If delivered today, the last of Huxley’s 7-part lecture series at MIT would probably be categorised under motivational talks or self-help strategies. It surv...
If delivered today, the last of Huxley’s 7-part lecture series at MIT would probably be categorised under motivational talks or self-help strategies. It surveys the various under-explored non-pharmacological means to realise the best versions of ourselves. Or, as he calls it, actualising our desirable potentialities.
Some fairly well known means for self-actualisation that Huxley discusses are Alexander technique and Gestalt therapy. While the former is considered a pseudoscientific therapyI am not using this as a pejorative, for a change., Huxley tells us of the influential educator John Dewey’s admiration of F.M. Alexander’s work. He paraphrases Dewey’s foreword in one of Alexander’s books:
Alexander’s technique is to education what education is to life, in general. It proposes an ideal and provides means whereby that ideal can be realised.
While this is mentioned much later in his lecture, a Huxley-like figure today might need to lead their lecture with this part to convey the import and validity of such approaches. Huxley doesn’t really go into the details of why or how this is true but admittedly admires Alexander’s contribution. I have a friend who swears by it for enhancing their dance practice though I have not been able to grok what it does so far—it sounds a lot like what meditation does in terms of raising awareness.
Huxley believes that such practices are effective at psychologically breeding in desirable qualities in a person instead of: genetically breeding out undesirable ones; or pharmacologically enhancing our intellectual abilities—i.e., improved attention spans or reduced sleep—to increase our mental efficiency. Here, Huxley predicts the emergence of Adderall though I was less impressed by his forecasting euphoric pharmaceuticals. After all, this lecture was delivered several years after the publication of The Doors of Perception.
The underlying efficiency gains from these psychological approaches happen, he claims, because they train humans into being fundamentally happier; something he felt pharma-euphorics might also achieve one day. The reason such therapies are effective is that they do not provide a homogeneous training; instead, they can be adapted to individual personalities and their intrinsic differences, allowing each individual to actualise their latent potentialities via different means. This recognition that there is no single ideal version of a human is quite old; Huxley finds the most realistic (or complete) ideals in the Bhagavad Gita’s Three Yogas. The ways of devotion (Bhakti), selfless action (Karma), and contemplation (Jnana) can all lead to enlightenment, i.e., the actualisation of desirable qualities. He sees a correspondence between these yogas and the more recent Western categorisation of human beings by William Sheldon’s somatotypes—quite a problematic take when I read the traits listed in this table. While I do admire his capacity to form connections through historyWhether I see them or not is less important., I don’t see the relationship between these two beyond the fact that these are categories. They’re by no means comparable so maybe I missed the point of this comparison.
He highlights parallels between the positive outcomes of training one’s imagination via Gestalt therapy and those seen in Richard DeMille’s strategies in Children’s Imagination Games: children get more fun out of life by, for example, visualising adversarial or intimidating situations with adults in a more playful manner so that things feel less serious than they need to beThat is how I understood this section.. The examples Huxley gives here reminded me of those given to nervous interviewees and public speakers, like “Imagine your audience is naked”, to take the edge off.
As an educator I am very sympathetic to Huxley’s grand idea in this lecture that we must develop new methods of education that adapt to personality variations; the current strategy of pigeonholing students into the identical training-and-testing modalities remains inappropriate, especially as technological advancements—which academia struggles to keep up with—could enable more personalised and expressive learning. He doesn’t imagine one-to-one therapy as the scalable solution to actualisation; instead, he suggests building upon the pre-existing categories of humans into three or more groups to test out other means and potentially develop new ones based on past practices.
While I think the whole lecture is delivered eloquently, I am unsure if it has more of a thesis than that; it’s more a survey of techniques that rely on anecdotal evidence or name-dropping to convey their effectiveness.
Tomorrow’s post will unpack how he sees the role of the humanities in helping us actualise our desirable potentialities, which Huxley discussed in his lecture. It will also include my own concluding thoughts on his lecture. Maybe I will have some semblance of a thesis from it as I contemplate his words overnight.
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By greekrich92 2025-11-1722:094 reply Just want to echo someone else's sub-thread: Adderall is not at all similar to Huxley's description of Soma. Soma was about feeling good and not having to think of the evil things that make the BNW society possible, not efficiency.
