

"Germans, however, didn’t need an order to take the buzzy substance. The hunger for powerful brain-food was already there. Consumption wasn’t decreed from above and it wasn’t top-down, as you might have expected in a dictatorship; it was entirely bottom up. This so-called speedamin landed like a bomb, spread like a virus, sold like sliced bread, and was soon as much of a fixture as a cup of coffee. “Pervitin became a sensation,” one psychologist reported. “It soon gained acceptance in a very wide range of circles; students used it as a survival strategy for the exertions of exams; telephone switchboard operators and nurses swallowed it to get through the night shift, and people doing difficult physical or mental labor used it to improve their performance.”"