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Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

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Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#21

Post by flatline »

Alex3917 wrote: post #12
drongoking wrote: post #9

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. If you're looking for a drug that helps with the anxieties of everyday life, alcohol would have my vote. It's been used for tho…

> Valium (and benzodiazepines in general) aren't prescribed as much these days because of their addictive potential. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/25/6882878... What were the prescription rates in the 60s?

Ridiculously high. A quick search reveals that:

> After about ten years on the market, Valium had been prescribed to 59.3 million patients [0]

The US population in 1970 was about 200 million. A significant portion of the adult US population took valium at some point during the 60s/70s.

[0] https://www.valiumaddiction.com/history-of-v.htm

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#22

Post by nostrademons »

drongoking wrote: post #9

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. If you're looking for a drug that helps with the anxieties of everyday life, alcohol would have my vote. It's been used for tho…

Yeah, Huxley was writing almost a century after the Opium Wars, which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. Laudanum (10% tincture of opium) was extremely common within the late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American world.

The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley didn't create or predict the pill-popping epidemic, he had a rich tapestry of former pill-popping epidemics to draw on.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#23

Post by [deleted] »

nostrademons wrote: post #22
drongoking wrote: post #9

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. If you're looking for a drug that helps with the anxieties of everyday life, alcohol would have my vote. It's been used for tho…

Yeah, Huxley was writing almost a century after the Opium Wars, which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. Laudanum (10% tincture of opium) was extremely common within the late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American world. The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley did…

[deleted]

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#24

Post by claudeganon »

nostrademons wrote: post #22
drongoking wrote: post #9

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. If you're looking for a drug that helps with the anxieties of everyday life, alcohol would have my vote. It's been used for tho…

Yeah, Huxley was writing almost a century after the Opium Wars, which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. Laudanum (10% tincture of opium) was extremely common within the late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American world. The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley did…

>the Opium Wars which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades.

This too sounds familiar...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-22/deadly-ch...

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#25

Post by Alex3917 »

flatline wrote: post #21
Alex3917 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Valium (and benzodiazepines in general) aren't prescribed as much these days because of their addictive potential. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/25/6882878... What were the prescription rates in the 60s?

Ridiculously high. A quick search reveals that: > After about ten years on the market, Valium had been prescribed to 59.3 million patients [0] The US population in 1970 was about 200 million. A significant portion of the adult US population took valium at some point during the 60s/70s. [0] https://www.valiumaddiction.com/history-of-v.htm

Interesting. The NYT says 59.3 million prescriptions, not patients. [0] If so the number of patients would presumably be significantly lower, since it is in fact addictive.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/01/archives/article-16-no-ti...

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#26

Post by Thorentis »

More importantly, he predicted the rise of The Pill (birth control) very eerily too. And the long term effect that it will have on civilization is undeniable.

Whatever your stance on the pill, I think it is naive to think that it will not have a lasting and deep impact on western civilization (and as it spreads globally, to all of human civilization).

Never before has sex been able to be had without consequence. Or the urge to have sex not led to at least the possibility of reproduction. For those that grew up entirely in a world where it exists and is readily available, it will have a huge impact on how they see sex, relationships, dating, and reproduction.

Sure, the world has a lot of people. But a civilization that by default, does not want to produce children? (As Huxley envisioned, and as I think will be the case in the coming decades) is headed for sure collapse.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#27

Post by MFLoon »

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #15

Huxley and Orwell saw two dystopian futures in different ways: one, totalitarian and ever watchful government. The other, a society robbed of cognitive and personal agency via societal pressure and medication. When I was young, I thought Orwell's future was the most dangerous an imminent. Then later Huxley, especially once things like "apps" were created. Now I see they both work together to erode liberty. Your cultu…

I'd agree with the spirit of your assertion that both the state, through surveillance and beauracratic control, and the market, through ever increasing share of our attention and hold over our appetites, are having harmful effects on many people. But it's interesting that you frame that harm as 'eroding liberty'.

I've recently been reading a book called "Why Liberalism Failed" by Patrick Deneen, which also sees these two forces as working together to harm both the individual and society at large, but not by restricting our liberty so much as trading away other valuable social goods for a surfeit of liberties most of us don't actually need or benefit from. The liberty to buy whatever our appetites desire, at any time. The liberty to uproot ourselves and live "globally" without concern for the locales we leave behind. The liberty to profit seek without regard for externalities.

Deneen draws a contrast between "liberty to " and "liberty from being ruled by our animal urges and appetites". The ancient Greeks who coined the term saw liberty as a virtue explicitly in the latter capacity. But the modern sense of what it is to be liberated is explicitly centered around the former. But I think the liberty you allude to is more of the ancient conception, and I agree, the pincers of the government and the market are eroding our liberty from animal urges, in exchange for an ever expanding menu of nominal liberties to which are often harmful to ourselves and others.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#28

Post by nostrademons »

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #15

Huxley and Orwell saw two dystopian futures in different ways: one, totalitarian and ever watchful government. The other, a society robbed of cognitive and personal agency via societal pressure and medication. When I was young, I thought Orwell's future was the most dangerous an imminent. Then later Huxley, especially once things like "apps" were created. Now I see they both work together to erode liberty. Your cultu…

The weird thing, if you study history and step outside the culture you were raised in, is to realize that Huxley and Orwell were both describing the world they were writing in, not some hypothetical future. 1984 is based on Orwell's experiences writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2; 1984 was intentionally chosen by switching the last two digits of the year it was written, 1948. Brave New World is a Depression-era reaction to the excesses of and hangover from the 1920s. The World State of Brave New World is based on Fordism, the logical result of taking Henry Ford's assembly-line mentality and applying it to a whole society. In many ways the creative class (which didn't really exist in the 1931 of Huxley's day) enjoys significantly more liberties than the populace of Brave New World.

It's also interesting to note that Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia are also literary reactions to that time period. Note that Saruman turns Isengard evil with "The fires of industry"; orcs cut down the trees and defile large areas of the countryside, while the Nine Rings corrupt men in the name of greed and power. Tolkien's answer to industrialization was to return to small pastoralist villages; Lewis's was to accept the redemption of Christ, in the form of the lion Aslan.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#29

Post by smegger001 »

SilasX wrote: post #16
millzlane wrote: post #2

And just 21 years later, Ray Bradbury who wrote Fahrenheit 451 would signal the OD crisis that EMT's face today. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/key-questions/why-does-mi...

He kinda missed the mark on predicting greater ability to suppress information though.

Did he miss the mark? Ask the average person on the street why congress are having impeachment proceedings against the president. most will either regurgitate some fox news conspiracy theory or say something about Russia. while the actual reason is he attempted to extort a personal quid pro quo from the Ukrainian government in exchange for releasing foreign aid funds they were due. Sounds to me like he predicted people not reading and getting nothing but propaganda misinformation and empty mindless entertainment from tv just right.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#30

Post by chiefalchemist »

drongoking wrote: post #9

I hate to be That Guy Who Argues With Everything, but I will. I'm a big fan of Huxley and Brave New World, but he wasn't particularly visionary with Soma. Drug use goes back as far as humankind does because people have been trying to cope with the stress of life since there have been people. If you're looking for a drug that helps with the anxieties of everyday life, alcohol would have my vote. It's been used for tho…

While it post-dates BNW my friends and I often joked that Rollerball was the first (film) reference to MDMA. Mind you the party scene wasn't a rave but the dancing and the touch sure make a good case for ecstasy.
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