Can we email you?
Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
591–600 of 642 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#592I have to tell you, I've been in Silicon Valley for 23 years and I've never seen anything used at work besides caffeine and maybe a (company-sponsored) beer on Friday afternoon. Outside of work, I know tech employees who used pot, LSD, mushrooms, 2cb, and (in the late 90s especially) MDMA. None of these had significant impact on their work, although those who did MDMA every weekend seemed a little flaky to me, even y…
What kind of work do you do?
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#593Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree and absolutely intend to discuss that in the book, thank you. When you say "brain health" do you mean actual neurological changes taking place in the brain, or underlying mental health issues like depression and anxiety?
"When you say "brain health" do you mean actual neurological changes taking place in the brain, or underlying mental health issues like depression and anxiety?" I've been looking closely at this distinction between mind and brain for over a decade and I have to say the evidence is very thin as to nature vs. nurture wrt anxiety and depression. Moreover, ask any professed expert about the differences between chronic st…
I will reach out, thank you. This is very helpful. Your last paragraph describes Peter accurately. At some point, all the years of chronic stress, too little sleep, too many stimulants (even before IV drug abuse) changed him somehow. I'm not a doctor, but I knew him for almost 30 years and over the course of a decade or so something profound changed.
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#594Earlier quoted context omitted.
I completely agree and absolutely intend to discuss that in the book, thank you. When you say "brain health" do you mean actual neurological changes taking place in the brain, or underlying mental health issues like depression and anxiety?
"When you say "brain health" do you mean actual neurological changes taking place in the brain, or underlying mental health issues like depression and anxiety?" I've been looking closely at this distinction between mind and brain for over a decade and I have to say the evidence is very thin as to nature vs. nurture wrt anxiety and depression. Moreover, ask any professed expert about the differences between chronic st…
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#595Sales and cocaine. It's a very real problem. Or not, depending on your view of it.
I'm in Finance. Mortgage Broker.
Use of cocaine and adderall is rampant to keep going all day long, take calls, multi-task, and overall just operate at a very high level of efficiency.
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
> why would the brain evolve to benefit from a chemical it doesn't normally have? You could apply the same logic to Aspirin or any medicine - if reducing swelling was beneficial, why doesn't our body do it for us? That seems like a misunderstanding of evolution. It's not a master plan driving toward perfection. Our biology is a bag of traits, some of which were useful and some of which just haven't been selected out…
I think it applies to aspirin too. You thin your blood, reduce some swelling. You feel better. But maybe you don't heal as quickly. Instead of being immobile and allowing resources to gather at the wound we get back to our work. But our work is leisurely these days and we probably don't need to heal quickly. Perhaps if you are a runner and you take these seemingly benign medicines to reduce pain and swelling, you end…
Yes, thanks for this.
It's I suppose possible to hit a simple optimization evolution hasn't found yet, but that's rarer than people seem to think. The major examples we have are either things which evolution lacks the tools for (e.g. mechanical prosthetics) or major biological leaps (e.g. your antibiotic example).
The things that look quick and easy like "eat some willow bark extract" have tradeoffs, even when they aren't obvious. Taking 'painkillers' to the extreme - morphine - makes it especially obvious. It's generally a terrible idea unless you've recognized that there's a problem and gotten someone else to take care of keeping you healthy while you're out of commission.
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#597Earlier quoted context omitted.
It started out as a focus on drug abuse, but more than abuse or use, I'm trying to answer a question of why? If, for example, you don't abuse but just use psychoactive drugs in some way, regularly, why? Especially if you like your job or things seem pretty good in your life. I am not judging and don't know the answer. Maybe the query is too broad though, I guess I'm going into this open eyed and open minded and I'll…
One thing I don't like is that you seem to repeatedly be asking if people felt "pressured" to take drugs to catch up with their colleagues or what their "fear" is. If you want to know why, you should ask "why", and not push your own narrative with leading questions. I think a lot of people, including myself, would actually tell you that they take performance enhancing drugs simply to make themselves the best version…
Thanks for clarifying. I don't have conclusions yet, but I do have ideas and didn't think my questions were leading. So apologize if they seem so. If you don't feel "pressured"--overtly or subvertly--to take a substance but just do it because you think it would be fun, then that's the answer, right? And I'll learn from that.
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#598so, you can browse my comment history [0] for more detail, but here's the gist: - heroin addict for ~20 years, smoking and iv injecting, plus crack cocaine - senior software engineer at startup, contributing to open source and speaking at conferences and meetups - now trying to quit, using methadone replacement provided by uk national health service my work situation helped by very supportive boss who knows about my…
thanks, I'd like to email you to the address in your profile, ok?
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a no such thing as a free lunch theory, but for drugs There's some reason to believe this is literally true - and true in the same sense as the economic rule! In this context, it's been nicknamed the Algernon argument. Gwern (of course) has the canonical writeup.[1] The short version is: "if some chemical change could make us smarter, why wouldn't it already been in place?" Or, framed differently, "why would the br…
Could it be that one reason we use chemicals to "enhance" our brains is because we are living in ways we aren't intended to live? Human beings aren't made to sit in front of a screen for 16 hours a day. We probably shouldn't be as isolated as we can get, we shouldn't be living the way we live (in crowded cities, say, disconnected from family or community, doing one thing--coding, for example--for 10 hours at a time,…
Yes - this is one of Gwern's big points.
There shouldn't be any easy way to improve on what evolution tried to do, because evolution would have done it. But there can certainly be ways to optimize for things evolution didn't try to do, like preparing us to do symbolic logic for 40 hours a week or stay up well past dark. And there can be ways to optimize for goals evolution didn't/couldn't reward, like "never having kids and staying healthy until age 90".
I do think there's risk in blurring the moral point with the practical one, though. I'm not particularly evolved for reading books, but it's something I enjoy and I want 'hacks' to do it better - whether that's reading glasses or a cup of coffee. I don't like commuting while tired or being stationary for hours on end, and if I had free choice I'd stop doing those things instead of hacking myself to be better at them.
But in "enhancement" terms, they both count as "doing a thing I wasn't made to do" regardless of whether I want to keep doing them.
Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
#600I'm 34 years old, I've programmed professionally for 12 years, and I discovered adderall 4 years ago. The timing of this couldn't have been more perfect as that's also right when I landed a role as the sole/lead developer for a profitable internet SaaS company. A lot of work to be done and nothing but a wide open greenfield to start tearing through. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the effects that addera…
I'm going to reach out now, thanks.