4 ms·

What is the lesson to be learned? Is drug use correlated with high-performance? "People felt like they always wanted to: splendid, completely calm, clearheade

by andyl 11y ago

What is the lesson to be learned? Is drug use correlated with high-performance? "People felt like they always wanted to: splendid, completely calm, clearheaded; it was a golden feeling." That sounds good! I'd like that... All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Maybe I haven't seen the whole picture. Is there an upside to drug use? If there was a safe performance pill maybe I would try it.

arbitrage 11y ago
Very simply, drugs make you feel awesome. That's about all there is to it. The problem comes in when you want to maintain the level of awesome ... and can't. That's when the detrimental side effects hit. You can be quite a high functioning, normal member of society with a drug habit. As long as you can pay for it, and as long as it doesn't interfere in the aspects of your life you don't want it to, one can make a rational case for continuing drug use. Think about coffee. It's great. It makes you feel great. It's socially acceptable. It's also highly addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms can be nightmarish for some people. But it's not viewed as a bad drug.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  I'm not sure where the phrase / joke / saying came from, but "I only have a drug problem when I'm out of drugs" kind of fits in with your description.
DanBC 11y ago
> All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it. You won't have seen a lot of drug use. You'll only have seen the worse end of drug use. You have seen plenty of people who can have a few alcoholic drinks a week? That's drug use that doesn't end in wreckage and death, even though alcohol is very harmful and very addictive. (And physically addictive, not just psychologically addictive.)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gwern 11y ago
  > Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it. Indeed. As has been well known in the addiction literature for a long time now, the overwhelming majority of addicts just sort of... get over it. The addicts that show up more prominently are a very selected subgroup. To give an example that will doubtless be familiar to many HN commenters personally, modafinil is used more widespreadly than it is acknowledged; in the survey I'm running now, most respondents just use it practically with no drama or mess.
6stringmerc 11y ago
What it really gets down to is the individual's compsition in a variety of factors (physiology). Each drug has a 'profile' of how it acts, or at least we categorize them for understanding. Thus, no two people will react the same way to the same drug, and no two drugs will react the same way in the same person, in my experience. Thus, you get somebody like Willie Nelson who is essentially a life-long pot head where his drug use/abuse didn't get in the way of his work; Willie has also noted that Waylon Jennings was fond of speed, but that Willie didn't like the stuff. Going down the list of accomplished writers yields a treasure trove of alcoholics not frequently remembered for the wreckage they made of their lives (F. Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, Hemmingway). As a society in the US, the unfortunate moralistic approach to addiction as a personal failure rather than a physiological concern holds back those who could likely benefit from certain substances but never come into contact with them. Also of note, it would seem a certain percentage of the US population simply has an addictive compsition: http://cdn.thewire.com/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-v-addiction.gif http://cdn.thewire.com/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-v...
- andyl 11y ago
  The undertone I hear a lot is that drug use is beneficial, and would have positive effects on the population at large were it not for the outdated taboos of a backwards culture. If society was more rational and embraced drug use, then people could lead happier lives. The secret that people won't tell you (because of the taboos) is that drugs make you more successful in work and family life. If coffee is good then by extension amphetamines ought to be double-plus good. Heavily paraphrasing here - I guess this is mostly a personal observation. I am curious to understand if I should explore drug use - if so many high-performers are drug users then maybe I should give it a try.
  - prewett 11y ago
    Those undertones you hear are only giving you half the story: look at what happens to users. Cocaine was legal and used by the intelligentsia initially. Coca-Cola had cocaine; Sherlock Holmes took it to eliminate boredom. Prohibition in the U.S. was completely a moral-issue law, and was repealed a couple decades later. Cocaine is still illegal 100 years later. Why? Because society discovered that it doesn't turn out so well. These "high-performers" mentioned by the parent post, do you want to live the lives they did? O. Henry died when he was 47, in part due to liver cirrhosis. [1] F. Scott Fitzgerald died when he was 44, in large part because of his drinking. [2] Frankly "The Great Gatsby" feels kind of dingy and depressing, and I, personally, do not want to have the kind of experiences in my life that would enable me to write such a book. Hemingway had four marriages and ended up committing suicide. [3] All the people I know that have been through a divorce describe it as extremely painful; to do it three times must leave a huge emotional scar. Is that the kind of "happier lives" you want to lead? Is it really high-performing to die at 44? How much greater could they have been if they weren't depressed, addicted, and/or lived twice as long? Have you read about the kind of lives alcoholics and their families have, let alone addicts of heavier drugs? Do you like being out of control (because when you are addicted, the addiction controls you, not the other way around)? Be wise. Don't believe the lie that you would be free if only those taboos weren't holding you back. What if there is a very good reason those taboos are there? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway
learning_still 11y ago
I'm speaking out of my ass here: 1. What is the lesson to be learned? I believe that the lesson to be learned isn't that drug use makes you better or worse. It's that people of all walks of life abuse drugs. Even people who are very successful. Despite the immense power of drugs. It is still the person, not the drug that determiness a person's life. Aaron Sorkin is a crack head. He's starring in that new Steve Jobs film, but has also worked on such successes as West Wing and The Social Network. Does crack make you successful? No. 2. All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Maybe I haven't seen the whole picture. Drug use is rampant in the United States. It's just hidden or is not considered drug use because a prescription is involved. Remember how out in the open alcoholism used to be? (Think Mad Men. Or talk to a grandparent about how things used to be.) Alcoholism didn't just go away. People just started keeping it to themselves. 3. Is there an upside to drug use? If there was a safe performance pill maybe I would try it. Amephatimes, Speed, Aderall. All the same drug. All abused across the country by college kids. I really don't know what the long term dangers of amphetamines are. Not only college kids are abusing them, that's just where it's most obvious. People use them as smart pills. They apparently allow you to focus on working and studying for hours. In closing, I think being smart and talented can also come with sadness and other mental issues. Sometimes drug use is a way for talented people to self-medicate. The talent and potential is still there. It's comes down to the individual whether drug use will inhibit them from their goals.
Mz 11y ago
I will suggest you are suffering from some kind of prejudice or bias. Doctors prescribe drugs all the time for beneficial purposes. Caffeine, found in chocolate, coffee, and sodas, is also a drug. Mos spices have medicibal uses. Etc. Many drugs have an impact on your mental state. I personally suspect that if someone has an addiction they cannot break, there is probably some underlying problem fueling it, possibly a physical health issue. So saying drug use is associated with wreckage and death....cancer leads to drug use and wreckage and death. But sometimes, cancer leads to drug use that averts death, though at a cost.
duaneb 11y ago
You don't notice the drug users who are well functioning. There are a lot of factors that feed into addiction and even more into how it affects your life. Drugs definitely have their role in the world. People are prescribed amphetamines daily to function better. However, as with anything that changes how you perceive the world, there are always new chances to hurt yourself. My best advice is not to view drugs as an end themselves, but a means to reach a mental state. The "safe performance pill" is called adderall. I would not call it very relaxing, though, or calming; it merely makes reward feedback much, much stronger. Alternatively, there is acid, which is its own thing. Do your research heavily with that, but I experience it as very relaxing and clarifying. It is also extremely hard to abuse in a way that would cause "wreckage and death".

