No Soma Tonight in My Coffee...

I really struggled with the title for this article. Because I’m a big Guess Who fan, this is what I ended up with. Others up for consideration were “Glass Half Full (of Pain),” which is my overreaching take at being hopeful and optimistic even if the glass contains pain and “Chronic Hope.” I’ll let you all decide your favorite...

Of course, there were more reasons for the title than the Guess Who, so how else did I arrive at my decision, you may ask? It all started innocuously with me getting a sales email suggesting some books I might like. When it comes to my fiction reading, I’ve always been a Kurt Vonnegut, Dean Koontz, or Elmore Leonard type of guy. So, when the first couple of titles I saw were from Nicholas Sparks and Nora Roberts, I figured they had sent this email to the wrong address.

Believe me, I know the latter two authors are extremely talented, they’re just not my particular cup of tea. Please don’t take offense. I continued glancing down at the other suggestions and started seeing more attractive offers.  I then eyed a title I hadn’t thought much about since high school, many years ago. The name of that book was Brave New World.

Was the world so brave?

Let me be clear, this will not be a literary review or analysis of the book. In fact, I’m not sure how many of my readers will actually know about it in this day and age (or of Guess Who either). I probably ought to go back and re-read it, but I am a little fearful of how much more the book will reflect our current society. Plus, I may find I remembered things wrong. Yes, I have taken the lazy way out. I do think I'll be accurate enough with my memories, to make my point.

When I tried to reflect on what I remembered about the story, the one thing that stood out in my mind, more clearly than anything else, was the drug Soma (no, not the Soma out on the market these days). It was passed out by the World State to control the masses. It basically was used to help people feel no pain, embarrassment, sadness, anger, and many other “negative” things, while giving the citizen an overall experience of joy their entire life, no matter what societal caste they landed in.

I remember thinking at the time, “That’s pretty cool, where do I sign up for Soma?” Joy, contentment, and happiness all the time?

The search for a Soma type of happiness

What is interesting, or sad, or maybe depressing, is how, for the bigger part of my life, I was caught in the trap of searching for “happy.” Did I like my car, my looks, my job? What could I do to make a good life even “happier?” How could I escape emotional or physical pain? Where was that Soma fix? Thanks to our culture, which has this “find happiness” allure, there was a lot of messaging making me think that "happy," whatever that was, was the epitome of personal growth and life.

I also realized that almost everyone else was searching for that same fix. I guess that's the curse of the Boomers (I am one), here in the U.S., but I also found out when I started world traveling as part of my job, this type of thinking had already started to become part of other cultures you wouldn’t expect, like China.

As I aged, a lot of that searching went away. I finally started realizing I already had a great life. Traveling for work to Third World countries was probably responsible for part of it. Another even bigger part was my return home. I was always greeted with love from family, friends, and my dogs. I was healthy, could run marathons, and could make my way around a basketball court and the weight machines at the gym. Sure there were emotional, physical, and financial struggles, but overall, things were good. The search for my Soma was still there, but it had become less important.

Turning my chronic pain into chronic hope

Then multiple myeloma hit. Seven severe compression fractures of my vertebrae in the first six weeks after my diagnosis, and then three additional within the next six months. Four total spine operations and recoveries.

“Severe pain” is such an underwhelming way of describing it. The three fractured ribs on top of that didn’t help either, and the psychological trauma was just as bad. God, where was my Soma? These opioids just weren’t doing the trick.

It took almost a year for me to just walk a mile or start feeling any serious relief from my never-ending pain. The collapse of my spine had also caused other issues I won’t get into now. But, now, after two years, the thing that almost everyone with MM had told me about things getting better, was pretty true. I still have chronic pain, some of which is extreme, but also, I still have “chronic hope”.

I guess it’s time to circle back to “Brave New World” and Soma.

Once I saw the book and started thinking about Soma, joy, the absence of pain, etc., and held it up to my last two years, as well as to the rest of my life, I came to a personal realization that Soma or even the idea of something like Soma, was a lot of BS. If my life up to this point had been either always “happy”, or devoid of pain, it might have been no life at all, or that I would never have learned anything about what real life is. Maybe, Aldous Huxley was trying to point that out in the book?

The message I understand now

I have found I’ve grown the most as a human and in my soul because of my experiences with pain. Please, don’t get me wrong. I am not a masochist, I wish like hell I didn’t have to fight pain 24/7, and I hope to God, I will never again have to experience the excruciating pain I had.

I've just realized that pain, discomfort, and unhappiness have been constants in my growth as a human being, as well as lead me to happiness and gratitude. I’ve done my best to not let them define me while having used them to my advantage the best I could in my personal evolution and healing. Unfortunately, it took a crisis in my health to get me to this point in my evolution of thought.

I feel pretty confident that if most people looked at the pain or at the bad experiences in their lives, they would probably see similar results.

So, as I write this, I have chosen to be optimistic and end my Soma search. I look forward to moving ahead while seeing my "glass half full... (of pain).” Yeah, that would have been a sh***y title...