By itishappy 2025-11-184:30 Not Soma! From a talk by Huxley:
> ... I have talked to pharmacologists about this matter, and a number of them say that it’s probably quite possible that it may be possible to, by pharmacological means, which will do no harm to the organism as a whole, to increase the span of attention, to increase the powers of concentration, perhaps to cut down on the necessity for sleep, and the various other things which may lead to a very considerable increase in general mental efficiency.
https://www.organism.earth/library/document/realizing-human-...
By NaomiLehman 2025-11-1812:16 Also, Huxley's Soma is very close to the medicine Soma (Carisoprodol), in my experience. It's a beautiful, relaxing, euphoric high. Probably highly addictive.
By never_inline 2025-11-1812:18 I was surprised to see the mention of ritual drink of Vedic people.
It turns out to refer to a drug in fiction which is named after the Vedic ritual drink.
Original Vedic "soma" is indeed more like a drink of inspiration and ecstasy, with myths similar to the norse "Mead of poetry".
"somasya tA mada indraS cakAra" - "In the exhilaration of soma, Indra has done these great deeds" - is a rig-vedic refrain.
That's also what I thought - Wasn't Soma more of a way to make people question less and just remain in a blissed out but maybe sort of out of it state at all times ? Seems very different than amphetamines
By phantasmish 2025-11-1723:333 reply The link (including the transcript of Huxley’s lecture) doesn’t seem to be about Soma, unless I’m missing something. Huxley produced a lot of work outside of Brave New World, lots of it concerned with drugs and altered states of consciousness (so much so that personally I don’t think I’ve done enough drugs to understand his perspective, as I find him distinctly, and almost uniquely among such high-profile authors that I’ve tried, unreadable)
By angadh 2025-11-1723:39 You are vey correct—the talk and link have nothing to do with Soma.
I can only presume, based on timing of the talk being 1960, that his thoughts here link to mescaline and the practical utopia he talks of in Island, whose inhabitants make use of a local psychedelic. So whatever he must have said here had more to do with his later perspectives than his feelings around the island.
By greekrich92 2025-11-182:23 Fair enough, but I have read Island, The Doors of Perception, and BNW, and none of those books described using uppers or anything about efficiency. Island was psychedelics (fantastic book in my opinion).
By Melatonic 2025-11-1723:34 Guess more of us should have read the link more carefully..... oops !
By mattgreenrocks 2025-11-1723:541 reply So kind of like our social media feeds then?
By phs318u 2025-11-180:30 I would've said like marijuana.
By notepad0x90 2025-11-187:177 reply amphetamines feel a lot like people putting NO2 on their cars, or overclocking their computers. You might just fine in the end, but the likelihood of wear & tear catching up to you increases. It should be treated just like any other medicine, don't use it unless you really have to, and expect adverse effect (known or unknown).
By potato3732842 2025-11-1812:552 reply To continue the analogy, a Dodge Challenger with a 50-shot of nitrous on it that gets used once a day is gonna still come out looking better at any milage/age than the same engine in a Promaster van because you can't drive around at 17k gross in a Challenger so the area under the abuse curve is way lower even if it peaks ever so slightly higher.
An office worker on meth-lite (or whatever you want to call it) is still accumulating less wear and tear than a laborer, something the human body is clearly capable of being for a lifetime if you're somewhat smart about it.
Adderall, caffeine, heck cocaine based stimulants, are probably all fine if you're not over-using the living crap out of them and stacking large amounts of them on top of other things that'll beat the body up over time.
By notepad0x90 2025-11-1814:09 I don't disagree at all. at medicinal doses, treated as medicine are fine. at higher doses they're addictive and lend themselves to excessive use.
By foxyv 2025-11-1916:23 Many people don't realize that any argument they can think of against a given medication has been gone over a thousand times by thousands of medical professionals. The truth is, they just don't trust the medical system as a whole.
Whether that is good or bad stands to be seen. However, I find that people with this position often reject effective and safe treatments along with the more questionable ones.
By throwuxiytayq 2025-11-188:513 reply Amphetamines are safe, well-studied and non-addictive at prescribed doses. On the other hand, untreated ADHD VASTLY increases likelihood of addiction and many mental disorders.
