Soma - Brave New World

ORAL PRESENTATION ABOUT SOMA IN THE BOOK BRAVE NEW WORLD the topic i will present is the theme of drugs as a requirement maintain social stability, as a contribution for people's happiness and most importantly drugs related to a perfect world.
In the real world, in our reality, drugs are seen as extremely dangerous and the consumers are excluded from the moral society, seen as outcasts that go in the wrong path or that will never achive real happiness and a right life. However, drugs, in the last few years have been much more integrated in society or at least now, people that do drugs are less ashamed of it, and less afraid to say it aloud. People seem to be more open minded about drugs or perhaps they have resigned to the fact that they should be forbidden because that doesnt stop people from consuming them. What Aldous Huxley did in part of his book was to predict many of the future changed and advances, and this issue of drugs so normally incorporated in the society might also be a well-done prediction. With the passing of the years drugs are becoming more accepted and who know if they end up being not only legalized but also recommended.

The drug that appears in the book is called soma and it's defined as the perfect drug, it has the positive effects of alcohol without causing any hang over or feeling of sickness the next day, the name SOMA comes from an hallucinogenic drug that was used in ancient India for religious reasons, in BNW soma was used to eliminate unpleasant emotions and feelings which may lead humans to inefficiency and conflict.
"if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training”
This drug was like a holiday, like taking a holiday whenever you need it. It was so good, that it was a need to maintain the social order. Even though the World State seemed to make everything right, and to have everything under control, without soma the totalitarian government would have never been possible. This may represent a very significant failure from the government, it also shows that this full control over the citizens can’t be achived in our society.

It is also important to highlight the way they used the drug, it is an irony that something that makes you feel like in holiday, appears used as a weapon too, by the police. In the episode that the savage goes mad the police pumps soma vapour into the air and thus is able to capture the savage.