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Among
the various themes treated in Bnw, I have chosen the theme of Drug.
Drug
is a serious national problem, at present. The use of drug is very
frequent in the life of young
people. It is the
primary cause of thefts, suicides, death, illnesses and
abandonment of the studies. The present drugs are more powerful
than in past and they produce more easily dependence and overdose.
Who is to risk? Many parents are confused, they prefer to think:
it will never happen to my child.... Perhaps to your child it will
never happen, perhaps...But a survey carried out on 21thousand
students of high schools, says that 84% of the boys condemn the
use of drugs but 33%
smoke hashish and marijuana. The young people know the danger of
drugs. Why do they
take them? The most common causes are: the desire to experiment a
new thing, the influence of the group, a way to fight boredom and
depression, the normal desire of transgression. “The illegal
commerce” of the drug doesn’t occur only
in the discos, but at school, in the pubs, in the private
parties: in all the structures where the young people enter,
anybody excluded.
In
BNW there is the use of drug that is considered a fundamental
element of that
utopian civilization. It’s name is SOMA.
Unlike
what Marx said about religion being the opium of the people, in
the Brave New World “Soma” is the religion of the people. Soma
is really the fundamental image of social and behavioural control
but it is a social and behavioural control that comes through this
artificial means. In our society there are some special things
that make us happy and are important elements of our society:
motherhood, home, family, freedom and love, and we look for these
things to be happy. In BNW happiness derives from mass-produced
goods, sports, promiscuous sex and this perfect drug called
"Soma". This drug, supposedly, make you high in a state
of pleasure. Soma is a drug that produces a pleasant effect on the
person. Soma creates an unreal happiness. It is a substitute of
the lack of freedom.
Huxley
is seeking to warm us against scientific utopia.
In
BNW there are no bad sensations on Soma but maybe because they don´t
even have the capability to have a bad trip, or maybe because Soma
is not a drug strong enough . Controllers can manipulate their
citizens with this drug. If there is somebody that does not feel
alright or think too much Controllers will give him/her some Soma.
All
drugs have a story and an origin. Soma has its story; it’s in
fact it comes from a plant used by the ancient Aryan invaders of
India.
The
Indo-Iranians were an ancient people who had their homeland
somewhere in Central Asia. About 4,000 years ago they split into
two distinct groups. One group, the Indo-Aryans, moved south to
the Indus Valley; the other became the ancient Iranian people.
Both preserved a vast body of religious oral literature which was
only later written down. These scriptures are the Rig Veda and the
Avesta, of the Indians and Iranians respectively. Both works
describe rituals in which a plant with hallucinogenic properties
was consumed. The plant was called soma by the Indians and haoma
by the Iranians. Although some of the descendants of these people
still perform their rituals, the identity of the sacred
entheogenic plant has been lost and non-psychoactive substitutes
are now used in place of the mysterious soma/haoma. In addition to
the various no-psychoactive plants that have been used as soma
substituted in both the Zoroastrian and Hindu traditions, a great
number of candidates for soma have been put forward by Western
investigators over the last two hundred years. Among the
suggestions of more or less convincing candidates have been
cannabis, Ephedra, a fermented alcoholic drink, Syrian rue,
rhubarb, ginseng, opium and wild chicory.
In
the last years the scourge of the drug has become more and more
serious.
The
experts distinguish the light drugs, hashish and marijuana, from
the heavy ones, such as cocaine and heroin, but all the drugs
falsify one’s personality and they are harmful. Many people
think that also the so called light drugs are dangerous because
they invite to pass to the heavy ones. If one starts to take
“non harmful” substances, it is more probable that he/she will
wish to move to new more powerful and dangerous substances. The
heavy drugs kill not only because they already have destructive
powers for the individual, but also because those who sell them,
“cut” them too, that is mix them with less expensive
substances - cement, talc, stricnina and arsenic - that have the
purpose to increase their weight without showing the deception.
The “pusher” is a murderer that premeditates his crime,
against the weakest youth without a strong will, almost always
suffering from family and personal problems.
The
drug addict is a poor victim of the pushers. For this reason it
has the right to receive comprehension, physical and psychological
care: often it’s only a person who is alone and needs love. The
statisticians say that 51 percent of them belong to families in
crisis: divorced parents, insufficient residences, violent parents,
etc. But often the drug addicts, to afford the
incredibly high expenses to buy drug, becomes a pusher himself or
a violent. For this the best care is prevention. Particularly
important can be in this sense the attention of the school and the
family to the problems of the age of development.
The
drug is a social problem, not chemical.
The
drug is not a cause but an effect, a shelter, an escape, anything
in which a person searches for what he/she doesn't have or doesn't
find. And the drug addiction is not a disease. If we consider the
drug addict only a sick person we risk to pass him from a category
(the drug as a social problem) to another (the illness) with worse
consequences. There is, in fact, the danger to simplify the
problem of the drug. Is it enough to take care of the sick to
resolve the problem of the drug? Is it enough to detoxify a drug
addict to eliminate the problem of the drug?
This
is not the right way! To detoxify a drug addict it takes a few days. After that, if
the causes won't be eliminated, the causes that are in him, in the
others, in the environment, in the society, the drug addict-sick
person will go on taking drugs as before. In fact, if the drug is
an escape of the weak people from situations of dissatisfaction,
of fear, all it takes of disappointment is eliminating the drug of
lack of faith and ideal. It is not enough to fight the pushers. It
is necessary to eliminate the motives that induce people to the
drug and contemporarily to help people reconstruct a strongest and
conscious personality. It is necessary to eliminate the criminal
commerce of the drugs, both light and heavy, actually to these
last. All this should be done to help the drug addicts and to help
the most probable victims: the young people,;
Leonardo Giuliani
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