In Aldous Huxley’s *Brave New World*, the drug used to enforce happiness is soma.
Soma is a state-provided intoxicant that keeps citizens calm, cheerful, and detached from grief, anxiety, or dissatisfaction. The World State encourages people to take it whenever uncomfortable emotions arise, turning chemical pleasure into a tool of political stability. Its popular slogan promises a “holiday” from reality, making escape feel like a normal civic duty.
The drug helps the World State preserve its motto of “Community, Identity, Stability.” Citizens are conditioned from childhood to accept their caste, consumer habits, and social rules, while soma suppresses the emotional resistance those rules might otherwise provoke. Linda, John the Savage’s mother, becomes especially dependent on it and eventually dies after consuming too much.
Huxley named fictional soma after the sacred Vedic drink called soma, which appears in ancient Indian religious texts. The novel’s drug is not the same as any single modern medication, although critics often compare its social function with sedatives, antidepressants, or recreational drugs. Soma is therefore both a plot device and a symbol of happiness imposed by authority.