(Vogue) – We are an anxious nation, an anxious world. Look at the news and it is there for everyone to see. Some 16 percent of the US adult population takes medication for mental health (a figure measured pre-pandemic; one wonders what it is today). Years ago, at a party with a new friend, I was admiring her calm happiness. “I’m drugged,” she said matter-of-factly and with a joyous smile. She then pointed to people around the room and told me: “He’s on Prozac, she’s on Zoloft,” and on and on until almost everyone in the room was accounted for.

But this is nothing new. Soma immediately comes to mind, the mythical drug of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects…the warm, the richly colored, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. There is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a weekend, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon.” (Read More)