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

I can't believe so many people here think none of their colleagues use stimulants. If you don't think they do, and you work somewhere that attracts young competitive people, it's just because nobody told you. I know plenty of people that take them every day and a smaller group of people that take them as-needed (if they need/want to do a marathon-session of coding). I don't know anybody that abuses them, in the sense that they use them to stay up for more than an all-nighter or who takes unreasonably high doses

I'm both surprised and not surprised that so many people aren't aware of this. There is a definitely a self-selection effect in that I would guess that certain demographics (e.g. government contractors in Alabama) have wildly different cultures compared to SV. Drug users are also very good at knowing who does and doesn't take drugs (or at least who would be non-judgmental about them). In part that's because everybody's run into that mormon/teetotal developer or two who would think you're the devil incarnate if he even knew how much you drank, let alone did anything else. And even for well-meaning people who don't abuse drugs, I think they may not know about it simply because their friends and colleagues don't want to implicitly pressure them into it or to normalize it for them.

they're more like an energy loan, and you better believe there's interest.

Let me clue you in on something: Your bias is showing, and while I'm sure it comes from a serious place of care, concern, and pain, it's offensively reductive.

As in I already hate your book for supposing substances used or abused is a problem. Life is a monumental series of problems and our species has adapted for thousands of years. Unless your book is 90% about alcohol then it's starting from a premise of Puritanism that will not sit well with probably a large swath of your intended audience. They will - and research will - shred it without mercy, and rightfully so.

How we treat our bodies and lives as individuals is incredibly diverse. I would submit switching out "drugs" with "Religion of Choice" and see how interested people are in joining your perspective.

I've been medicated by necessity for my entire life and not by my choice. I choose to identify any and all substances I take as medication now, and I will admit that I'd call my lifestyle inherently addicted to modern medicine. I would not be here without a wide swath of legal and stigmatized substances, from basic stuff like tobacco over the years, to more exotic compounds like designer steroids or other mind-bending, reality questioning opportunities throughout the years.

I guess what it really boils down to, in my case and - I don't want to infer here, but it's hard not to with my 20 plus years of adulthood - is that it's none of your business what I put into my body whether it's between me and a dealer or doctor, and I have a gut feeling Peter maybe felt a similar sense of privacy and shame.

You know, because people like to publicly shame drug addicts and throw them in jail in the US on the regular, and unless your book has a roadmap to fix this terrible misunderstanding of human nature and lack of compassion, well, it's part of the problem a lot of society refuses to recognize, accommodate, and adapt our lifestyles to understand and address. I think Ozzy Osbourne said it best: "Sobriety sucks"

This conversation reminds me a little of the Vernor Vinge novel A Deepness In The Sky where the antagonists subjugate their conquered/enslaved foes with chemically-induced “focus” in order to improve their productivity/output. Explored is how this arrangement is not unambiguously good for the employer nor unambiguously bad for the “employee”.

Does that make you feel you should be using something too?