Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Aldous Huxley: A drug addict?
While discussing Brave New World and various prompts with one of my good friends he suddenly told me, "By the way, Huxley was a drug addict." For a moment I was dumbfounded, but quickly became interested in Aldous Huxley. My friend then stated that Huxley had used LSD, or acid, and probably more drugs. I quickly became curious and inquired how Huxley had died. As stated by my friend, "He was laying on his deathbed and took LSD." I did find one source that had said he died from cancer, but he could have had cancer while in his deathbed and took the LSD. The mention of Huxley taking drugs on his deathbed reminded me of Brave New World when people that were probably going to die loaded on soma. I read that Huxley also experimented and searched for enlightenment with drugs. I found this rather interesting, and do hope some of you will also.
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Carina Taylor and Raul Gil discussed this in early July: http://apbloggers1011.blogspot.com/2010/07/somas-real.html
ReplyDeleteLSD is not a physically addictive drug -- it's not like an opiate. Huxley did experiment, as did many other people of his time. LSD did not become illegal in the US until 1966. I'm not justifying Huxley; merely explaining that people did not have the same attitudes then as we do today.
I was just listening to a film reviewer discussing an interview he did in the late 60s or early 70s, where the subject of the interview (a well known movie star) asked if he minded if she "turned on" (smoked pot) during the interview. He said of course not. It was not surprising at all. But now, if someone did that, even in the well protected enclave of Hollywood, it would be absolutely astonishing. In many ways, we are more conservative now than we were 40-60 years ago.
Check out http://somaweb.org/
ReplyDeleteAlso, one thing I want to point out Jimmy: you have made a logical error entitled "appeal to uncertain authority." In arguments, we cannot use "my friend said," as a source of evidence. However, if you had you said, "my friend, the writer and social critic, Joel Stein said," that would be another matter.
ReplyDeleteThank you Misses Fletcher for pointing out my error, I will definitely take it into consideration. Seems like Raul and Carina got to it first. By almost two months. That is quite an interesting interview. It was not too long ago, either. Fascinating how our society has changed so quickly over a course of thirty or forty years.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I don't mean to suggest that you can't talk about something that has been discussed before, but reading the blog and what people have been discussing shows respect to your classmates and the work that they have done. You merely continue an ongoing conversation by referring to it. And I did want to caution you against the "my friend said" thing. That stuff doesn't fly. Perhaps your friend is a genius, but the way it is worded makes it impossible for us to know. We want evidence we can trust and rely on.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure "Misses" is plural...one Miss, two Misses. I go by Ms. -- I enjoy the ambiguity.