Happiness In Brave New World

Throughout history, many people ranging from the most educated of scientists to the simplest high school students alike have aimed to answer the question “how to achieve full happiness and self-transcendence?”. People look for the answer in many things including meditation, religion, completing goals, and controversially, recreational drugs. The 1960s, known as the psychedelic ‘60s is often remembered as a time where recreational drugs were widely used. When the rave scene began to rise in the 1970s and 1980s, partygoers would often use club drugs or psychedelic drugs to enhance their experience and achieve satisfaction. Even in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, characters use a drug called soma routinely in order to maintain a state

Even when people go on drug detoxes, they often fail to find enjoyment in other activities as “the drug has warped the brain’s reward system” (Miller 2009). This is due to the drug sending excessive dopamine to the brain, making it produce less or causing cells to respond less. This also explains why recreational drugs can be so addictive as consumers increase their usage to make up for the lack of dopamine that the brain is producing. In an experiment conducted by Melbourne University, pictures were shown to heroin users. These images included “children, sports events, food or peaceful scenery” as they normally trigger a pleasure response (Miller, 2009). Electrodes that measured their responses showed that the heroin addicts displayed less pleasure compared to non-users. However, they felt an excessive amount of pleasure when images containing drugs were displayed. Brave New World is a prime literary example of drugs preventing people from experiencing true happiness. In the novel, characters only gain what they perceive as happiness from sex and soma. Every little problem or discomfort the characters encounter is solved by taking soma. As a result, they are so dependent on it that the only time citizens of Brave New World have shown any emotion aside from pleasure and peaceful indifference is when a mob becomes outraged at the sight of John throwing soma at the window. Heavy drug users are similar to the characters in Brave New World as consuming recreational drugs is their primary mean of feeling a sense of happiness. In order for a drug detox to be truly successful, drug users would have to partake in different activities in an effort to feel pleasure in a different way. Even when the heavy user stops using the drug they may still have a hard time trying to seek happiness through other means, hurting their chances of