A Long Way Gone

The white capsules the young soldiers are given are probably some form of methamphetamine, since they are allegedly intended to boost the boys’ energy. Beah notes later that he and the other soldiers become addicted to the drugs, just as they become dependent upon cocaine, brown brown, and marijuana. The need to deaden their senses to the slaughter around them is a recurring theme in this section of Beah’s memoir; the drugs are the soldiers’ coping mechanism against feeling anything of the horrors witnessed - and committed by themselves - during this conflict.