The pressure to maintain a lifestyle that you perceive to make you whole is an interesting one. My career started in the film industry and the long days, emotio

The pressure to maintain a lifestyle that you perceive to make you whole is an interesting one. My career started in the film industry and the long days, emotional personalities and industry norm resulted in abusing blow, while I don't think it ever got totally out of control in my life, I did go through a year of using it every day, and some days all day. Of course, it's a cycle. You use it to live that life, you make money living that life, you spend money using things to live the life, you have to live that life harder. I switched back into tech in my mid 20s, and eventually ended up relatively senior in a quickly growing startup. After about a year I started to use adderall more and more and more to keep up and feel more focused and more like the engineering minded folks around me. I'm thankful that eventually my boss (our ceo) pulled me aside and told me he felt that I was using adderall and booze in an unhealthy way and he wanted me to stop. However, the next thing he said to me is actually what made me stop. He said we really love you the way you are without drugs, we really love John as he is. Whoah, that was like a slap in the face. I'm really grateful for that as I'm sure I could have ended up down some pretty crazy rabbit hole. I suspect more bosses could do with being like this.