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Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

• Myrmornis 9y ago
  SF Bay Area: Are you worried that it’s a bit tone deaf to be writing a book on drug use among well-paid programmers and other tech sector workers when they are living among a sea of homeless people living in squalor under bridges with high levels of heroin and alcohol abuse and mental illness?
  • burner890 9y ago
    Much like what we have seen with the opioid epidemic I suspect that people will pay more attention to stories about well-educated, affluent (read white) members of the upper middle class suffering from drug abuse. If the end result is more humane drug policy and enforcement then maybe it's a good thing?
• tjansen 9y ago
  Wow, this discussion is mindblowing. Working in software dev for 20 years, in Germany, and I have never seen any developer taking any stimulants. But maybe this is because only my first job was at a young startup, and I quickly learned that working 24/7 just isn't for me and I need a more stable environment. Today, the way whalesalad and others describe the effect of Adderall sounds interesting to me, but I would never take the risk. I want to see my kids grow up, and I certainly wouldn't give this up just to be able to work more hours...
  • donquichotte 9y ago
    I feel completely the same! I have been working in electrical engineering in Zurich, and I've never seen or heard anyone use anything other than caffeine during and alcohol after work. Now I wonder whether I'm just naive or there is a massive cultural divide between Silicon Valley and Central Europe w.r.t. stimulants.
    • harryf 9y ago
      Meanwhile cocaine usage in Zürich is one of the highest in Europe ( https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/drug-capitals_zurich-is-europe-s-third-biggest-cocaine-hot-spot/42760246 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/drug-capitals_zurich-is-europe-... ) which boggles my mind - I assume this is the finance industry
      • s3nnyy 9y ago
        Not only that but Zurich has been a drug hotspot in the 80s; we had cocaine, heroine, and, we believe, we found out how to fight it: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-02-12/us-can-learn-lot-zurich-about-how-fight-its-heroin-crisis https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-02-12/us-can-learn-lot-zuri... Now it changed for the better but still the drug scene is relatively big and cocaine is used a lot both by youngsters 18-25 yrs olds and probably also by bankers.
        • tsme1 9y ago
          I agree. You really feel how people in Zurich (in social settings) are more tolerant towards drugs than in most other European cities. It's almost like Amsterdam.
• setheron 9y ago
  Perhaps an email to send you stories anonymously would be good.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    please send to zimmermaneilene@gmail.com.
• setheron 9y ago
  Perhaps an email to send stuff anonymously would be good.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    of course. please send to zimmermaneilene@gmail.com.
    • jamisonbryant 9y ago
      This looks like it might be your personal email. Consider protecting yourself by making a temporary email for the purposes of your research such as booktitle@gmail.com.
      • untog 9y ago
        Journalists tend to want people to be able to contact them. The spam etc. is just the cost of doing business.
        • Eilene 9y ago
          completely true.
      • kakarot 9y ago
        Or better, consider protecting those offering their experiences as well by using an encrypted email provider like protonmail, or offering a GPG key.
        • Eilene 9y ago
          I don't know what those are, I'm sorry. I'm not in the industry (software engineering/tech) so am not familiar with those (though I know they exist). Is it something I can do in the next hour?
          • joshfraser 9y ago
• whalesalad 9y ago
  Adderall and Cocaine. I remember a CEO of one of my early startups would give me 5mg addies to help me get more done. I appreciated it because it was great to get the added boost to focus. I eventually worked my way up to taking 30mg of XR daily (legally, doctor prescribed) and it was the most productive I have ever been in my life. I worked 24x7. I was working a normal consulting job while also working on a startup/app in my spare time. I did ui/ux/frontend/backend/api development and sent cash overseas for an iOS developer that I managed. None of this would have been possible without stimulants. It's only way to do some of the things that the really successful engineers are doing. You forgo eating, exercise, etc... and spend 110% of your time on working and chasing the high of getting shit done. It's not sustainable though. I eventually went cold turkey. I do NOT recommend that as it will completely ruin your life for 6 months to a year. I was not productive, I gained tons of weight, my self-confidence went to shit. My life really went into a downward spiral. Now I am 100% drug-free and am not at the same level I was back then, but I am very productive and focused. I would not go back to where I was, even for the productivity gains. I eat clean (low-carb, ketogenic), weightlift in my basement, row 5k/10k every few days for cardio. My only vice is really coffee and the low-carb cocktails on weekends. Best of all, I do not wake up in the morning needing a tiny pill full of amphetamine salts.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Any chance you can explain why? Not enough hours in the day kind of thing? Is the only route to success in software engineering to work 24/7?
