Heroin does provide pain relief. However, there are other less dangerous pain medications, by which I mean every other pain medication.
I don’t know about it providing “the ability to function in dangerous work situations without panic” but in Vietnam I understand that it was their weapon, not ours.
I have a good friend who was a door gunner in Vietnam and he says that his whole crew, pilot included, would sometimes use heroin to “keep straight” when making the fine-tuned adjustments necessary when descending through triple canopy forest.
That came as a revelation to me. I had always thought of heroin as just euphoria followed by “nodding off”.
Heroin does provide pain relief. However, there are other less dangerous pain medications, by which I mean every other pain medication.
I thought heroin was just as safe/dangerous as morphine.