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

disclaimer, I have a long history of drug and alcohol use pre-serious coding, so it wasn’t coding that got me started but it got me off everything but stimulants.

I was going for school for something other than computer science and saw it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Thusly I turned to adderall and research chemicals to increase my focus and productivity learning to code. I worked all day and night, 7 days a week.

For coding, it worked wonderfully. I was able to learn a tremendous amount in a short time and it opened up many opportunities. However it wreaked havoc on my personal relationships. I didn’t have any friends, I just worked. I became a jerk to my then girlfriend.

My work outside of work and heavy use of stimulants came to a holt when we broke up which led to excessive drug use of all sorts of things from disassocatives to opiates. Eventually I started microdosing LSD and got over it, got back to work.

After college it was hard to find adderall and my research stims of choice weren’t available so I started using cocaine which often tested positive for amphetamines.

I wasn’t using for my day job, I was using on the weekends to have 24 hour coding marathons for side projects + prepping for a new job. Using cocaine was cool for awhile but it led to chronic sinus problems and after a couple months it became more about using all weekend than getting work done. I quit using when I noticed strong urges when I got home on, say, a Tuesday night.

Now I have a prescription for adderall and I take it responsibly. It helps me focus at work and usually take a day off on the weekend or at the least, take a half dose. A couple of weeks ago I didn’t take it at work because I was planning on taking it after to work on side project.

Interestingly enough, I had a hellish day wherein I didn’t get much done and just watched the clock until the end of the day. I was very depressed that night. I felt so bad I didn’t wind up taking it. Instead I laid around and watched TV.

I don’t have any plan to get off of adderall but I find the random drug testing pesky because I like to smoke marijuana to unwind but if I get caught, I get discharged.

Perhaps if you are a runner and you take these seemingly benign medicines to reduce pain and swelling, you end up causing more permanent damage by continuing to run when you should not (I have experienced this).

I think a lot of medicines work by turning off or on processes that are important but inconvenient at the time. Painkillers are probably the best example. We shouldn't take them when we are healthy, it would be dangerous. Other medicines, such as antibiotics, work by killing pathogens directly and don't affect our bodies like the drugs in this discussion.

I've come to learn that there a few different kinds of drug users.

The first are the users who have not yet had to face the reality of drugs or how drugs affect them personally, even if they are suffering consequences from use. The mental gymnastics at play serve to protect and prolong drug use. I see this all the time with white-collar and middle-class users. They may have to take drugs to function, will crash, lose sleep, have mood swings and resultant relationship problems, but it all gets rationalized away because they have a job and aren't homeless yet.

You'll see things like projection, minimization, rationalization, denial, shifting blame and intellectualization used to defend, deflect and justify drug use.

Another type stays rational about drugs, despite how easy it is to let the honeymoon period trick them into believing that there are only positives and no downsides. They don't tend to lean on the psychological defenses mentioned above. They also tend not to abuse drugs chronically or end up dependent.

The final type, if they haven't died, has been kicked in the ass by drug use and was forced to be brutally honest about it. They might still use, but they know they have a problem, or they might be sober.

If you see a person talking about drug use as if there are no downsides, only positives, you are probably witnessing someone who belongs to the first camp.