I remember reading a story years and years ago. I’m not sure if it was fictional or true. But I believe it was about someone working in a government lab who accidentally ingested some chemical warfare product designed to make a person hallucinate.
After about 3 weeks, they were still hallucinating. So they told their superiors, who gave them an injection and the hallucinations stopped.
Which sounds like a good weapon of war. A chemical weapon that makes soldiers feel like they are high on hallucinogenic drugs, but that the body cannot naturally break down and it can only be broken down by an external antidote that has to be injected. That way you get all the enemy soldiers high by spraying the chemical in the air, they stay high, and after you have conquered and disarmed them, then you give them the antidote. Since it would be a secret weapon of war, the enemy soldiers wouldn’t have their own antidote.
So has anything like this ever been looked into? Can drugs be made that the body cannot break down or expel via natural means (or that have a half life of several weeks) and would require an external antidote to break them down?
You can ask about virtually any wild idea and find that somebody has looked into it. How far their research went and how many people took it seriously are the important things. I’m not aware of any specific, large scale research projects that match your description but you could mention almost any major government in the last couple of centuries and i’d wager that somebody has floated some similar idea.
The logic of this weapon as you describe it doesn’t really make sense to me though. What’s the tactical value? What’s your specific goal and why can’t more conventional chemical weapons meet that goal? Why cause mild hallucinations (I assume mild because your target was hallucinating for three week and apparently somewhat functional before telling their superior) when any number of toxins can easily kill or incapacitate? How do you perceive such a weapon being used?
The US Government worked on, and weaponized BZ for awhile. I don’t have any information on its metabolization, but I remember it being described as a pretty persistent agent.
It was phased out by the US a while back. But it has been suspected of use in Syria.
This type of weapon is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention for use in warfare. However, that would not prohibit its use as a riot control agent or something similar for use in domestic police operations. But I’ve never heard of anything remotely like what you describe, and would seriously doubt such a thing has been developed. ETA: that works in the way you describe, with effects lasting weeks to indefinitely until an antidote has been administered, that is.
Getting back to the OP, the military has experimented with all kinds of stuff. While the story in the OP does sound like a bit of an urban legend, it may well have its roots in a real event of some sort. There are (or were) government drug research labs. There was one in Edgewood, Maryland, for example, which was closed in the mid 1970s.
The government experimented with all kinds of stuff in these labs. In addition to the aforementioned BZ, they also experimented with LSD, PCP, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, morphine, temazepam, mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, sodium pentothal, and even deadly nerve agents like sarin and VX. And that’s just the stuff we know about.
Rather than a hallucinogenic substance, the lab worker may have been exposed to a nerve agent or some other drug or chemical that gave them symptoms that could not be relieved without treatment of some sort.
After quite a bit of drug research, folks managed to make a lot of people sick, ruined a lot of lives (google MKUltra), but generally failed to produce the super-power military drugs, truth serums, etc. that they were looking for. Most military drug research was ended in the 1970s.
Well during the Revolutionary War supposedly some colonialists gave some Redcoats JimsonWeed maybe in Tea or something that stuff is deadly and hallucinogenic and they tripped for like a week straight and stripped off all their clothes and thought they were animals. I personally know a guy that did too much of the stuff and tripped for a week and I think he must have gotten a fever or something and had brain damage, cause he dropped out of school after that and his personality completely changed and his manner of speech, and he was also more impulsive and violent.
In all the traditional medicines I’ve ever read about one I don’t think I’ve ever seen one which supposedly treats Lightning strike. That’s actually a hell of a good idea if I ever get into snake-oil sales, What are the chances anybody would have a chance to figure out it doesn’t actually cure lightning burns before I got out of town?