Is there evidence that drugs can help programmers produce “better” code?

Glass of wine, relaxes my body which let's me think more and worry less about my comfort.

Nicotine resets my brain after solving hard problems. E-cigarettes are a nice healthier option.

Marijuana is great for sitting down with pen and paper to draw out large concepts or designs.

Coffee is just like Ritalin, just weaker and you don't get the stimulated euphoria.

I find working is impossible unless I have a goal. Psychedelics have let me see life in a different light and feel more at ease with my life plan which in turn makes work easier.

For that matter, it's not the best code that makes a good product. A good code is just part of it.

I can't answer about helping with coding.

  His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning
  coffee into theorems", and Erdos drank copious quantities. After 1971 he also
  took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham)
  bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdos won the
  bet, but complained that during his abstinence mathematics had been set back by
  a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled
  with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he
  promptly resumed his amphetamine use.

I need a certain amount of confidence to go after a difficult chunk of work that may not really lead anywhere or may turn out to be too big a task to accomplish in the available time.

I need a certain amount of creativity to come up with new avenues to try when I'm stuck on a problem or starting to brainstorm a new project.

And I need a certain amount of concentration to power through a hard coding task (both to tune out distractions and to keep a lot of information in short-term memory).

I have zero experience with hallucinogens, but my understanding is that they can help immensely with creativity but are really lousy for concentration (anyone care to chime in?).

Straight depressants don't really help me with any of the above, although I gather some people get more confident after drinking. I tend to go straight from "pleasantly unwound" to "I really need to get to sleep".

My experience with (legally prescribed) stimulants is that they're really pretty great for confidence and concentration. I also find that being slightly behind on sleep is less of an impediment to coding, and when I get into social settings I'm much more engaged and generally better at interacting with people.

The flip side is that I often can't sleep well, and I can rarely nap, so if I get too far behind I end up clicking around the web like a zombie all day. Paradoxically I'm a lot less interested in socializing, even while I'm better at it. All told I would say it's neutral to negative on creativity.

I'm also not totally comfortable with what effect five, ten, or twenty years of daily use will have, and part of me really wants to maximize the portion of my life spent without taking a pill every day. So it's a mixed bag.