    • whalesalad 9y ago
      I think a human being is really only capable of like 6 hours of solid mental work throughout the day. And even that is tough, with all the distractions of modern life. When you take something like Adderall, that doubles to, say 12 hours and enables you to get hyper-focused on the task at hand. Sure, you can still get hyper-focused on the wrong thing, but if you can reign that in you're golden. Not only that, the amount of things you accomplish in that time span is far greater. So it really does turn you into a 10x engineer. If you're already very strong, experienced, pragmatic, etc.. then the stimulants will truly make you feel invincible. So if you see a software engineer at a big company who is making 200k a year while simultaneously putting out dozens of open source projects a year, maintaining them, speaking at conferences, managing complex hobbies, etc... chances are that is due to a stimulant drug. I know very few people who are capable of that naturally.
• TomMarius 9y ago
  A lot of people experiment with various psychedelic drugs for the psychedelic purposes. Marijuana is pretty much normal. LSD is sometimes used in the form of microdosing that produces no psychedelic effects and should improve focus and creative thinking. And of course coffee and alcohol are abused hugely.
  • monocasa 9y ago
    And MDMA. I've heard a fellow engineer say, "it lets me enjoy being an extrovert."
    • TomMarius 9y ago
      Yeah, forgot to mention that one, very true.
    • Eilene 9y ago
      Can you work better on ecstasy though? Isn't that more a recreational thing than a productivity related thing?
      • ozzmotik 9y ago
        i find psychedelic experiences to be very beneficial to productive states if you wield them properly, and stimulants often do help with focus and efficiency when it comes to working, so, i could certainly see MDMA having some very beneficial neurological effects during the course of the experience.
        • vimcat 9y ago
          I’m perfectly agree with “Neurological” effects on MDMA.
    • vimcat 9y ago
      I found CandyFlipping - First LSD,4hours later Molly, is one of the best combination for coding. It gives you a very strong sense of color.
• anonyx69 9y ago
  Modafinil is a hot topic these days
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Peter said he thought he needed modafinil. Why is it a hot topic now? His thought way back was that it was everything he needed at the time--mood regular, stimulant.
    • Eilene 9y ago
      regulator, sorry.
    • oil7abibi 9y ago
      It said to have characteristics of a holy grail stimulant: increased performance without the crash or heavy tolerance build.
      • ShabbosGoy 9y ago
        That’s an odd assertion to make when the full pharmacodynamics and mechanism of action are unknown. Modafinil doesn’t increase your cognitive performance in the way that a substituted phenethylamine would. Focus and attention are certainly related to wakefulness, but wakefulness in and of itself doesn’t increase cognitive performance.
        • Eilene 9y ago
          Can you tell me what substituted phenethylamine is?
          • TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
            Substituted phenethylamines[1] are derivative compounds of phenethylamine. Many substituted phenethylamines are stimulants, while some are psychedelic too. Dopamine, epinephrine, amphetamine, pseudoephedrine, MDMA, and many others are considered to be substitued phenethylamines. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_phenethylamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substituted_phenethylamine
• ozzmotik 9y ago
  i may have a somewhat atypical story and experience to share with you as i was certainly a heavy user of mind altering substances during the period of the past where I was a white collar software engineer. ive sent you an email about it, hopefully we can discuss it there. but all that aside I am madly interested in the potential output of this project as it has strong relevance to my individual life path.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    I will be checking that email too, later today, and will respond. Thank you.
• temp987654 9y ago
  A lot of weed and alcohol. People more curious than that will try LSD, schrooms, DMT, cocaine, Exctacy and MDMA. And pretty much any other drug they come across, at least once, except opiates. Never met anyone in IT doing opiates as far as I know (could be wrong). That is my experience amongst colleagues under 40 in the IT industry. Doesn't differ much from the other industry I've been in. None of these people have been effected by their weekend sins much besides hungovers and a thinner wallet.
• nathan_long 9y ago
  Glad you're looking into this. As a counterpoint: I've been a developer 10 years. I've worked at a few established businesses, two startups (one U.S. based and one German), and two consultancies. I worked in-person in Charlotte, N.C. and remotely since then. I've never worked in Silicon Valley. One employer had a "play hard" culture, encouraging alcohol (ab)use outside of work. I didn't stay there long. Perhaps I've self-selected based on my values (I don't work overtime), but I've never heard drug use condoned in any of those places, or at conferences I've attended. And I've often heard overwork spoken of as counter-productive and exploitative, as a thing that wise coders avoid. I was not aware that "drug use as a programming aid" existed in the industry, though, human nature being what it is, I'm not shocked. Just a caution that this shouldn't be portrayed as if it's ubiquitous without statistical evidence of that.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Yes absolutely understand that. And I'm coming at this as someone trying to learn what the situation is--I don't have a preconceived notion of stimulant or amphetamine use as being pervasive. That's why I'm here--to learn. Thanks.
