Mood-altering drugs are Huxley’s soma

The comedy set No Refunds by Doug Stanhope in 2007 (Scraps from the Loft) includes the following bit,

“The only drugs that are even popular anymore are all the… dummy drugs, all the drugs that make you more boring. All the mood stabilizer, antidepressant… Everyone’s got some mental disorder they’ve been diagnosed with, and they take a f*cking pill.

“They push them on me all the time. I’ve ruined so many relationships, ’cause, you know, ’cause I think. I f*cking think all the time, sorry.

““Oh, jeez, oh, you, you… It’s ADD.”

“No, it’s not ADD, I’m thinking. I’m thinking about a lot of stuff. That’s not ADD. Yeah, I stutter a lot and I f*ck stuff up, but I’m… That’s ’cause I’m always thinking.

““Well, you’re not listening to me.”

“‘Cause I’m thinking about something that’s more interesting than you! I’m trying to build a perfect Utopian society in my head, and what are you talking to me about? Bowling or what?

“And I do, I have a head that won’t shut the f*ck up.

“That’s where the ideas come from Do you have a head like that? Do you have the brain that just won’t shut the f*ck up all the time?

“(applause)

“You learn to work with it.”

In another bit, he made a joke about this guy named Harry Levin[1], who is apparently such a terrible person that he said that even most Jewish people would agree that had Hitler succeeded in his goals, if it would have led to a world where Harry Levin were never to have been born and, given that, the Holocaust would have been acceptable collateral damage. Stanhope is a madman but he’s brilliant.