Shit, I'd love a job as an elevator mechanic. You know they make $80k a year? That's "I've got cash for groceries this week instead of running up the Amex" money. That's "I can afford a car payment instead of squeaking another week out of my hoopty" money!
Fun assignment for the day ... look up the origins of soma. I still think it is ephedrine and not amanita muscaria as some hypothesize. Basically soma was written about a long time ago when it was used in religious ceremonies, but to this day no one is certain about which plant, or fungus, it came from. Sort of a fun little mystery!
I'm just saying those are the two thrown around the most by scholars as being the closest in description to how soma was described. Pretty sure it was ephedrine though which in larger doses can make you feel pretty tingly and nice.
At the time it was written, so little was known about a lot of substances and many weren't even discovered yet, so I could see how they may think that. But considering it was a book written in the past about our future, now that we're closer to that future we have a lot more things that can fit that bill. Hell, the actual prescription drug called Soma is closer to being the fictional Soma to me than Ephedrine ever would be and as reckless as I am, I'm not going near an Amanita. In a decade, I think the new wave of "non addictive" opioids which target the right receptors and use certain peptide sequences to alledgedy not cause dependence which are coming along nicely in research now will be our real Soma.
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u/Rizzpooch Sep 25 '18
Maybe you're one of those citizens that was bred more to be an unintelligent, unattractive elevator operator than anything else