Definitely DO use this medication if you need it - it's the first medication your doctor will likely ask you to try precisely because an extensive body of research says it's the most effective way for treating ADHD.
By mr_00ff00 2025-11-1816:48 “non-addictive at prescribed doses”
Less likely to be addictive, definitely not non-addictive.
https://talbottcampus.com/resources/how-adderall-addiction-s...
This has the same energy as the common incorrect statement “marijuana isn’t addictive”. I assume made by frequent users who want to downplay negatives.
The "if you need it" is important.
1. People take it as a study drug, without prescription.
2. There may be over medication. Doctors will sometimes feel pushed to prescribe (as is known to happen with antibiotics)
3. At an individual level that is true, but you may need it because of your society and environment. Both ADHD rates and treatment varies between countries (even between regions and states within countries) and has varied a lot over time, which implies some external factor affects it.
By trashface 2025-11-1819:34 Not sure about over-medication. I think about all the people I used to work with that were absolutely addicted to caffeine, just to get through the day. And the work we were doing (software) didn't seem _that_ boring to me. Some of most hardcore caffeine addicts were from when I worked briefly in game dev (and that was my own peak usage too; now I can't drink coffee due to acid reflux, its also bad for my eyes because I have glaucoma now).
I think untreated attention issues (if not the rather narrowly defined condition labeled "ADHD") are rather widespread. And society doesn't help, just look at the checklist of things you need to do on an ongoing basis to just keep a vehicle running for transport in the US, which pretty much everybody outside a city needs, and even many city dwellers elect to procure as well.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna95111
1 out of every 5 Ivy League students is prescribed stimulants.
I think it’s time we stop pretending like prescriptions magically mean the substance isn’t abused or is truly needed.
By FatherOfCurses 2025-11-2016:21 "1 out of every 5 Ivy League students is prescribed stimulants."
From the third paragraph of the article:
"Researchers analyzed responses from an online questionnaire of more than 600 Ivy League sophomores, juniors and seniors who were not diagnosed with ADHD — attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder — and therefore did not have a prescription for the medication. Writing essays and studying for an exam cause the most angst for students — of those who used stimulants, 69 percent said they used them to stay focused while writing and 66 percent said they used the drugs to help study."
By notepad0x90 2025-11-1814:11 > at prescribed doses
If you're getting Adderall from "a guy I know" instead of with a prescription, that's the problem. you keep taking more until you're satisfied.
By NilMostChill 2025-11-187:433 reply Isn't the whole point of amphetamine based treatement for ADHD to correct(or beneficially alter, depending on your point of view) an non-standard brain chemistry?
AFAIK some neurodivergent brains deal with amphetamines differently and the baseline levels of chemical affected by amphetamines is different.
Wear and tear might be a thing, i don't know, but the analogy of putting NO2 in their car feels a bit off.
It'd be more like finally putting premium unleaded in your car after years of "back of the lorry" pseudo-unleaded.
By DonaldPShimoda 2025-11-187:561 reply I believe parent commenter was referring to recreational use, i.e., use by people without such diagnoses who want a "performance boost". I heard about that sort of thing being popular when I was in college — people would take Adderall to cram for an exam or to study late into the night.
You're right that, for people with ADHD and related disorders, stimulant medication sort of just adjusts their baselines so they can pay attention like a "normal" person.
> You're right that, for people with ADHD and related disorders, stimulant medication sort of just adjusts their baselines so they can pay attention like a "normal" person.
I have ADHD and take metylphenidate(I've tried many kinds of stimulants as well) -- and the NO2 analogy is an imperfect but better analogy than saying stimulants simply adjusts the baseline of people with ADHD to function like "normal" persons.
I feel there is a narrow window of dosage and time where it might feel that way -- i.e. stimulants at the onset might calm you down, reduce anxiety, but all stimulants are very broad hammers.
For me it feels like it's impossible to re-create chemically exactly the neurotypical focus that I've seen in other colleagues.
Like spending 5-6 hours of continous work where you drill down just enough, get back on track, don't get distracted, don't get too anxious, don't get hyperfocused AND do that consistently, day after day after day.
