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Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

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251–260 of 642 posts

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#251
Please highlight if you can how questions of brain health are often ignored exactly because people seem productive. Learning to do good work under too much stress and with too little sleep is a big part of the problem. We condition ourselves to get the work done, then compensate with drugs and alcohol. But since we're productive, the latter is not seen as a problem.

The pattern is repeating itself all over top universities and why rates of brain health concerns and suicides continue to remain high. Those maladaptive behaviors then carry over to workplaces.

Stress and sleep concerns are independently public health crises, and yet they are two sides of the same physiological coin - the autonomic nervous system. And of course, being high on stress makes sleeping that much more difficult.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#252
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to talk to you. Did this happen a long time ago, your experience(s)? or was this in the last 4 years? Also, to reiterate, do not need to use your name, etc. Don't even need to know it to speak to you.

All recently. I assume the e-mail address listed in your e-mail is an appropriate contact point?

yes, that's perfect. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#253
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this manager still going this route? And do you think any of the microdosing (or other drug use) goes beyond the 10x productivity stuff? Could it be some of the tedium of programming work? Does it relieve any of that? I'm trying to determine too if all of the drug use in tech is really aimed at enhancing performance/productivity or if it's also used to stave off depression, anxiety or just that feeling so many of…

> I'm trying to determine too if all of the drug use in tech is really aimed at enhancing performance/productivity or if it's also used to stave off depression, anxiety or just that feeling so many of us have and have had that we're not doing anything particularly meaningful in our professional work. This is a fascinating possibility, and apparently there's at least one researcher working on exactly that. [1][2] On a…

Thanks for the links.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#254
post #200

Drug abuse is not a big issue in SV in general. There are a few general themes: 1) Some startups have a heavy-drinking bro-y environment. 2) Weed is common outside of work (in all of SF) 3) As part of the burning man culture a lot of people will occasionally let loose all weekend with molly, LSD, shrooms, and anything else you’d expect at BM 4) Some people will use adderall/modanfil to stay productive during work. 5)…

After all that.. "not big issue in SV"

Well, you don't have tech workers offing themselves with fentanyl in record numbers, at least.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#255

Well, there are recreational and performance-enhancing drugs. The attitudes about the two types are different. Coffee, alcohol, nicotine, and pot are all just normalized. Nobody cares. We chat about it in passing (e.g "so Friday I was high....blah blah rest of story"). Coffee is perf-enhancing but people treat it recreationally. The performance stuff is alluded to but not really in any detail. Cocaine, adderall, rita…

White trash drugs? Benzodiazepines, of which kolonopin is one are used by over 15 million people in the US and over 10 in the UK. It's one of the most widely used, widely prescribed categories of drugs and kolonopin one of the top prescribed in the category. And opiates? Who uses opiates who isn't addicted to them? You think being rich gives you a pass on addiction, and chronic pain?

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#256
There is a population of media developers that are fairly heavy marijuana users. By 'media developer' I mean animation, VFX, games, and other graphics & entertainment related type of software. We tend to be older, having been in graphics and media for 20 to 30 years for most of us pothead graphics junkies. We have bongs and all the typical pot smoking accessories out in the open at our offices, and they are in active use throughout the day, from the moment the day starts.

In general, we are people that write the core software of the renderer, the simulation, the shaders, the production tools, or other somewhat overly complex yet creative element of our work. We've been leads for 20 years, at least. We're all people that enter into deep states of flow when stoned, and many of us believe the pot is required to quickly enter flow and then stay there for hours on end as we develop.

We're split between people with pot belly and people that actively work out. The only consistency of this crowd is we all use pot to isolate ourselves into our work, and we're working in media production.

Now media production itself drives many people to drugs, simply due to the pressure of that ever present deadline. I'd like to clarify that the pot smoking developers I'm talking about typically ignore this pressure, mocking it, because they have already adopted an obsessive developer lifestyle. These are basically creative stoners that would work like this anyway, and are glad to get paid well doing what they love anyway. Also, this is all we do, pretty much 7 days a week. We're obsessive, the pot seems to aid that obsession, our employers like our productivity and look the other way towards our open smoking in the studio.

Personally, I smoke about 1 oz of high grade Indica per week. The typical pot smoker is 1/8th that.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#257
post #187
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What made you decide to go cold turkey? (which sounds almost not-doable it's so tough). Did you hit some kind of wall? And would you mind commenting on what you think happens to engineers who don't use some kind of stimulant?

Suddenly ceasing stimulants does not involve nearly as acute or prolonged a withdrawal as opiates. There's no risk of seizures like there is with benzos. Your dopamine receptors will reset their tolerance much quicker than the 6 months I see cited throughout this thread. I have stopped stimulants many times with no more than a 1 week (maybe 10 day max) period of physical dependence symptoms. When people experienced p…

I'm wondering if it's life conditions in many cases that is part of the reason for using in the first place? Yes, needing to work long hours is very real, but maybe the drugs also help to avoid life conditions that we don't want to deal with...

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily endorsing stimulants but here is a good analysis of Modafinil suppliers: http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil#suppliers-prices . It's worth reading the whole page from the start though if you're interested. Includes some comparison with Adderall too.

Also consider Adrafinil. It metabolizes into Modafinil, but Adrafinil can be purchased legally from just about anywhere (Amazon has a few listings).

Adrafinil has side effects on one's liver. It would be wise to do at least some cursory reading on it before taking this advice.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#259
post #61
post #42

I am open to discussing this in raw detail - contact in my profile. Most programmers, scientists, people in finance and startups I know take a lot of stimulants. I take a lot of stimulants. [Edit - as others have pointed out, there's a strong selection bias going on here. I actively seek out people who I know take stimulants, and we naturally congregate socially based on a bunch of subtle and explicit cues that signa…

I lived in London for a few years to work in finance (top tier banks as well as hedge funds). I haven't met a single person who takes any sort of stimulants besides coffee. I'm a software engineer myself and your world seems very different from mine despite having worked in the same city. Your normality looks completely foreign to me.

You have, they just haven't told you about it and you haven't spotted it.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#260
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever feel like everyone around you is doing some substance to make them work faster or better, and that you'll somehow fall behind or be at a professional disadvantage if yo don't?

I felt that sense while I was down in the dumps after going cold turkey ... but now that I have more of a grasp on my life (married, dog, money in savings, living a healthy lifestyle, etc...) I no longer feel that way. I don't live in Silicon Valley any longer though... so that might be part of the reason I don't feel the pressure. Right now I might call myself a big fish in a little pond (not really, I am more humbl…

Good point. And I'm interested in knowing how being in SV, as opposed to outside that particular fish bowl, affects drug use
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