How Finnish soldier accidentally overdosed on Nazi meth pills during World War 2 battle - sparking a two-week trip that ended with him half-naked and badly wounded in a ditch eating a raw bird before he was rescued ALIVE

Whether its a few too many glasses of wine after work or too many slices of pizza on the sofa at home, we've all ended up feeling worse for wear after over-indulging.

But perhaps none of us have ended up feeling as bad as Aimo Koivunen, a Finnish soldier who accidentally took a squad's-worth of Nazi methamphetamine pills while fleeing Soviet soldiers on skies during the Second World War.v

Aimo hoped the pills would give him enough energy to escape the pursuing Red Army - which they did, though he also outran his own unit, got lost, and ended up spending two weeks skiing around the Arctic Circle while high out of his mind.

During that time he travelled a total of 250 miles including back through the middle of the Soviet camp, stepped on a landmine which blew his right foot off, and ended up half-naked eating a raw bird in a ditch before somehow being found alive.

Aimo Koivunen (left and right), a Finnish soldier during the Second World War, accidentally overdosed on Nazi meth pills while fighting the Soviets

The incredible story took place in March of 1944 when Finland, fighting a years-long on-off conflict with Russia over its eastern provinces, was in an alliance of convenience with Hitler's Germany.

Aimo, then 27 years old, was on day two of a three-day mission behind Soviet lines with a squad of fellow Finns and who been on the move almost non-stop when they ran into a Soviet patrol around 10am on March 18.

A firefight broke out and Amio's unit was forced to flee, skiing through knee-deep snow to avoid being encircled and captured.

At first they made good ground, but soon Aimo began falling behind. With his squad disappearing on the trail ahead and the Soviets getting closer, he knew he had to do something to tip the balance.

It was then that he took out a packet of Nazi Pervitin pills from his breast pocked - methamphetamine that was given to Hitler's troops to give them an edge in battle.

Aimo, a straight-laced kid who abhorred the idea of taking the pills, had been entrusted to carry the squad's whole supply - which he promptly tipped into his hand because it was too difficult to extract a single pill while wearing mittens.

In a moment of madness Aimo swallowed the whole handful and - within minutes - found he had more than enough energy to escape his Soviet pursuers.

Not only did he escape the Soviets, but he quickly overhauled his own squad. When they eventually caught up with him, they noticed something was badly wrong - Aimo was hallucinating and barely coherent.

Aimo had been entrusted with his entire squad's supply of Pervitin, a Nazi methamphetamine pill, which he accidentally took while trying to swallow one pill for energy

Concerned as much for their safety as his, the squad took away Aimo's ammunition. Shortly afterwards he suffered the first of what would become a series of prolonged blackouts. When he came to he was alone, unarmed, and badly disoriented.

Somehow he had managed to travel almost 40 miles from his last known position and was now lost in -15C temperatures with no idea how to get safely back to camp, while a squad's-worth of Nazi meth coursed through his system.

As Aimo later recalled in a memoir, the next several days were a blur during which he was on the move near-constantly and suffered a series of vivid hallucinations.

At one point he recalled speaking with friends from back home, he also spent a night skiing towards what he thought was a lit cabin on the horizon which turned out to be the North Star, he also fought a wolverine that turned out to be a tree branch.

During that time he subsisted upon snow that he melted in a cooking pot to make water, and pine needles that he boiled into a kind of broth.

Perhaps the most bizarre episode involved Aimo skiing towards a camp full of men that he took to be his Finnish comrades in the hopes of being rescued, but which turned out to be the same Soviet soldiers he had escaped days beforehand.

Unable to turn around in time to avoid them, Aimo ended up skiing straight through the middle of their camp - initially causing confusion as they mistook him for one of their own.

'What a situation!' Aimo wrote. 'The ones in the middle of the camp, the ones I mistook as Krauts, were laying in a lean-to shelter without snowsuits and when I skied by, they would only move their winter boots a little to the side, out of my way!

'They must have been the same group that chased us on the road.'

Eventually the Soviets recognised Aimo and gave chase a second time, sparking what he called the 'scariest race of my life' through a frozen swamp and snow-covered pine forests.

Aimo ended up getting lost for two weeks in the Arctic Circle in temperatures down to -30C, before being found badly wounded but alive by his fellow Finns (pictured, ski soldiers)

After a day of hard siiking, Aimo managed to escape the Soviets before stumbling upon an abandoned cabin. He went inside, and decided to warm himself up by lighting a fire.

But, in his disoriented state, Aimo lit the blaze in the middle of the wooden floor. He then fell into a fitful sleep as the cabin burned around him, waking each time the flames got too close - only to move slightly further away and go back to sleep.

Somehow he managed to get out of the burning cabin before it collapsed on top of him, before stumbling on a second shelter - an abandoned Nazi military camp.

But, unbeknownst to Aimo, the departing soldiers had booby-trapped it.

He first trod on a landmine which blew most of his right foot to pieces, then stumbled to a cabin and opened the door - only for a second explosion to throw him 30ft into a nearby ditch.

Surrendering to what appeared to be a certain fate, Aimo stayed in the ditch for what he estimated to be a week in temperatures as low as -30C with only a few small fires to keep him warm and a raw bird to eat - which he caught with his bare hands.

He was eventually found by a patrol of Finns, though there were not enough of them to carry him back in his badly wounded state, so they left him with a promise that a rescue party would return.

To Aimo's surprise, the rescue party did come back for him and he was hauled to a nearby field hospital where he was patched up.

It was here that he learned he had been missing for two weeks, and it later transpired he had skiied some 250 miles in that time.

When he reached the hospital, his heart was going at 200 beats per minute, against an average resting heart-rate around 80. He weighed just six and a half stone.

Despite the traumatic experience, Aimo survived the war and went on to have a family and live to the old age of 71 - he died in 1989.

His son Mika later recalled how his father didn't like to discuss his time in the war, but in 1978 wrote down the experience of his meth trip for a competition a magazine was holding.

It took second place. ,Whether its a few too many glasses of wine after work or too many slices of pizza on the sofa at home, we've all ended up feeling worse for wear after over-indulging.