
Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction - benbreen
https://lithub.com/aldous-huxley-foresaw-americas-pill-popping-addiction-with-eerie-accuracy/
======
drongoking
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 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.

~~~
shams93
What is interesting is that the same family owned company that created
oxycontin also created valium originally. Amazing to think of how much damage
one family owned business has done (Purdue Pharma) to an entire nation.

~~~
rtpg
As someone who has had to deal with restrictions on other drugs I need to
function, I’m always a bit reticent to go full in on “this drug is evil”
narratives.

Is Oxycotin particularly addictive in itself in ways it could otherwise not
be? Or is this about general painkiller addiction plus the pharmaceutical
company taking advantage of this to push it out too much?

In other words, is there a way to tackle this problem that doesn’t cut access
for people who actually need this stuff?

~~~
unixhero
Who needs that stuff?

~~~
tim58
I'm not sure about Oxycotin specifically, but people in severe pain generally
should receive medication to alleviate it. I've had severe burning. Pain
medication greatly reduced the amount of suffering that occurred.

~~~
wp381640
The newer formulations - especially those that are slow release and combined
with naloxone, are fine and have their use. The problem is the 20+ years of
overprescribing straight up plain and crushable oxycontin that for a time was
better than heroin

------
nickstinemates
For people who are a fan of Huxley's work, I would recommend taking a look at
Island[1]. It contrasts well with the dystopian view of Brave New World by
providing a look into other reasons a successful utopia might fall.

Of course, the constant theme of experimentation with hallucinogenics is
apparent in this book as well.

1: I listened on Audible while driving, I highly recommend
[https://www.audible.com/pd/Island-
Audiobook/B01L0LZWVO](https://www.audible.com/pd/Island-Audiobook/B01L0LZWVO)

------
darkFunction
Soma became a reality and takes the form of constant distractions and
serotonin hits delivered via our mobile devices and TV screens. It's the
status notifications, the likes, the latest Netflix series, browsing Reddit in
bed. It's pornography and follower counts. We consume the Soma until our
pleasure receptors are fatigued then we sleep and repeat the process. Huxley
was right and it has nothing to do with pills.

------
mudil
I am a practicing anesthesiologist and I see every day what medications my
patients take, because we review preoperatively their in home meds. And it's
astonishing that a large chunk of population takes either psychiatric or
psychoactive prescription meds plus cannabis, etc. I even have a joke that
Americans voluntarily take meds that in Soviet Union were only given to the
political prisoners.

~~~
Cougher
This presents an interesting diversion: the phenomenon of anesthesiologists
who are addicted to drugs. I worked with one who lost his position as chief
because he was caught buying street drugs . . . on a city street. If people
who are so well-educated about the effects of recreational drug use can still
succumb to it, it's unreasonable to expect that the average person should be
"smart enough" to be immune to the risks.

~~~
Nasrudith
I think it obvious personally - you would find it difficult to find an
anaestiologist who fears the drugs. Also notably the reason you heard about it
was because the hammer of the state, not because the drugs itself ruined his
life.

~~~
Cougher
I generally agree about the hammer of the state angle, but another angle here
is that if medical people are addicted to drugs and they have access to
patients' drugs, they can potentially skim some of the drugs that they're
supposed to be giving their patients.

~~~
jacquesm
Medical practitioners have a long history with sampling the wares from the
drug cabinet.

~~~
Cougher
Of course! Any good cook needs to sample the product to ensure that it's good
enough to serve!

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
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 culture works against the expression of your constitutional rights,
especially in certain areas of our country. And of course, if you stop using
those liberties you might never notice once they're taken away.

~~~
nostrademons
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; 19 _84_ was
intentionally chosen by switching the last two digits of the year it was
written, 19 _48_. 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.

~~~
afarrell
> Tolkien's Lord of the Rings...literary reactions to that time period

It was also a response to WWI. Tolkein's childhood friends were killed and
shattered by that war...and why? Because in 1831, Britain agreed to be a
guarantor of Belgian neutrality.

So when Gondor calls for aid... when Isildur calls the Men of the White
Mountains to war... when Minas Tirith is besieged... what ought elves and men
do but honour their allegiance? We now have all seen that war is obscene as
cancer, but perhaps to march to death is still more fitting than to forsake
our friends and break all bonds of fellowship.

Otherwise... what was the point?

~~~
Nasrudith
Tolkein apparently furiously denied allegory - although there are preexisting
tropes that predate even his influence (decline of the mythic past
Götterdämmerungn Atlantis) is hard to not see. Which I suppose probably owes
itself both to decline of youthful myths like "parents and ancestors as
infalliable" and the distant mutated memories of the Bronze Age collapse where
the greatest empires indeed did fall from lofty heights and take millenia to
be reached again.

~~~
afarrell
What I'm pointing to isn't allegory though. Allegory would be if the Rohirrim
at Helms Deep represented the Belgians and the elves led by Haldir represented
the British Expeditionary Force. They don't.

But stories are still about (among other things) the choices people make, the
way we see those choices, and the things we think about our own choices.

------
maverick2007
The scariest thing in this article to me was buried at the end describing how
many of these drugs can be found in the water supply (albeit in mostly trace
amounts). Whether you want them or not, it seems like everyone is going to get
these medications in trace amounts and who knows what they will do to our
bodies over time.

