Except in Brave New World, soma is used to maintain a lie (which you're punished for refusing to believe) that life isn't unpleasant. In the modern world, alcoh

Except in Brave New World, soma is used to maintain a lie (which you're punished for refusing to believe) that life isn't unpleasant. In the modern world, alcohol is used by some people to cope with the common-sense fact that life is unpleasant. One of the central themes of Brave New World is the collapse of realism and individualism in the attempt to maintain perfect order (and thus, ironically, control over reality). It's hard to leave that out of any conception of soma, especially when you consider that the pretentious fuck complaining about his coworkers taking "soma" really isn't all that much more enterprising or self-aware than anyone else, in the first place.