Brave New World Revisited - Aldous Huxley - Soma the wonderdrug

The Soma of Brave New World had none of the drawbacks of its Indian original.  In small doses it brought a sense of bliss, in larger doses it made you see visions and, if you took three tablets, you would sink in a few minutes into refreshing sleep. And all at no physiological or mental cost. The Brave New Worlders could take holidays from their black moods, or from the familiar annoyances of everyday life, without sacrificing their health or permanently reducing their efficiency.

However, it was one of the main instruments of the dictatorship's armoury.

The systematic drugging of individuals for the benefit of the State (and incidentally, of course, for their own delights) was a main plank in the policy of the World Controllers. .. Marx said that religion was 'the opium of the people'. In Brave New World, opium (soma) was the religion of the people.

Huxley runs through the drugs currently available in the late 1950s, both legal and illegal. Opium makes addicts and ruins health. Alcohol not only 'maketh glad the heart of man; it also, in excessive doses, causes illness and addiction, and has been a main source, for the last eight or ten thousand years, of crime, domestic unhappiness, moral degradation and avoidable accidents. Cocaine is a very powerful and very dangerous drug, leading to 'agonising depressions' and 'paranoid delusions that may lead to crimes of violence.' Amphetamines work at the expense of physical and mental health.  Huxley considered cannabis 'merely a nuisance'.

He also runs through the kinds of drugs used to treat psychotic patients and finds great strides being made in the manufacture of tranquillizers and in hallucinogenics - he was quite enthusiastic about LSD for the spiritual insight it gave, which he felt to be of great value.

But to Huxley the danger is that drugs may be used to limit the freedom of a population. Writing at the time of the Cold War, he could compare the populations of the Soviet Union 'constantly stimulated by threats and promises and directed by one-pointed propaganda' and that of the United States 'no less constantly being distracted by television and tranquillized by Miltown'.

I think antidepressants are rather like Soma in that people may be genuinely unhappy with their society and find that it gives them no emotional fulfillment, but antidepressants lift their spirits enough to enable them to carry on. But I did a quick check for all drug use, to find how widespread it is.

Here are the results.

How many people take Antidepressants?

The number of antidepressants prescribed by the NHS has almost doubled in the last decade, and rose sharply last year as the recession bit, figures reveal.

The health service issued 39.1m prescriptions for drugs to tackle depression in England in 2009, compared with 20.1m in 1999 – a 95% jump. Doctors handed out 3.18m more prescriptions last year than in 2008, almost twice the annual rise seen in preceding years, according to previously unpublished statistics released by the NHS's Business Services Authority.

One in three women have taken anti-depressants at some point in their lives, researchers say.

The study by women's campaign group Platform 51 found that 48 per cent of women currently using the drugs have taken them for at least five years, while 24 per cent have taken them for 10 years or more.

Meanwhile, 24 per cent of women on anti-depressants have waited a year or more for a review, the research found.

How many people take tranquilizers?

An international survey at the beginning of the 1980s showed that tranquilizers and sedatives of any type had been used at some time during the previous year by 12.9 percent of U.S. adults, 11.2 percent in the United Kingdom (U.K.), 7.4 percent in the Netherlands, and 15.9 percent in France. Persistent long-term users comprised 1.8 percent of all U.S. adults, 3.1 percent in the U.K., 1.7 percent in the Netherlands and 5.0 percent in France. The proportion of repeat prescriptions for tranquilizers has increased steadily since about 1970 in many countries, the U.K. in particular. This suggests that fewer people are being newly started on tranquilizers but that a large group of long-term users is accumulating. People starting tranquilizers have at least a 10 percent chance of going on to long-term use, that is for more than 6 months. Some of these chronic users have chronic medical or social problems, and the tranquilizer blunts the unpleasant feelings of tension, anxiety, insomnia and, to a lesser extent, depression.

American children are often prescribed psychiatric medication

Like the diagnoses, the drugs administered to children have mushroomed to involve every class of psychiatric medication, including stimulants, antidepressants, tranquilizers, mood stabilizers and anti psychotic agents. The FDA has increasingly given official approval for giving children especially deadly anti-psychotics such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon and Seroquel. Meanwhile, anything that can sedate the child’s growing brain from anti-hypertension drugs to anti-seizure drugs are routinely dispensed with callous disregard for their harmful impact.

It’s not uncommon to find children subdued and crushed by multiple psychiatric drugs. Probably 10 to 20 percent of our children will at some time be diagnosed or drugged. This number includes nearly every child in special education classes, foster care or on SSI/SSDI. Any child singled out by child services and educational or psychiatric authorities is likely to fall victim to psychiatric drugs.

How many people take recreational drugs in the UK?

"We have very scant evidence about how many people are using drugs," Mr Linnell says.

"We can't even give accurate figures of how many people are in treatment for heroin and rock cocaine, let alone magic mushrooms, cannabis and ecstasy."

Despite these difficulties, the annual British Crime Survey (BCS) is viewed as the primary source for assessing general drug use.

Over 20,000 respondents are asked, anonymously, which drugs they have taken in the past month, year or in their lifetime.

The latest survey, 2003/04, suggests that 35.6% of people aged 16-59 in England and Wales have used drugs at some point.

Twelve per cent have used drugs in the past year and 7.5 per cent in the past month.

That equates to 11 million people having used drugs in their lifetime, and just under four million using them in the last year. Cannabis, the survey suggests, remains by far the most popular drug.

In a similar survey in Scotland, 27% said they had used drugs in their lifetime and 9% reported using them in the last year.

Commentators agree that although figures from both surveys are likely to be underestimates, they provide a useful benchmark.

"It does give us a broad snapshot of the major trends," says Petra Maxwell. "However... some of the most problematic drug use may not be captured.

"Also it is slow to respond to emerging drugs of choice, focusing mainly on the large ones. For example, as it doesn't ask about ketamine... although we know this is increasing in popularity."

If we say that the population is 62 million, more or less at the moment, and we go with the notion that 1 in 3 women is going to take anti-depressants at some time in their lives. This seems like a huge exaggeration, so let's say that no men take anti-depressants. That would be about 10 million people taking antidepressants.

Then we say that those people taking anti-depressants don't take recreational drugs, although I guess there is likely to be some overlap between the 2 groups. Let's say that the number of people taking recreational drugs stays level at around 12%. that gives us another 7,440,000. Add these two figures together and you get about 17.5 m. This is rather more than a quarter of the population and less than a third. Maybe if we included people on anti psychotic drugs it would approach a third.

See also my entry 12/12/12 which refers to the film Silver Linings Playbook.