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Benzedrine in popular culture: Wikis

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Benzedrine is the trade name of the racemic variant of amphetamine (dl-amphetamine). It was marketed under this brandname in the USA by Smith, Kline and French in the form of inhalers, starting in 1928. Benzedrine was used to enlarge nasal and bronchial passages and it is closely related to other stimulants produced later, such as Dexedrine (d-amphetamine) and methamphetamine.


References in popular culture

  • This drug was very popular with the beat generation and its influence can be seen in the literature and biographies of William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Also, a famous user was the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős, who spent much of his restless life on psychostimulants. An article of November 1987, published in the Atlantic Monthly profiled Erdős and discussed his Benzedrine habit. Erdős said to writer Paul Hoffman that he had liked the article "...except for one thing...You shouldn't have mentioned the stuff about Benzedrine. It's not that you got it wrong. It's just that I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." in the movie robocop benzedrine is an ingredient in the narcotic nuke
  • Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson claims that many of the songs on his album Smile were written while the lyricist Van Dyke Parks was under the influence of Benzedrine.
  • The Beatles have said that in their early days in Hamburg, Germany, they used Benzedrine quite often in order to play several concerts a night without getting sleepy.
  • Benzedrine was given to Judy Garland at a young age to help with her weight. She became dependent on the drug for the rest of her life.
  • Benzedrine is the preferred drug of choice amongst the flawed characters which make up the noir fiction of James Ellroy, who himself has confessed a past addiction to the drug.
  • In addition to his addiction to heroin, the jazz alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, Jr. often took Benzedrine in tablet form, dissolved in cups of hot coffee. As a result, Parker often did not sleep for days at a time, and friends noted that he was always moving, "24/7".
  • Benzedrine is also prevalent in the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. In the first novel, Casino Royale, the villain Le Chiffre inhales benzedrine during a battle of wills over a game of Baccarat with 007, earning himself the description, "filthy brute", from an American lady at the table next to Bond. In the novel Live and Let Die, Bond himself eats a benzedrine tablet before going underwater to infiltrate Mr. Big's lair. Similarly, in the novel Moonraker, 007 mixes the drug with champagne before his card game with Sir Hugo Drax in order to "keep my wits about me"; according to the book, the only side effect was overconfidence. In the novel Thunderball, rogue pilot Giuseppe Petacchi consumes two tablets while flying the British Vulcan bomber he has hijacked. Bond himself uses it to keep himself awake so he can protect Vivienne Michel in The Spy Who Loved Me. This drug use has never featured in the film adaptations until Casino Royale, in which Le Chiffre uses a platinum inhaler, ostensibly for his asthma.
  • Benzedrine is mentioned in the lyrics of the R.E.M. song "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?". The band later recorded a song with William S. Burroughs, whose late wife Joan was a notorious user of the drug.
  • In "Filth", a novel by Irvine Welsh, Ray Lennox says that benzedrine is the most demanded drug on the market and offers Bruce Robertson some.
  • It is mentioned in the song popularized by Fred Astaire known as "On the Beam."
  • In the novel Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr., the character Georgette, a transvestite, grapples with an addiction to Benzedrine in the face of her abusive brother and unrequited lust for a local drunk, Vinnie.
  • Progressive house DJ duo, Deep Dish, opened their 2005 album George Is On with an intro track that states, "No stopping for benzedrine, no stopping for rock 'n roll stars".
  • In Robert Harris's novel Enigma, Benzedrine is taken by the cryptanalysts of Bletchley Park in order to keep them awake and alert during shifts stretching over several days.
  • In the classic 1971 cult movie Vanishing Point, the main character Kowalski takes "Bennies" before undertaking his reckless drive through the Southwestern USA.
  • In Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones, a mother and grandmother argue about whether Susie Salmon is - at fourteen - too young for benzedrine, her grandmother's "own personal savior."
  • The song "Wet Sand" by Red Hot Chili Peppers contains the lyrics "The travesties that we have seen, are treating me like benzedrine".
  • The song "Oh Marie" by Sheryl Crow, on her self-titled album released in 1996, contains the lyric "She's on magazines and Benzedrine and vodka."
  • In the British Sitcom Fawlty Towers, during the episode entitled "The Psychiatrist", Sybil Fawlty (Prunella Scales) tells Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) that he is "spitting poison at them like some benzedrine puff-adder."
  • In F. Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished final novel, The Last Tycoon, main character Monroe Stahr takes benzedrine before a date.
  • In Joyce Carol Oates' Novel Blonde, a fictionalized version of Marilyn Monroe's life, Marilyn is said to have used Benzedrine "sparingly: to 'provide quick and valuable energy,' sorely needed by an exhausted actress" (418).
  • The classic anime Akira opens with a character ordering benzedrine at a bar, with the well-known line "Red bennies. Three of 'em".
  • Harry "The Hipster" Gibson had a novelty hit in 1944 with the song, "Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?"
  • Jerry Reed and others have recorded a truck-driving song called "Caffeine, Nicotine, Benzedrine (and wish me luck)."
  • Many truck driving songs, including "Six Days on the Road" and "Midnight Hauler," refer to "whites" which are the tablet form of benzedrine. Similarly, in the movie Eurotrip, a German truck driver mentions that he is wired on "schnapps, Benzedrine, and those little chocolate covered peanuts".
  • "Benzedrine often helps a case run." - L. Ron Hubbard, "The Intensive Processing Procedure," 1950 "Run a case" means to administer Dianetics or Scientology procedures to someone.
  • Often wacky '30s Jazz artist Slim Gaillard makes reference to its recreational use in the song "Who put the Benzedrine is Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?"
  • Benzedrine was used by Lee Blanchard in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia.











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