Yeah, Huxley was writing almost a century after the Opium Wars, which managed to reduce the greatest civilization on earth to a bunch of drug addicts within a few decades. Laudanum (10% tincture of opium) was extremely common within the late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-American world.
The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley didn't create or predict the pill-popping epidemic, he had a rich tapestry of former pill-popping epidemics to draw on.
The reason soma continues to resonate in literature is because it reflects fundamental truths of how the world works. Huxley didn't create or predict the pill-popping epidemic, he had a rich tapestry of former pill-popping epidemics to draw on.