    • js2 9y ago
      I'd like to echo nathan_long's sentiments. I worked for a small startup in Atlanta from 97-2000, then another startup in Silicon Valley from 2000-2004 (yay dotcom boom -- I slept under my desk more than once). I relocated to NC in 2004 and continued to work for that company (from its newly acquired NC office) till it was acquired by HP. I remained at HP a couple years. In 2009, I joined another SV startup (my third I guess) and worked from home for that startup till it was acquired by Yahoo in 2013. I've been at Yahoo, now Oath/Verizon since. In all that time post-college, I've never used any form of drugs (besides occasional alcohol either outside of work or at a company party, beer bash Friday, etc), never felt any pressure to do so, and I've not been aware of drug use by colleagues with the exception of one person, but even that was hearsay to me. Some of the stories I read about SV, I wonder how I could be missing so much (see for example, "The Nudist on the Late Shift"). That said, I tend to keep to myself. For me, work is work, and play is play, and I'd rather not cross the lines. 46 y/o, highly compensated software developer, married, father of two, used marijuana recreationally in college (I have a funny federal security clearance story about that...), never used any other drugs besides one not so good evening with LSD. Long distance running is how I keep my head straight, besides getting enough sleep and a relatively good diet.
• kelukelugames 9y ago
  I know lots of people do pot. Don't forget the alcohol! What about other kinds off addictions like porn?
  • ponderatul 9y ago
    I wanted to mention this as well. Porn is the one that mostly gets away in these discussions. It kills motivation, enhances anxiety and depression over the long term. And these are just first order effects. It can easily affect your relationships, work and personal, and make you numb. It's something with limited upside, that feeling of ecstasy when orgasming which has been reported similar to that of heroine. But that is short lived. Other than that there are only downsides. OP If you're interested in the topic, I'm happy to go deeper into the subject.
• michaelt 9y ago
  Scott Alexander has written, in the past [1], about acting as a gatekeeper for people who want Adderall. Could be worth interviewing him? Gwern Branwen is also quite open to talking publicly [2] about his experiences ordering things like modafinil without a prescription. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mor... discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16033574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16033574 [2] https://www.gwern.net/Modafinil https://www.gwern.net/Modafinil
  • Eilene 9y ago
    appreciate this, thanks.
• TACIXAT 9y ago
  Probably not what you're looking for, but I've cut out anything remotely addicting in my life, including sugar and caffeine. I feel a lot of people in the software industry have the luxury of developing and improving themselves. Most people I work with exercise regularly. Alcohol can be regular in some offices, and people smoke weed, but I don't know anyone who I would consider an addict.
• Blahah 9y ago
  I am open to discussing this in raw detail - contact in my profile. Most programmers, scientists, people in finance and startups I know take a lot of stimulants. I take a lot of stimulants. [Edit - as others have pointed out, there's a strong selection bias going on here. I actively seek out people who I know take stimulants, and we naturally congregate socially based on a bunch of subtle and explicit cues that signal we are safe to talk to about this kind of thing. My experience is not a random sample - I'm just responding to the request in the OP] I have pretty severe ADD, so I take ritalin. Initially it was on prescription, but then I realised it was actually easier and cheaper to just get it from other sources. I was pretty productive before because I developed a bunch of working practices that mostly contained the ADD, but with ritalin... I feel superhuman. And to be honest I can output an order of magnitude more and better than most people when I'm up. I recently moved to Berlin, where everyone is up all the time. Like, I know people who founded or are working for hundreds of businesses. Everyone, every single person, is up all the time. Adderall, dexedrine, ritalin, plain old speed paste, cocaine, kratom, modafinil. LSD or MDMA microdosing. Everyone works best when they are up. Then on the flip side, xanax, zopiclone, diazepam help control the wiredness and allow you to sleep when you want. Everyone is doing this. I know it's the same in London and New York. If I have a good week, I generally will take perhaps 30mg Adderall IR a day, or 50mg Ritalin IR. If I need to brainstorm or deliver something with someone we order whatever (stimulants are delivered within 15-30 min by taxi here) and work through the night to get stuff done. This is normal. It's strange to me to see this being described as a problem because... it's not a problem. It is fairly low risk (compared to e.g. binge drinking) and it completely transforms your ability to work. It's so normal to me that I don't hide it from anyone and nobody ever complained. I meet random people, like undergraduate students from the USA who are visiting, and they are in exactly the same routine. Everyone works best with stimulants.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    I'll contact you directly, and appreciate your candor. Do you think it's a European vs. American thing? That we tend to demonize in some ways the need for substances to help us in some way, whereas in Berlin, for example, no one cares? And they've schooled themselves so that they know how to use it 'safely'--whatever that means? surely taking this stuff in the long term has some effect on the body (not sure if the effect is necessarily degrading in some way, but it must have an effect, at least on the liver...no?)
