Explanation: Amphetamines in ‘Go Pills’ have been used since WW2 to induce wakefulness in military pilots called out for missions on short notice. While they were indispensable when sending up more planes than pilots (literally - Allied fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain regularly bailed from damaged aircraft, were retrieved, and would go back up in the air soon after to fight against the Nazi menace in a fresh plane), especially during night attacks, their risks became more notable as precision and individual discernment regarding indistinguishable dots on the ground became more important than having another plane in the sky.

In the USA, amphetamine usage in ‘Go Pills’ ended after the Tarnak Farm Incident in 2001, when an American pilot’s impaired judgement on amphetamines caused them to misidentify allied Canadian forces in fire exercises as hostile Taliban troops, and dropping a bomb on them when he misidentified that fire as directed at his unit, despite being advised to hold fire by several other American forces in the area.

Nowadays wakefulness drugs which minimally impair judgement are used in ‘Go Pills’, such as caffeine and modafinil.