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"When the higher ups have control issues and don't care about lives..."
Definitely the case in the show I cited. The higher-ups are members of a group that's essentially The Klan gone sci-fi, and are perfectly willing to utilize drugs with lethal side-effects to both even the odds against gengineered enemies, and maintain "loyalty" (withdrawal symptoms are fatal, and kick-in within two hours).
Show an affirming flame
Strikes me as an expensive way to go about things, though. It's impractical to do that to a whole infantry battalion (for instance), and smaller numbers of shock or elite troops focus more on teamwork rather than individual fanaticism or brutality, which calls into question the whole rationale for something like this (which is essentially coercion, not a good motivator for quality troops).
Plus, a formation that dies in two hours if they don't get their fix may not be a problem for fighter-pilot-equivalents that are expected to sortie out and come home, but in the messy supply situations of an actual war...
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
In this particular instance the drug was comboed with a Psycho Serum/Super Serum, which cranked up the performance of the (small) unit of troops in question.
As for it being impracticable, of course it is. Wildly and ridiculously so. In the particular context, it's the brainchild of a paranoid, sociopathic control freak.
edited 28th Apr '15 9:41:15 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
What made me single your method out is the fact that not only it's simply usually the hardest one to make and thus the hardest one to write believably, but on average attempting to write that one seems to end with failures because those who try either have no idea how drugs work, have no idea how loyalty works, or both. There are exceptions, of course, but I think it's better to repeat oneself than not say anything and then get someone who pulled a Brown.
But yeah, relying on stuff like that isn't a good idea. Though when the higher-ups have control issues and don't care about lives ...
edited 27th Apr '15 10:03:34 PM by Kazeto