By Gayne C. Young
Remember kids, drugs are bad.
Unless the Soviets are after you.
Then you should do them … hardcore.
Aimo Allan Koivunen did exactly this and not only survived but went on to enter the sacred halls of infamy.
Our story begins in Lapland, Finland 1944. The Finnish and Germans fought the Soviet Union nearly uninterrupted for over four years in what was known as the Continuation War, or the Second Soviet-Finnish War.
Koivunen and several other Finnish soldiers were assigned to a ski patrol and sent behind enemy lines. On March 18 the group was ambushed and surrounded by Soviet forces. Retreat was the Finns’ only option. Koivunen sprang into action and immediately led his comrades through deep, virgin snow. The going was grueling for Koivunen, but his cutting a ski path allowed the rest of his troops to glide through the snow with relative ease. Koivunen quickly tired but knew that his failure would mean he and his men would be overrun and killed by the ever-gaining Soviets.
Koivunen suddenly remembered he was carrying his unit’s ration of a stimulant called Pervitin. He reached into his pocket while still skiing. The thick mittens he wore wouldn’t allow him to disperse just one pill, so he downed the whole bottle.
The whole bottle of 30 pills of straight methamphetamine.
The meds kicked into Koivunen with a bolt of energy not unlike when Popeye scarfed a can of spinach. Koivunen suddenly had strength and stamina he’d never before imagined … and his body could barely handle it. I’m no doctor, and I wasn’t there, but I bet his eyes shot out of his face like bowling pins, and steam most likely train-whistled out of his ears.
He cut through the snow at breakneck speed and his men followed. The Soviets fell back. The massive dose of crank continued coursing through Koivunen. But soon his vision went dark, and he lost consciousness. He came to the next day and to the realization that he skied straight through the night—more than 60 miles—in a blacked-out state. He took in his surroundings. His squad and the Soviets were nowhere to be seen. Furthermore, he had no ammunition or food. Still bursting with energy, he skied onward.
He soon skied over a landmine. The blast threw him to the ground and into unconsciousness and started a forest fire that eventually spread to a nearby Soviet camp. He awoke and, still fueled by meth, skied onward. During that time, he encountered and escaped more Soviet patrols, caught and ate a Siberian jay bird raw, and occasionally gnawed on pine buds. Koivunen soon made it to Finnish territory, was found by fellow countrymen, and taken to a nearby hospital. Doctors found that he had dropped to under 95 pounds in weight and had a heart rate of 200 beats per minute.
That’s triple the average human heartbeat.
And that’s after skiing almost 250 miles nonstop in just a few days.
Not only is this an absolutely true story, but it made Koivunen the only soldier to survive an overdose of meth behind enemy lines.
Koivunen died peacefully at the age of 71 on August 12, 1989.