• neverminder 9y ago
  The way I see it there's mainly 2 types of drugs in this case: recreational and performance enhancing. For instance both cocaine and modafinil are drugs, but vastly different in terms of safety, addiction and last but not least - social stigma. If you want more information regarding performance enhancing substances, more specifically mind performance (very relevant in tech sector), I suggest you visit /r/nootropics.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Yes, realized that in the last 20 minutes, when I went to look up modafinil. Do you think that the use of performance related drugs and stimulants are far more prevalent in the under 40 set? Or under 30? than among those working in tech that are over 4o or 50?
    • neverminder 9y ago
      My guess is the younger the more familiar with stuff like modafinil. There's growing outrage that at least half of Oxbridge is on it and that it provides unfair advantage against "clean" students. It's also my understanding that in the valley especially where hours are long and nights short, modafinil is the go-to.
    • muzani 9y ago
      I've picked up nootropics at 30, mostly trying to catch up with younger, more energetic developers. Part of it was also because these resources weren't around when I was in college. Part of it is because those of us who have been working several years in a soul draining job often look for other ways to enjoy life and take some risk.
  • cwkoss 9y ago
    I recommend examine.com for finding science-backed information about nootropics and other supplements. Great resource.
• coleifer 9y ago
  Drop me an email, you can find it in my profile.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    I will do that. Forgive me, I'm new to HN. When I click on your handle, I don't see an email. Do I find it somewhere else?
    • Eilene 9y ago
      edit: found email info
      • unfunco 9y ago
        It's probably easier to provide your email or put it in your profile, many commenters might not want to associate their username with a public comment.
        • Eilene 9y ago
          thanks. Will do that now.
    • meredydd 9y ago
      The "email" field in your HN profile is not shown to other users. You need to put it in your "about" field if you want it to be public. Many people don't realise this. (The same is true for you, Eilene - your email address is hidden. If you want people to be able to email you, click your username in the top right of the page, and add it to your "about" section.)
    • coleifer 9y ago
      Didn't know it wasn't shown, I've added to the about section of my profile. Long history with dope, happy to share if it'll help you. edit: I'm a senior software engineer
      • 9y ago
• hprotagonist 9y ago
  In no particular order: the use of caffeine, alcohol, cannabis, adderall, and modafinil are absolutely rife in the academic research world. Postdocs and young faculty, in particular.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    For all the same reasons it's used in tech--to enhance productivity? are junior faculty and post docs overworked or are the hours required of them kind of insane too?
    • hprotagonist 9y ago
      Pretty much, yeah. Postdocs and junior faculty are generally worked to the bone for little money. Postdocs need to crank out papers that benefit the lab, but also advance their own career prospects; faculty need to do the same, as well as write grant applications, serve on prestigious committees in order to look good for tenure review, etc. There aren't enough hours in the day.
    • Hooke 9y ago
      I'm a junior academic, recently a postdoc, and I saw a little bit of ADHD stimulant use among peers, and the increasing popularity of modafanil. Basically just due to publication pressure; in my field assistant professors at a top flight university have to write not one but two peer reviewed books to get tenure. Others go in an orthogonal direction and get obsessed with intense exercise routines, also with the aim of increasing those ~six hours of usable cognitive time per day. MDMA and cannabis are both quite popular and talked about openly but I think that's more a general reflection of the culture in places like NYC and the Bay Area, where I have personal experience. Good luck with the book by the way. One word of warning: please try very hard to avoid falling into a simplistic narrative that will contribute to drug prohibition. Criminalization of drugs has, IMO, ruined far more lives than drugs themselves. A former Columbia colleague, Carl Hart, professor in the psych department, has written a lot on this and might be worthwhile as an interview subject for your book. Personally I think he sometimes pushes too far in the opposite direction, but he is nevertheless an important public voice speaking up against decades of scaremongering.