My non-chemical modes are either hyper focus for 2 weeks on a problem, immerse myself but then completely lose interest, most of the time without showing much for it OR procastinate it a long way, get extremely anxious and work really hard on the problem.
With stimulants it's a bit like: - dosed just right:it evaporates anxiety, stressful situations feel easy to deal with, BUT there's always increased heart rate, grinding teeth and some tension at the end of the day - some stimulants make mundane things wildly interesting (on isopropylphenidate I spent a few hours playing with a PLSQL debugger because I thought it was really cool), but no sense of "GO, GO, GO, do it". - some make things seem urgent enough and help stay on track -- like the metylphenidate I'm prescribed. - some make going into a flow-like state easy and fun (like methamphetamine and phenmetrazine). - some are pure energy and urgency -- like modafinil.
All of the stimulants have the potential to give me euphoria, all of them temporarily increase libido I still have to be mindful of not focusing on the wrong thing, the "normal" feeling is very fleeting, it's very easy to get hyper on stimulants, all of them feel like wear & tear at the end of the day, some more than others.
By modo_mario 2025-11-1813:322 reply I've had similar experiences to you. I never can quite get that normalcy. I now just take rilatin but it is finnicky. Getting enough sleep and eating the right amount of the right stuff just before ingesting is extremely important so I don't even take it all that much even tho i struggle.
I wonder if you tried lisdexamfetamine? I can't get it prescribed easily here since it's not covered the way the alternatives are but someone i know had amazing success with it. Seemingly because it's a prodrug. I can't help but be hopefull that I'll get to try it one day and that it ends up being what I always needed.
By meeq 2025-11-1823:43 Not the OP, but I‘ve had a rather bad experience with methylphenidate (ritalin) where it made me way more awkward around people, and increased my obsessive tendencies. It did help with focus, but the effects were very short-lived. It also obliterated my hunger and once the effects wore off, it left me feeling semi-depressed until the end of the day.
Once I got prescribed lisdexamphetamine, my life turned around almost instantaneously. While it doesn‘t really get rid of my ADHD, it does help tremendously. The everlasting brainfog isn‘t as debilitating anymore. When I get excited about something I actually tend to follow through. I still battle with my obsessive tendencies — like getting stuck at setting up the perfect project tooling stack or spending way too much time on planning and research instead of just getting to work — but these are not so much related to ADHD.
On lisdexamphetamine, I am more social, my appetite is better, when I actually commit to something, I tend to stick to it for much longer, and I have also picked up a bunch of healthy habits. For example I exercise almost every day now.
If you someday get a chance to switch to lisdex, do it. It’s much smoother, longer-lasting, with fewer side effects. But honestly, anything is better than ritalin in my book.
By raducu 2025-11-1814:00 > lisdexamfetamine.
It's not legal where I live also, I did try 2-FMA and it felt better in certain scenarios -- like following a hard course, but I also felt the tolerance ramps up much faster in releasers than re-uptake inhibitors so methylphenidate still is a wonderful tool.
By Fr0styMatt88 2025-11-1811:54 Watching a good friend of mine struggle with this after diagnosis for a few years now and I feel this really captures the nuance and complexity of this struggle well. Stimulants are an incredible tool but also an incredibly imperfect one.
By boat-of-theseus 2025-11-1814:43 [dead]
By standardly 2025-11-1819:22 Eh, for me the comment rings mostly true. It fixed my ADHD - I was incredibly more productive, present, and "on track" so to speak. I set goals for myself and achieved them (some for the first time) once I was treated.
That said, it completely destroyed my appetite. I picked up ciggies, too. It made me crave nicotine and caffeine. I started pulling all-nighters because I was so productive (or, so into whatever game I was playing.) I got cold sweats often and had some weird uh sexual health side effects. Develeoped a tolerance to 5-10mg very quickly, so went up to 15-20mg, which also felt weakened after a month or so.
So, wasn't lolng before I could tell this was not healthy. Felt like I was in overdrive mode - super mentally active, and productive, but running my body into the ground. I would never do it long-term.
By boat-of-theseus 2025-11-1814:48 [dead]
Is that based on a rigorous PhD level understanding of the neurobiology of the brain and the chemistry behind that particular medication, or just something you absorbed though popular culture, eg movies and Instagram reels?