Is there anything that I as an average person can do to remove as many of
these chemicals as I can? A special filter?

~~~
elil17
Any activated carbon filter should do - these molecules are pretty big and
will be caught by a Brita filter or similar. Faucet attachment systems are the
most effective.

[https://nowtoronto.com/what-chemicals-do-brita-type-
filters-...](https://nowtoronto.com/what-chemicals-do-brita-type-filters-
remove-from-water/)

------
sreatyugr
To anyone who like dystopian books I find that the most succinct of the early
genre is Rose Macaulay's What Not.

It's a little harder to parse then the others because it was written in world
war 1.

I think it's really interesting as the earliest example I've found of this
kind of story telling.

------
smilbandit
Aldous's pill popping from Brave New World isn't as interesting as what he
said in his interview with Mike Wallace,
[https://youtu.be/alasBxZsb40](https://youtu.be/alasBxZsb40)

~~~
mindfulgeek
Thanks for sharing that link. What he’s saying here is very relevant today.

------
Melting_Harps
Did anyone see this part in the article:

Fentanyl wasn’t on offer, but agents kept following the digital trails that
have made it easier for people like Muhammad and Yan to enter the global drug
trade and for investigators to hunt them down. Because Yan used Gmail,
operated by U.S.-based Google, Gibbons and his team could persuade a judge to
let them monitor his communications in real time.

FAANG is an extension of the US' Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies, in
case anyone had any doubts. This is why they get so much funding from both
respectively, and why they can get away with such egregious infractions and
unlawful behaviour.

Those of you dropping where you work should really have some reservations of
what is taking place with your labour and in your name.

------
zer00eyz
I 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.

~~~
mrob
Benzodiazepines are much more difficult to fatally overdose on than
barbiturates, which is IMO an important health reason.

------
decebalus1
I will probably go against the grain here but my inner tinfoil hat is telling
me that the recent marijuana legalization is actually secretly run by the
military industrial complex in order to silence dissent. Kind of the 'lithium
in the water supply' thing.

~~~
drongoking
Heh. Except it took _forever_ for states to begin decriminalizing/legalizing
marijuana, and it isn't legal at the Federal level yet.

~~~
decebalus1
The more opposition you appear to have, the more people will fight for it. My
theory is that (again, tinfoil hat) if the federal government really didn't
want marijuana to be legal, it wouldn't have been. If they really cracked down
on it on the ground in the states where it was tolerated (before getting
legalized), it wouldn't be legal now. Unless we get another Vietnam, where the
government fears that young folk is too woke/high to fight in a war, it would
rather have them sedated than dissenting. Automation is growing, blue collar
jobs are going away, not everyone invested in their white collar future,
income inequality keeps growing, better have them baked rather that raising
their fists.

------
millzlane
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...](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/key-questions/why-does-mildred-
overdose/)

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

~~~
smegger001
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.

~~~
SilasX
The reason has nothing to do with his “firemen”.

~~~
smegger001
To quote the conversation with the firechief Captain Beatty; "There you have
it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no
declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology mass exploitation,
and minority pressure carried the trick"

------
leed25d
So did William Burroughs, from a slightly different aspect.

------
arminiusreturns
I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

It's a brave new world... until you resist, then it's 1984.

------
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.

~~~
heavyset_go
> _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._

Contraception and abortifacients have existed for millennia.

People in the developed world are choosing not have children because of costs.
Having children in the developing world is an investment that is paid back in
the form of free labor, dowries and someone to care for you when you're
elderly.

~~~
jerf
"Contraception and abortifacients have existed for millennia."

Yes, but not reliably (for contraception) or safely (for abortifacients), and
by their nature, 80% reliable contraception is of dubious utility.

~~~
oska
> 80% reliable contraception is of dubious utility.

You realise the quoted reliability rates are per year, not per act? For
example, the withdrawal method (available to everyone, for all time) has a
reliability rate of 78% for typical use and 96% for perfect use. [1]
Obviously, even at 78% reliability over a year, that is of a great deal of
utility. 78% of the time a woman whose partner practises withdrawal will not
get pregnant over the course of a year.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coitus_interruptus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coitus_interruptus)

~~~
jerf
It is observably a fact that the "sexual revolution" was a qualitative change
and not just a quantitative change. Presumably something changed for that to
happen. A student of history will note many, many times in the past that
cultures would have been willing to make that change, but couldn't for some
reason, so "it's just because we moderns are so uniquely awesome and wise and
wonderful" doesn't strike me as a likely answer.

I suppose it could conceivably just be the ability to treat STDs, but I don't
think that's enough, personally. YMMV. (Plus I'm not sure that the time works
out correctly.)

------
squidsurfer
From my perspective, Brave New World was a cautionary tale of transhumanism,
technocracy, secularism, and hedonism. The climax of the novel delves into
theology and the condition of man, with the protagonist lamenting the
disappearance from society of God or any higher allegiance than to the self or
state.

Whenever I hear John Lennon's Imagine, I always imagine the world portrayed in
this story.

------
llamataboot
Would 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!

\--

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.

\--

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.

------
usaidkamran007
Just get it through

------
notadoc
And 1984 foresaw speech police, wrong-think, and cultural cleansing yada
yada....

~~~
buboard
it should be called 2018

~~~
microcolonel
Twenty Eighteen.

------
Animats
_" They have given us Soma, and it is called Valium."_

Not quite. They have given us Soma, and it is called cannabis.

------
LessDmesg
I've never taken anti-depressants and don't understand why so many people do.
If you can't calm down your own mind, then you've got a problem no pill is
going to solve - and the fact that people abuse these pills or keep taking
them habitually proves this.

~~~
Nasrudith
You don't understand depression or antidepressants period.

Antidepressants typically take weeks to take effect and have a low efficency
rate overall - the reason why so many are approved is because it is a matter
of cycling through them to find one which is actually effective and without
unacceptable side effects.

The closest form of "abuse" aside from idiots who take any random substances
to try to get high (in which case Mike & Ikes or kitchen spices also qualify
because it is a matter of intent) is using them to try to make other
withdrawal symptoms more tolerable which is far from mainstream even among
burnt out addicts.

