Brave New World: A society of Addicts This essay compares and contrasts our societies views on drugs, to those of the society in Adolus Huxley's novel, Brave New World.

In Brave New World, there is only one drug left, Soma. Soma is distributed freely for the suppression of unpleasant emotions. Today's drugs are used for the same reason, but they have more adverse side affects than Soma.

The book quotes 'a gramme is better than a damn,' referring to a hipnopaedic lesson that teaches all of society to use Soma if they are ever in a situation that presented unpleasant emotions. They are led to believe that the way soma makes them feel is good, and all other feelings are bad. This means that love, hate, fear, passion, all of these feelings are dampened. Some are good and some are bad, but the society in Brave New World doesn't know the difference, because they have never truly felt any of them. They have been programmed to feel that drug use is acceptable, where our mainstream society feels that it is not.

Soma does not have any apparent side-affects, but in really has the same worst side-affect as all drugs do: it makes you forget who you are, and you become someone else. This, along with the advent of the Bokovsky method, pretty much shut up individualism. Today's addict is much the same way. They become someone else when they are addicted. They crave their drug, they crave to be satisfied, and only when they are actually feeling the direct affects of the drug, are they truly happy. If the addict is not satisfied, they will sink into withdrawal, and eventually start accepting other alternatives if they are not satisfied. When we find Linda at the reservation, she has already gone through withdrawal, and used the drink 'Mescal' to try and relieve her cravings. She unfortunately would get 'sick with the Peotyl' whenever she took it though, and even admits...