• tekromancr 9y ago
  Of the developers/tech folks I know it's mostly a weed/booze crowd. A few people that do party drugs. And a few people who occasionally do psychedelics. No one I know seems to have any outwardly visible issues with it. I do know one person who I am sure has problem with painkillers, but it's that scary blurry ground between "addict" and "chronic pain sufferer". I don't think it effects her work, but I wonder about their personal life. Also stimulants. I almost forgot to mention them because they are basically water in this industry. Almost everyone who isn't on some sort of health kick is using some combo of caffeine/amphetamine derivatives/coke/modalert/etc.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    do you just steer clear of those using stimulants of some sort (when you say those you know are mostly the booze/weed crowd). Is the reason it's 'basically water' in the tech industry only because of the hours needed? What's the fear--if you don't keep up, do you lose your job? Does your career flounder?
• agoodthrowaway 9y ago
  Haven't done anything myself other than smoke weed in the evenings. However at times I've wanted to give Adderal a try to get me through challenging times. When I was in college I used relatively high doses of pseudophedrine during exam times and found it helped me focus. I used it once during finals to stay up for 3 days. I aced those exams. Currently I am a high level IC at a major web company. The pressure and competition at this level is incredible. I only do this job and put up with the pressure because I need the money (long story) and am trying to put my family ahead. I do like what I do though but would scale myself back if I didn't need the money. When I get stretched too thin, I have trouble focusing. Adderal would be a way for me to focus when I'm running on fumes. It's not something I'd use daily but something during crunch times for sure. I've not done it because I haven't found a non-risky way to get it. I won't buy this kind of thing on the black market because I don't trust the product or the people. I'm not going to ask my doctor for it. But if I had a reliable way to get it, I'd have it.
  • Jefro118 9y ago
    Not necessarily endorsing stimulants but here is a good analysis of Modafinil suppliers: http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil#suppliers-prices http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil#suppliers-prices. It's worth reading the whole page from the start though if you're interested. Includes some comparison with Adderall too.
    • cweagans 9y ago
      Also consider Adrafinil. It metabolizes into Modafinil, but Adrafinil can be purchased legally from just about anywhere (Amazon has a few listings).
      • aspett 9y ago
        Adrafinil has side effects on one's liver. It would be wise to do at least some cursory reading on it before taking this advice.
• rootsudo 9y ago
  LSD, Ritalin (Daytrana is the best man), Terestrone...
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Do you use all of these? And why do you like Daytrana?
• beeskneecaps 9y ago
  I pass no judgement and just wanted to remind people reading through this that not all techies are doing drugs.
• thinkmore 9y ago
  The #1 and #2 drugs consumed by far in Silicon Valley are simply processed/refined sugars and caffeine. The former via foods of all kinds and sodas, snacks, and the later via coffee and sodas. These are far more dangerous drugs in this sense... even a small child can tell you cocaine is bad for you or that LSD is a “drug”, but no one considers soda and coffee to be drug laced. These are the real gateway drugs, by far. If Silicon Valley had decent espresso, no joke, there would be no demand for any of these stupid drugs people are messing with. But the espresso tastes like absolute poop. In the bay area you can market and sell poop drinks as artisinal or small batch or whatever. Its essentially poop. E.g. if you think blue bottle tastes good, I could sell you a cup of poop for $10 easy because you have been fooled. Back to seriousness, the real problem in all of this is failure to understand the real impacts of seamingly harmless things (processed sugars and caffeine) NOT obviously harmful substances. There must be a progression from the former to the latter. Who the fuck wakes up one morning and says: “shit, works been hard lately, id like to try a line of cocaine, i heard its really great for relaxation”. Wake up, it doesnt happen like that. Yes, i have conveniently left alcohol out of this ranking, but its #3. If you dont know how bad alcohol is for your brain and body... heh... The real story is the engineer drinking 8+ cups of black coffee or 10 sodas per day... not the coo ceo or vp doing marijuana or cocaine before work. The latter knows what theyre doing, they may be depressed but they know whats up. The former, probably not. And those seemingly safe substances kick off the dangerous ones.
  • projektir 9y ago
    I never really got the point of people referring to things other people eat or drink with terms like "poop".
