There's a commercial on American networks right now for a prescription drug that can help you fall asleep if you take a long time to do so at night, or help you stay asleep if you're the type who falls asleep easily but then awakens in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. I happen to have both problems, at various times, and have suffered with insomnia for most of my life. And yet my reaction to this ad was not to rush to my doctor to see if I could get a script for it. Instead, that commercial caused me to think about how chilling Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley was, with its soma-neutralized populace. Described as "an opiate of the masses", soma kept people in chemically-controlled equilibrium just like our current pharmaceutical companies would love to see everyone modulated daily, or better yet, hourly.
I'm not anti-prescription drugs, as a lot of serious problems require medication and even modulation. But I draw the line at using them to 'fix' things that are better handled by the sufferers themselves, like not sleeping, eating too much, or not feeling happy, or up, enough. Seems like I might be in the minority on that count, though..
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