Word: soma
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Astor (LI 2-5030), EI Cidstars(unbeknownst to itself: it has pretensions to being as good as a movie about EI Cid could be) magnificent Spanish scenery; at the Orpheum (LI 2-3491), Sergeants 3 is as good as routine tastelessness and flatness always is (good like soma), despite the most violent exertions of the Clan to make something more of it; and, at Keith's Memorial,Rock Hudson and Doris Day, in Lover Come Back are not as good as the song whose title they stole can be when Ella sings...
Predictably, Huxley compares mescaline to soma, the universal antidote to everyday existence in Brave New World,--a drug with "all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol, none of the drawbacks." Like soma, mescaline is an hallucinogen and a euphoriant that is not harmful and provides a reasonably safe, extremely interesting escape from the world. But the effects of mescaline are far too capricious, much too susceptible to subtle psychological influences, and certainly too time-consuming to rank with those of Huxley's ideal drug. And with the majority that finds heaven in mescaline here is inevitably a small minority that...
...issue may be raised sooner than one might expect. Since mescaline became available, several other drugs with similar properties have been isolated, and some of these have very many of the qualities of Huxley's soma. The most astounding one is psilocybin, a compound isolated quite recently from a certain genus of Mexican mushrooms and now also synthesized. Psilocybin affects the mind much more selectively than mescaline, specifially stimulating those psychic effects that have been termed "broadened consciousness." It never impairs the higher mental functions, often it greatly enhances them. Visions and physical symptoms do occur but seem less intense...
...psilocybin is still not soma, the ideal drug is probably on the way. Ethical and philosophical questions raised by the availability of such a compound are staggering in complexity, yet they will have to be faced. The work going on now in Cambridge may force us to find answers to them in the very near future...
George Bolton and Ed O'Callahan as Cerebro and Soma make believably solid citizens, and they can say absurd things without blinking an eyelash, which is what the play requires. Fred Morehouse and Endo seemed overly conscious of himself as an actor last night, where the apparent consciousness of the others was of their stage personages, rather than their off-stage personalities. Randy Echols' Visionary has little to do (which is very difficult for an actor to do well) and Echols is fine at it. He has a touching moment of pathos and beauty at the end of the play...