    • FeteCommuniste 9y ago
      With coffee there is actually a link to poop in some cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak :-)
  • sedachv 9y ago
    > The real story is the engineer drinking 8+ cups of black coffee or 10 sodas per day... Very much agree. Compulsive consumption of sugary/caffeinated beverages is very much an eating disorder. People engage in this at work as a means of coping with stress. There are very harmful side-effects to this behavior: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/soft-drinks-and-disease/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/...
• rdl 9y ago
  I had a bunch of bay area tech friends all become meth addicts while I was out of the country (2001-2008?). It was self-reinforcing. I think a few people on the periphery died, and then eventually it stopped, although I'd drifted away by then. It was just weird seeing people who had used lots of other drugs without becoming addicts become addicts en-masse.
• vimcat 9y ago
  Stimulunts such as speed or ice, are not so good for me, It’s not for creative work also comedown is so hard. Acid and Molly are best.
• economics2008 9y ago
  I'm a New York-based finance professional (former investment banker turned private equity investor) with a background using a wide variety of drugs, but mostly heroin. Besides heavy drinking and rare cocaine use among younger peers (analysts), I didn't see a lot of substance abuse. I often felt quite alone, especially in using my drugs of choice. I started using heroin right after I graduated high school, and used it throughout undergrad, as it honestly helped me get better grades by quieting the turmoil in my mind. I experimented with suboxone and methadone after graduation, and was using a mix of methadone, Provigil (a stimulant, to counteract the drowsiness from the methadone), and alprazolam (to take the edge off the Provigil) when I started my first banking job in NY. I was let go for nodding off at work. At my next job, I started using heroin again after a brief period being drug-free, and started injecting. I had a short-lived job at another investment bank, where I injected heroin, cocaine, or a mix of both pretty much all day at work, even setting up a way to do it at my desk discreetly to avoid having to get up and go to the restroom so often. That job obviously did not last long. I used like that for a few months, got another job at a bank, and stopped those drugs, but continued to seek prescription painkillers sporadically, and drink to take the edge off. I managed to keep it together for that job, but my overall demeanor made it tough to really succeed. Before starting in private equity, I got sober (no controlled substances or alcohol anymore), and have been sober since mid-2012. It's been the biggest and best decision of my life. I used to think I was perhaps one of just a handful of finance professionals with as intense background in hard drugs, but I'm coming to see there are too many of us out there.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    wow, what an intense journey.
  • majos 9y ago
    Serious question, how did you obtain a series of banking jobs after previous employers noticed (fired you for?) your drug use? Do prospective employers overlook these things, or never check references?
    • mi100hael 9y ago
• logfromblammo 9y ago
  The only drugs I have observed personally are caffeine, nicotine, refined sugar, and ethanol. The only other drugs I have heard about or suspected are prescription drugs for diagnosed medical conditions, such as hypertension, pre-diabetes, and high cholesterol. But people around here would tend to keep even the legal drugs out of public knowledge, as that sort of thing may affect background checks and security clearances. Everyone in my workplace is very square. My office-neighbor uses a nicotine vape and prescription mood-stabilizing drugs, and doesn't have a clearance explicitly because of the latter. It would be nice to be able to get drunk or high a few times a year, but the career risk isn't worth it. I have worked exclusively in the Midwest and South. In general, people of those regions collectively have a rather low opinion of people who use drugs of any kind, legal or illegal, although the Southerners are a bit more hypocritical about it.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Does anyone else want to weigh in about geographical differences in the use of drugs or the perception of those who do? It's very interesting to me how different your experience is from those, say, in the Bay Area or in big coastal cities.
    • deadmetheny 9y ago
      As a Midwesterner, I can echo the sentiment that those who use illegal drugs are generally considered to be lowlifes or otherwise looked down upon by older folks, and some younger ones. Cannabis use is something of an exception - it's seen as acceptable by most of the younger crowd and more of the older folks are being convinced it's not dangerous as well. Legal drugs are a-ok. For tech specifically, in my experience there seems to be a higher-than-average number of smokers. Coffee and soda are drank as if they were water. That's about it.
      • logfromblammo 9y ago
        Soda? You must be from St. Louis.
• mabbo 9y ago
  I work in a major software corporation and have literally never seen or heard of drug use at the company, outside of non-work-related recreational drug use (and even that never ventured very far). Perhaps it's the stability of being at a fortune 100 company. Those who work here went through a pretty intense interview process. They're pretty good developers, which means if they were fired it wouldn't take them long to find a job. So why bother taking performance enhancing drugs? Of course, the coffee and sugar is readily available and free.
