Drugs In Brave New World

Over-medication has become one of the fastest growing problems throughout the modern society. The vast increase in the use of recreational and pharmaceutical drugs have been a result of the increased control by government and large industries. Brave New World is a dystopian novel, which explores the concept of the use of drugs and how the totalitarian government seized control of its people. Citizens in the novel use the drug, soma, in such large quantities as a way to escape the harsh realities of their everyday life. The obsession with drug use has greatly increased, in today’s modern world, as it allows for an easy solution to any situation. This problem of drug abuse is seen throughout society today being fought by the Obama Administration

As a result of the immense pressure by society to succeed, many students, nowadays, are pressured into using drugs to either fit in or to help gain a competitive edge over classmates in school. Much of the youth population today relies on the use of drugs to help succeed in school and outside of school, on the countless standardized test, which has a large deciding influence on the future of the student. “Among high school seniors, 7.4 percent reported taking Adderall for non-medical reasons, 5.3 percent reported abuse of the pain reliever Vicodin, and 5 percent reported abuse of cough medicine containing dextromethorphan” (Drug Abuse). Many of the students who use drugs such as Adderall, use it to gain a more concentrated focus, which allows them to strengthen their performance on an enduring test such as the SAT. Although many students rely on drugs for educational purposes, the true factor for the rapid growth amongst teen users is peer-pressure. As seen through an article that researched the use of marijuana, “Illicit drug use among teens remains high, largely due to the increasing popularity of marijuana. Among twelfth graders, 6.5 percent use marijuana on a daily basis (Drug Abuse). According to the article, the drug proliferated amongst teens due to its popularity and other students would be pressured into using marijuana. For the students that attempted to refuse to take the drug they would face feeling rejected from their peers or they would feel as if they would not be considered “cool”. Many individuals have also begun to use recreational or pharmaceutical drugs as a result of social conformity, which pressures the individual to fit in with everyone else. In Brave New World the idea of social conformity is ubiquitous throughout the society through the cloning