Performance Enhancing Drugs for Glider Pilots

On Dec 16, 11:06*pm, Mike the Strike wrote:
While browsing all the various international racing rules to get ideas
for our upcoming soaring camp, I came across the FAI's 39-page
treatise on performance enhancing drugs, including the testing
criteria.

As an old geezer who doesn't fly cross-country nearly as fast as I
could (some call me Captain Slow), I was captivated by the idea that
there are drugs that can enhance the performance of a glider pilot.
Obviously a sufficiently severe problem that needs 39 pages of rule-
making!

What are they and where can I get them?

Obviously not alcohol - ruins your reaction time and you fly like
cr@p, but you don't know it.
Not marijuana either - also ruins your reaction time - except you know
it, but don't care.

Perhaps chewing coca leaves to improve oxygen uptake at high
altitudes? (Oxygen is cheaper)

I can't really think of any - so what is this severe problem that
needs the 39 pages of rules?

Mike

Hi Mike,

There are some compounds out there in DARPA-land that do measurably
inhance human performance in areas not covered by Viagra, at least in
the short term. It's the long term you have to worry about when
taking them though. Of course for us old geezers that's less of a
problem than it would be for the kiddies. I suspect that most of
these new goodies are undetectable (or even looked for) in the current
drug-testing regimes.

FWIW,

Ray Warshaw
1LK