by andyl 11y ago

arbitrage 11y ago

Very simply, drugs make you feel awesome. That's about all there is to it. The problem comes in when you want to maintain the level of awesome ... and can't. That's when the detrimental side effects hit. You can be quite a high functioning, normal member of society with a drug habit. As long as you can pay for it, and as long as it doesn't interfere in the aspects of your life you don't want it to, one can make a rational case for continuing drug use. Think about coffee. It's great. It makes you feel great. It's socially acceptable. It's also highly addictive, and the withdrawal symptoms can be nightmarish for some people. But it's not viewed as a bad drug.

6stringmerc 11y ago
I'm not sure where the phrase / joke / saying came from, but "I only have a drug problem when I'm out of drugs" kind of fits in with your description.

DanBC 11y ago

> All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it. You won't have seen a lot of drug use. You'll only have seen the worse end of drug use. You have seen plenty of people who can have a few alcoholic drinks a week? That's drug use that doesn't end in wreckage and death, even though alcohol is very harmful and very addictive. (And physically addictive, not just psychologically addictive.)

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gwern 11y ago
> Drug use is illegal and is taboo. Many people who take drugs are not going to talk to you about it. Indeed. As has been well known in the addiction literature for a long time now, the overwhelming majority of addicts just sort of... get over it. The addicts that show up more prominently are a very selected subgroup. To give an example that will doubtless be familiar to many HN commenters personally, modafinil is used more widespreadly than it is acknowledged; in the survey I'm running now, most respondents just use it practically with no drama or mess.

6stringmerc 11y ago

What it really gets down to is the individual's compsition in a variety of factors (physiology). Each drug has a 'profile' of how it acts, or at least we categorize them for understanding. Thus, no two people will react the same way to the same drug, and no two drugs will react the same way in the same person, in my experience. Thus, you get somebody like Willie Nelson who is essentially a life-long pot head where his drug use/abuse didn't get in the way of his work; Willie has also noted that Waylon Jennings was fond of speed, but that Willie didn't like the stuff. Going down the list of accomplished writers yields a treasure trove of alcoholics not frequently remembered for the wreckage they made of their lives (F. Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, Hemmingway). As a society in the US, the unfortunate moralistic approach to addiction as a personal failure rather than a physiological concern holds back those who could likely benefit from certain substances but never come into contact with them. Also of note, it would seem a certain percentage of the US population simply has an addictive compsition: http://cdn.thewire.com/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-v-addiction.gif http://cdn.thewire.com/img/upload/2012/10/12/drug-spending-v...