• woah 9y ago
  I would be careful of overestimating the amount of stimulant use based on comments and emails here. People who use a lot of stimulants tend to love talking about themselves and often have a belief that anyone successful must be taking stimulants secretly. It plays into the motivation of most stimulant users which is that the stimulants have given them a special cheat code in life. I worked in construction in my younger years and saw this kind of attitude from the occasional meth user on the jobsite. I'm seeing more coherent echoes of it in this thread. Another theme that pops up sometimes is someone who says that they used to take stimulants and they were super productive, but they don't anymore, but actually they still do.
  • coldtea 9y ago
    >People who use a lot of stimulants tend to love talking about themselves As opposed to people who don't?
    • vkou 9y ago
      I generally love talking about myself, but I don't love talking about how I had a glass of cab last night, and how I can't wait to get home and have another.
      • coldtea 9y ago
        No, but non-drug-using people also love to talk about their abstinence, teetotalism, vegetarianism, healthy lifestyle, Jesus, and so on...
  • lordofmoria 9y ago
    Logged in to upvote this. Birds of a feather flock together. I’ve personally never come across anyone who (admits) to using anything stronger than Redbull. In fact, we have some employees who don’t even drink coffee, opting for “natural” stimulants which come with less of a crash. Yerba Mate seems particularly popular these days. However, I may be in my own bubble; I’m very interested in seeing what you find!
• grubmatt 9y ago
  This is tangentially related but I attend a leading CS university which sends a lot of students into highly sought after tech, consulting, and investment banking jobs. Students here do every drug under the rainbow and they do them a lot. When I talk to students at other schools the problem doesn't seem to be anywhere near as widespread.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Does that make you think it's a problem in computer software more than other professions?
    • kazen44 9y ago
      I think (not OP btw) that it is more a problem of being in a highly competitive enviroment? These people are all trying to one up each other, which will eventually leads to finding substances to getting an edge over others? (otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place?)
• yanslookup 9y ago
  I work for a well known software company now and of the 20 or so developers I work with closely I can confidently say that 50% of them don't even drink alcohol (mostly cultural) and the other 45% stick to craft beers and 5% might smoke some pot here and there but nobody really lets on. I don't have any data but in my experience the most drug use and abuse has been in the sales org. My hunch it is a mix of personality type, environment and the way they are compensated (always a reason to party big) thing but they are best described as frat houses and make the tech side look like monasteries. And this isn't just small tech companies. Oracle, Salesforce, AWS etc.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    I assume you've see this sort of thing among those in sales are your company, yes? Is it coke or all kinds of things? And any idea why? Is sales particularly stressful or somehow more intense than the tech side of things?
    • outsidetheparty 9y ago
      As someone who's also seen this pattern: I'd say the type of personality that is good at sales just correlates strongly with the type of personality that enjoys cocaine. Stress level or intensity can be high or low (within limits) in either occupation.
• jdlyga 9y ago
  Programmer in NYC working at various companies for almost 10 years. Never seen any drug use, or even heard of any. People drink a lot of coffee and tea, but that's it.
• no_real_names 9y ago
  TL;DR: I've had issues with alcohol in the past, and am currently on prescription drugs to focus at work. I've bounced around a bit. After losing my job in '00 I started drinking pretty heavily. That was probably my worst period, and definitely in the abuse zone. I was able to pull myself out of it long enough to get work, which helped me keep out of trouble with it for a while. In '06 I was working in the banking sector in NYC. There was a pretty string drinking culture there. Never at work, but afterwards you'd head out to bars and have a half dozen beers, then maybe go to a whiskey bar. I'd stumble home at least one night per week. I had to do a lot of introspection about this and decide whether I wanted alcohol in my life at all. In the end I feel like my drinking was trying to avoid a shitty point in my life. If I hit a point like that again I stop drinking altogether (this has happened once since then, and it went well). But otherwise I don't really worry about it. I probably drink about twice/month, and usually only a drink or two when we go out for a nice dinner. These days I've been having focus issues. I've always been borderline ADD. After my son was diagnosed with ADHD he started on Methylphenidate (in the Ritalin family) and I saw a night and day difference. So I saw a psychopharmacologist and I'm taking 60 mg Vyvanse (in the Adderall family) most work days. I don't use it when I'm not working, and I never stack more than one. But there has been a lot of pressure to keep up with peers. I'm 38 years old and have two kids, working as a software engineer at Google, my team lead is 22, and the average age of the group is 23. I just can't match their work-life balance. The Vyvanse keeps me focused on my job, and my peers and manager have noticed and commented on the increased productivity. I've gone through periods when I smoked pot heavily to unwind from stressful work. These days I smoke extremely rarely. After dabbling in the alcohol addiction, I don't want to fall back in that, so I keep a pretty close eye on myself. My wife also feels comfortable telling me if she thinks there's a problem, so I feel supported by the people around me.
