A Survey of Programmers' Cannabis Usage, Perception, and Motivation

I hear people talk about it like it's a miracle drug for pain management, but for me it makes pain worse. I spend the entire time focused on every pain in my body.

I knew a guy who concentrated on problems and coded better when he was stoned. Another who was an amazing chess player and had to smoke before he could play. Others who mixed records and played music while high and it enhanced their abilities. I tried to DJ techno once while high and it was a horrible trainwreck, and I can't focus more than 30 seconds at a time. I wrote a paper in university while high and it was the worst crap I ever wrote. Others swear by it.

Many of my friends were super social and enjoyed going out and doing things. It always made me paranoid, overly self-critical, and I spent the whole time taking myself apart and feeling sad.

So I didn't smoke it for almost 20 years. I tried it again recently now that it's legal here. Basically the same experience, even with "low THC, high CBD" strains.

It really comes down to YMMV. And yes, I saw many people with the same experience as you, including a close relative. Unproductive, unmotivated, and low concentration, and chronic.

I've fortunately only had a few of my friends succumb to addictions, but it was surreal to watch them remain convinced that the drugs (including alcohol) were actually helping their performance, relationships, and productivity while everyone around them could clearly see that the opposite was happening.

One of the most striking examples is benzodiazepine abuse. Benzos famously mislead users into a false sense of sobriety even when they may be so inebriated that they struggle to accomplish basic tasks.

Within the tech scene, I've also noticed this with LSD microdosing. The few people I know who (openly) tried it were convinced they were smarter and more productive while microdosing, but it was objectively clear to everyone else that they were thinking more slowly, generally more confused, making more mistakes, and so on. The difference is that the drug convinced them that everything they accomplished was a wonderful achievement that made them happy, which led them to perceptions that they were accomplishing more on those days.

I see similar trends in acquaintances with excessive marijuana habits: A general belief that the drug is helping them do more of the things they want to do, but they're clearly doing very little on the days they smoke. Obvious from the outside, hard to see from the inside when your perceptions are being bent to extremes.

Also puts me in a really bad mood the next day - short tempered, even aggressive.

On rare occasions it does help with brainstorming, looking at things differently. But mostly it's good for forgetting about your day and just going to bed.