Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
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Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#2And 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...
Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#3And 1984 foresaw speech police, wrong-think, and cultural cleansing yada yada....
Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#4And 1984 foresaw speech police, wrong-think, and cultural cleansing yada yada....
it should be called 2018
Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#5Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#6[dead]
Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#7Would at least be useful to point out in this article that Huxley didn't have an overly moralistic view of substance use in general and he wrote one of the most classic books about using psychedelics to explore consciousness with Doors of Perception!
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I tend to find simplistic pro and anti substance screeds yawn-inducing. All psychoactive substances, whether legal or not, whether they have physical dependency issues or not, whether they are used by rich people or poor people, have a unique set of consciousness-altering properties in the short-term and long-term. They give with one hand and take away with the other.
Whether something is useful for short-term or long-term use is a profoundly individual choice that is best made with as much information available as possible, and far separated from moralizing judgement. And sometimes, far from the pharma companies and current psychiatric fad.
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I don't see much new in this article. It's true lots of people are popping pills to deal with late capitalism, but maybe that's what a lot of humans have to do in late capitalism til we figure out something better.
Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#8Orgies as well. Went to my first one 2 weeks ago. Orgy-porgy baby.
Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#9I 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 thousands of years, for better or worse. Alcohol use comes with lots of problems, of course, but that doesn't stop it from being the socially acceptable drug of choice.
As for Valium, it seems odd this article even makes a big deal about it. Valium (and benzodiazepines in general) aren't prescribed as much these days because of their addictive potential. Their spike of popularity came and went in a few decades, roughly 1960-1980. Benzos are still popular in illicit use, but a key point of Soma was that it wasn't illicit---it was sanctioned by the state.
Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction
#10I think it is cute that the author trys to make some leap about valium. If Huxley was talking about, or thinking of anything it would have been a more contemporary problem. Though my memory of the book is hazy, I do not recall that Soma was addictive or potentially deadly.
The contemporary family of drugs would have been barbiturates, and in the very early days of their use. Well before we knew how bad that they were in regards to addition and withdrawl. Valium is a benzodiazepine, and those come much later, again we don't find out how bad the withdrawal from them is till much later. In some regards benzodiazepines end up replacing barbiturates not for consumer heath reasons rather for patent and profit reasons because as it turns out both are fairly damaging.