My friend Luke used to drink a pint of beer before a game of rugby. I don’t know whether he thought that it might reduce pain or improve performance, but the idea of taking drugs before “going into battle” goes back to the beginning of recorded history.
Indeed, we find frequent mentions of mead drinking by the warriors in Edinburgh in the seventh-century epic poem The Goddodin. These warriors feasted and drank mead for a year before riding out to their certain deaths in a hopelessly one-sided battle in Yorkshire. Similarly, Anglo-Saxon warriors were very fond of their mead-halls – think Beowolf.
These ancient warriors probably used alcohol to reduce anxiety and blunt the horrors they would face on the battlefield.
