31–40 of 642 posts
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This looks like it might be your personal email. Consider protecting yourself by making a temporary email for the purposes of your research such as booktitle@gmail.com.
Journalists tend to want people to be able to contact them. The spam etc. is just the cost of doing business.
A lot of people experiment with various psychedelic drugs for the psychedelic purposes. Marijuana is pretty much normal. LSD is sometimes used in the form of microdosing that produces no psychedelic effects and should improve focus and creative thinking. And of course coffee and alcohol are abused hugely.
Yes, I've been reading about psychedelics. But that seems to be more to spark creativity (and there also appears to be some actual therapeutic benefits to it). Whereas opioids or stimulants seem to be used for different purposes.
Modafinil is a hot topic these days
As a counterpoint: I've been a developer 10 years. I've worked at a few established businesses, two startups (one U.S. based and one German), and two consultancies. I worked in-person in Charlotte, N.C. and remotely since then. I've never worked in Silicon Valley.
One employer had a "play hard" culture, encouraging alcohol (ab)use outside of work. I didn't stay there long.
Perhaps I've self-selected based on my values (I don't work overtime), but I've never heard drug use condoned in any of those places, or at conferences I've attended. And I've often heard overwork spoken of as counter-productive and exploitative, as a thing that wise coders avoid.
I was not aware that "drug use as a programming aid" existed in the industry, though, human nature being what it is, I'm not shocked.
Just a caution that this shouldn't be portrayed as if it's ubiquitous without statistical evidence of that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This looks like it might be your personal email. Consider protecting yourself by making a temporary email for the purposes of your research such as booktitle@gmail.com.
Or better, consider protecting those offering their experiences as well by using an encrypted email provider like protonmail, or offering a GPG key.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I've been reading about psychedelics. But that seems to be more to spark creativity (and there also appears to be some actual therapeutic benefits to it). Whereas opioids or stimulants seem to be used for different purposes.
Sure. LSD is very special because it actually helps to focus more as well as increases creativity (if we're talking about microdosing). Stimulants and opioids are not really that common. High quality cocaine can be seen but it's not really "normal" like the other drugs are. Meth, crack and heroin are hugely frowned upon, it's a failure to be a user of these. MDMA and LSD have very different effect based on dosage. It…
Don't forget the alcohol!
What about other kinds off addictions like porn?
Modafinil is a hot topic these days
Yup. I used adrafinil(prodrug of modafinil) regularly during university and found it particularly useful in my programming classes. It helped me get "in the zone" while avoiding the euphoria, BP issues, and recovery periods/withdrawals that stronger stuff does. Plus it doesn't show up in most drug tests.
Adderall and Cocaine. I remember a CEO of one of my early startups would give me 5mg addies to help me get more done. I appreciated it because it was great to get the added boost to focus. I eventually worked my way up to taking 30mg of XR daily (legally, doctor prescribed) and it was the most productive I have ever been in my life. I worked 24x7. I was working a normal consulting job while also working on a startup/…
There was a story on HN with people trying to microdose on LSD, and the alleged benefits - long story short, when they asked peers about their performance, they noticed they're more distracted and not more productive, while those doing the microdosing thought they're on a super productive trip.
We notice this manager is in a constant state of "brain fog" to a point where his speech changed (like he's drunk), while I'm pretty sure he thinks he's a 10x machine and wouldn't be able to pull all of his workload off without drugs.
You get more sick days, you need more time to recharge, while thinking you're on your absolute productivity peak. And when you crash, you're basically unemployable / unproductive for 6 months to 1 year.
Not worth it IMHO.
Gwern Branwen is also quite open to talking publicly [2] about his experiences ordering things like modafinil without a prescription.
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mor... discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16033574