by MATTHEW GAULT

The number one cause of hospital visits for American service members is mental health, noted a recent issue of Medical Surveillance Monthly Report — a publication that tracks health and wellness trends in U.S. troops.

The number one way the Department of Veterans Affairs deals with that problem is by prescribing the soldiers drugs — typically anti-anxiety pills, antidepressants or a mix of the two.

Journalists, families and soldiers now blame those potent cocktails for many of the returning soldiers’ woes — everything from suicide to homicide.

The medicating often starts on the battlefield. In 2012, The New York Times reported that stimulant prescriptions for drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall had jumped by 1,000 percent in the five years before 2012.

It’s a serious problem, but it’s one that’s as old as the warfare itself. “Why Are We Drugging Our Soldiers?” The New York Times asked in a headline. The answers are both obvious and many. Soldiers take drugs to make them more effective in combat and to numb the physical and psychic pain war inflicts.

Ritalin-addicted veterans, Percocet-popping wounded soldiers and antidepressant cocktail post-traumatic stress cases are just the newest form of a problem that’s as old as war itself.

One of the earliest instances of a soldiers on drugs is so old that it’s recorded in story and legend.

Berserkers were fierce Norse warriors described in Viking songs and poems. The warriors supposedly wore wolf pelts and entered into a hypnotic trance that granted them superhuman strength on the battlefield.

We don’t know if these legendary warriors ever actually existed, as most of the evidence comes from old Norse songs and stories. But that hasn’t stopped historians and scientists from trying to pin down exactly what made them so powerful in war. Drugs is the popular answer.

Most Viking historians suggest the warriors downed massive amounts of alcohol to work themselves into a frenzy before battle, but one psychologist has claimed the berserkers used hallucinogenic mushrooms to induce the frenzied state.

To anyone who’s taken mushrooms for a good time, the idea of hallucinogens aiding a soldier in wartime sounds ridiculous. But the mythological Viking warriors weren’t the only soldiers to do so — at least in the popular legends.