By notepad0x90 2025-11-1814:12 An observation of how our body and machines in general behave under stress, and a skim of the wiki page for amphetamine.
It's a good thing that human bodies are not analogous to cars then. The research on these chemicals does not align with your metaphor.
By notepad0x90 2025-11-1822:05 i picked cars at random, it could be any machine. I picked overclocking computers as well, maybe that is easier for you to relate the concepts.
By TurkishPoptart 2025-11-1817:35 What are the "wear & tear" effects of using Adderall and its derivatives as prescribed for many years or decades?
By earlyriser 2025-11-1720:222 reply I read champignons and it kind of fit even better. Adderall (Brave New World) and mushrooms (Island).
By brandall10 2025-11-1720:264 reply Soma in BNW is more analogous to MDMA as it's about sedated pleasure, not mental clarity/performance.
By mock-possum 2025-11-1816:41 Kind of depends really. I’ve definitely had Molly trips that have been very oozy/cuddly/spacey.
I really prefer the term ‘ecstacy’ for mdma paired with a stimulant, even if it’s just caffeine - because that is a distinct experience.
I seem to think marijuana is more about sedated pleasure than MDMA. Granted, it's been about 30 years since I read Brave New World.
I agree, soma definitely parallels weed much more closely, but I don't think it's a perfect match. Huxley imagines a drug a bit more insidious, without obviously negative side effects, and with somewhat unrealistic(imo) intended effects.
Disagree. Weed is somewhat psychadelic ... and makes people enjoy the colors and not work so much. Soma made people numbless working with a feeling of glow. So I always understood it as antidepressant and moodlifter with some amphetamine compoments.
By ProllyInfamous 2025-11-1814:352 reply Weed isn't really psychedelic (it can be profound, and sometimes you'll get extra giggly...) but really it's more about being okay with the numbness.
It's also not really an antidepressant any more than it is an amphetamine (it's neither). Attempting to self-medicate in either direction is not beneficial, longer term.
If your marijuana usage carries you through such wide-ranging symptomology, that's on you homey [holds-back next pass to you]. It's okay to ask for help.
> Weed isn't really psychedelic
Depends on mind, use, dose. I've had THC trips that were almost as strong as concentrated mushrooms can deliver on an empty stomach, seeing shit that wasn't, patterns, my mind was light years away, reality twisted. Almost as strong.
Didn't dance as a mist of atoms to shamanic music without any connection to my real 5 senses, but then again I hardly met mushroom user who did achieve that themselves.
By ProllyInfamous 2025-11-2014:20 I agree with you that even higher doses of psilocybin (several grams) isn't that psychedelic (rather interconnected, e.g.)... I don't have enough experience with LSD to exclude its visuals capability, but even its quintessential acid visuals I rarely hear described [as such].
...unlike DMT (recommended) or Salvia (not recommended) or mescaline (neutral), which even at low dosages are strikingly visual. I have only met devils with the latter two. Ketamine isn't exactly visual, but its dreaminess is angelic.
.. and it is on you, if you misread. I believe my writing was clear.
(Antidepressant was about "Soma", the Huxley fantasy drug)
By ProllyInfamous 2025-11-1916:18 ' " ` A soma in time saves nine ` " '
I'd say something with the intensity of weed (relatively low) along with the effects of MDMA. Essentially "MDMA lite"
Marijuana often seems to promote thinking "outside the box" which is probably not what the Brave New World people would want for their population
By mikkupikku 2025-11-1811:16 > Marijuana often seems to promote thinking "outside the box"
Hard disagree. Cannabis induces a sensation of profundity. It makes ordinary mundane thoughts feel insightful and novel. The ideas you have when on cannabis seem like insightful out of the box ideas, but that's a perceptual illusion created by the drug. The best it can do is provide you the encouragement to see ideas through to the end, but of course this is tempered by the way it generally has a negative effect on motivation, so most often users are left thinking of ideas they think are wonderful, but not actually executing on those ideas. End result is usually a couch potato lost in unproductive thoughts.
By FooBarBizBazz 2025-11-182:041 reply I think he was inspired by Valium and other benzos. They put people into a docile, low-anxiety state, and they were popular around the time the book was written.