andyl 11y ago
The undertone I hear a lot is that drug use is beneficial, and would have positive effects on the population at large were it not for the outdated taboos of a backwards culture. If society was more rational and embraced drug use, then people could lead happier lives. The secret that people won't tell you (because of the taboos) is that drugs make you more successful in work and family life. If coffee is good then by extension amphetamines ought to be double-plus good. Heavily paraphrasing here - I guess this is mostly a personal observation. I am curious to understand if I should explore drug use - if so many high-performers are drug users then maybe I should give it a try.
- prewett 11y ago
  Those undertones you hear are only giving you half the story: look at what happens to users. Cocaine was legal and used by the intelligentsia initially. Coca-Cola had cocaine; Sherlock Holmes took it to eliminate boredom. Prohibition in the U.S. was completely a moral-issue law, and was repealed a couple decades later. Cocaine is still illegal 100 years later. Why? Because society discovered that it doesn't turn out so well. These "high-performers" mentioned by the parent post, do you want to live the lives they did? O. Henry died when he was 47, in part due to liver cirrhosis. [1] F. Scott Fitzgerald died when he was 44, in large part because of his drinking. [2] Frankly "The Great Gatsby" feels kind of dingy and depressing, and I, personally, do not want to have the kind of experiences in my life that would enable me to write such a book. Hemingway had four marriages and ended up committing suicide. [3] All the people I know that have been through a divorce describe it as extremely painful; to do it three times must leave a huge emotional scar. Is that the kind of "happier lives" you want to lead? Is it really high-performing to die at 44? How much greater could they have been if they weren't depressed, addicted, and/or lived twice as long? Have you read about the kind of lives alcoholics and their families have, let alone addicts of heavier drugs? Do you like being out of control (because when you are addicted, the addiction controls you, not the other way around)? Be wise. Don't believe the lie that you would be free if only those taboos weren't holding you back. What if there is a very good reason those taboos are there? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway

learning_still 11y ago

I'm speaking out of my ass here: 1. What is the lesson to be learned? I believe that the lesson to be learned isn't that drug use makes you better or worse. It's that people of all walks of life abuse drugs. Even people who are very successful. Despite the immense power of drugs. It is still the person, not the drug that determiness a person's life. Aaron Sorkin is a crack head. He's starring in that new Steve Jobs film, but has also worked on such successes as West Wing and The Social Network. Does crack make you successful? No. 2. All I've seen in drug users is wreckage and death. Maybe I haven't seen the whole picture. Drug use is rampant in the United States. It's just hidden or is not considered drug use because a prescription is involved. Remember how out in the open alcoholism used to be? (Think Mad Men. Or talk to a grandparent about how things used to be.) Alcoholism didn't just go away. People just started keeping it to themselves. 3. Is there an upside to drug use? If there was a safe performance pill maybe I would try it. Amephatimes, Speed, Aderall. All the same drug. All abused across the country by college kids. I really don't know what the long term dangers of amphetamines are. Not only college kids are abusing them, that's just where it's most obvious. People use them as smart pills. They apparently allow you to focus on working and studying for hours. In closing, I think being smart and talented can also come with sadness and other mental issues. Sometimes drug use is a way for talented people to self-medicate. The talent and potential is still there. It's comes down to the individual whether drug use will inhibit them from their goals.

Mz 11y ago

I will suggest you are suffering from some kind of prejudice or bias. Doctors prescribe drugs all the time for beneficial purposes. Caffeine, found in chocolate, coffee, and sodas, is also a drug. Mos spices have medicibal uses. Etc. Many drugs have an impact on your mental state. I personally suspect that if someone has an addiction they cannot break, there is probably some underlying problem fueling it, possibly a physical health issue. So saying drug use is associated with wreckage and death....cancer leads to drug use and wreckage and death. But sometimes, cancer leads to drug use that averts death, though at a cost.

duaneb 11y ago

You don't notice the drug users who are well functioning. There are a lot of factors that feed into addiction and even more into how it affects your life. Drugs definitely have their role in the world. People are prescribed amphetamines daily to function better. However, as with anything that changes how you perceive the world, there are always new chances to hurt yourself. My best advice is not to view drugs as an end themselves, but a means to reach a mental state. The "safe performance pill" is called adderall. I would not call it very relaxing, though, or calming; it merely makes reward feedback much, much stronger. Alternatively, there is acid, which is its own thing. Do your research heavily with that, but I experience it as very relaxing and clarifying. It is also extremely hard to abuse in a way that would cause "wreckage and death".