That's also more-or-less consistent with the implied literary reference to the Lotus Eaters, who I think are usually imagined as opium users. Opioids are different but are also downers that reduce anxiety.
Benzos later featured significantly in one of Adam Curtis' film-essays -- maybe Century of the Self, maybe another one. I'd view those films as being in a similar spirit to Brave New World.
If we are talking about BNW, which was written in 1931, then that book predates benzodiazepines by 25 years or so. Perhaps you are thinking about barbiturates?
By FooBarBizBazz 2025-11-1812:32 Oof! Thank you for the correction. I should have checked the publication date. I thought it was from the late '50s; I was wrong.
(By contrast, turns out 1984 -- which is always paired with BNW -- came out later than I thought, in '49. Yet BNW seemed more forward-looking. I always imagined it was written partially in response. It wasn't.)
There goes my benzo theory.
Though they remain what I imagine when I read about soma.
It is, you're right, and it's super weird what happens on the internet when you suggest weed isn't some gateway to enlightenment. I love cannabis, but it's a depressant that increases dopamine, it's not that complicated. Stoners on the internet sound exactly like alcoholics—they say it makes them more creative, helps them sleep, deal with anxiety too. We do such a shit job teaching about signs of psychological addiction.
By pfannkuchen 2025-11-187:001 reply It definitely doesn’t help sleep quality, but it could plausibly help with creativity in people who have the capacity to have good creative ideas. This is because it seems to produce a feeling that all (or at least more) of one’s ideas are good.
If someone has a problem with idea development because they decide early that the idea isn’t worth exploring, perhaps due to low self confidence in ideation etc, then simply producing the feeling of it being a good idea could help them go further than they would otherwise with it. Of course it also makes dumb ideas feel like good ideas too, so for someone who doesn’t have the capacity to have good creative ideas or who doesn’t have this problem in the first place, it probably won’t help.
By cluckindan 2025-11-187:111 reply It definitely helps sleep quality in some people.
By pfannkuchen 2025-11-1815:001 reply I’ve read that it interferes with one or more sleep stages enough to make them ineffective. My understanding is that it may help someone fall asleep, but the actual sleep they get will definitely be worse. So for insomnia, where the alternative is just not sleeping at all, yes, but otherwise no, AFAIK.
By cluckindan 2025-11-1817:29 Exactly. In addition to general insomnia, people who suffer from persistent nightmares due to PTSD or other reasons will sleep restfully.
And with nightmares I’m not referring to bad dreams in general, but to horrific nightmares where a person is re-experiencing their trauma in various ways, not necessarily remembering their dreams afterwards.
Imagine sleeping eight hours but waking up more tired than when you went to sleep and in full panic mode without even knowing why. After months and years, it gets pretty tiring.
Being able to not be afraid of going to sleep is a lifesaver and can keep those people functional in their lives.
By brandall10 2025-11-1722:03 The sedation is psychological - soma suppresses discomfort and boosts easy pleasure. It’s not introspective at all, which makes it much closer to MDMA than to cannabis.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-11-1721:533 reply mdma is pleasureful but extremely non-sedated
pure racemic MDMA has very little stimulant effect. street MDMA can feel stimulating because it is either intentionally mixed with caffeine/speed/meth or contains residual precursor from clandestine synthesis.
my major state was one of deep relaxation ... MDMA does not work like Dexedrine ... I feel totally peaceful.
- Alexander Shulgin, PIHKAL
https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal109...
Shulgin used dozens (hundreds?) of these compounds. I do wonder if some of his better subjective observations might be due to simply relieving withdrawal symptoms.
By loeg 2025-11-1815:55 Yeah, Shulgin is not really a reliable witness here. He's also a single anecdote.
By ratelimitsteve 2025-11-1815:00 that was certainly the story when I found opioids to be energizing
By brandall10 2025-11-1721:58 I meant the psychological role in the book - soma as a tool to melt away discomfort or disturbing feelings, not its literal pharmacology.
By wmeredith 2025-11-1723:21 The street drug Ecstasy is MDMA usually mixed with speed. MDMA doesn't have a stimulating effect.
By cjrp 2025-11-1814:44 Isn't it more like morphine or another opiate?
By MavropaliasG 2025-11-1812:11 Which "Island", is that a book?