• halfnibble 9y ago
  I have found that the high tolerance for recreational activities throughout the workday has made software development easy to cope with. Stuck on algorithm? Go play some ping pong. Stressing about a bug? Pick up Dr. Mario or maybe some Ms. PacMan. However, since my brain is expected to be on full speed all the time, I do find myself drinking a lot of espresso. Around 8 shots per day. In this profession, we work weeks and often weekends to meet deadlines. I cannot imagine that software developers who abuse drugs could live through a typical software project. And I can't recall any professional developers who use drugs. Although I did know a graphic designer who I'm pretty sure did crack. Not 100% sure though.
• drosan 9y ago
  Hardly a drug, but I take a "cosmonaut pills", Phenylpiracetam, for years. No side effects for me (tho it varies from person to person as I saw), but compared to Adderal (which I'd gladly take but it is too much pain to obtain here) it is like kiddie vitamins.
• allochthon 9y ago
  Good luck with your book. I worked as a software developer for 6-7 years in San Francisco and Emeryville, CA, and never became aware of or suspected widespread drug/stimulant use apart from coffee (a beloved thing in my view). Alcohol was definitely something one saw consumed at startups. At the present time (now in Colorado, working with a remote team), a colleague of mine uses prescription medication to deal with ADD. Another is into the psychedelic drug scene and micro-doses LSD.
• hx2a 9y ago
  In the finance industry Adderall is very popular. I know someone who works as an in-house psychiatrist at a top-tier investment bank. Most of the employees that go to see her are looking for an Adderall prescription. I've known a few people who use cocaine. It is useful for the people who want to stay up late at the clubs and be able to work the next day.
  • mbid 9y ago
    And do they get the adderall prescription there? What does your friend's employer think about this?
    • hx2a 9y ago
      She doesn't give them the prescription. Sorry I should have mentioned that in my previous reply.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Do you use Adderall too?
    • hx2a 9y ago
      Nope! Not for me.
  • nradov 9y ago
    Wow the notion of having your own private Dr. Feelgood on staff just seems bizarre. It's a whole different world I guess.
    • hx2a 9y ago
      No, she doesn't. Happily her job is structured in such a way that she has full control over her job and decisions. The employees can get her fired for not giving them what they want.
• pnathan 9y ago
  A fair bit of marijuana in the Seattle tech scene. No particularly visible ill effects from what I can tell. I have the notion hallucinogens have been used, but no one admits current use (to me). I would expect the more far out tech scene to be more into hallucinogens than anything else. Cocaine, meth, & opioid use - no idea. Personally, I'd guess opioids are uncommon in tech: foggy heads don't fly. No one I know is admitting cocaine/meth to me. Of course coffee is extremely common, if it is even worth remarking on. And booze flows very freely. I don't get invited to exciting parties to meet the really odd people out of a professional setting - I go home to the wife & kid. And I work for a big boring company. So my sample is a little skew.
  • nullbites 9y ago
    Yeah, same in government contracting with the coffee and alcohol. Older guys all just drink (obscene amounts of) coffee and us young guys go out and drink and smoke. One thing I have seen quite a bit of in the Gov't contracting world is the smoking of all kinds of tobacco. I'm a pipe smoker but we have plenty of guys who enjoy regular and simi-regular cigar smoking. We also have a more cigarette smokers then I was used to seeing in the purely commercial sector. I don't know why this is. These are just some observations I have made.
  • walrus01 9y ago
    hallucinogens, sure. There is definitely overlap between the seattle area tech scene (more so people who live in Seattle proper, not people who live in Redmond/Kirkland/Issaquah and have a marriage, a mortgage, 2 kids and a minivan), with tech workers who are also regular Burning Man attendees. At least to the extent that if a curious person wanted to find a source of Psilocibe Cubenses mushrooms, they would know who to ask.
    • pnathan 9y ago
      I have a personal refusal to ever own a minivan, despite the wife, kid, and mortgage. :-) I just note that I go home to the family to indicate that I can't go to the evening events where more interesting people & discussions are.
• daddykotex 9y ago
  I'm working in a small/medium business in Montreal, Canada. I've been hear for almost 3 years and AFAIK no body here takes stimulant. Of course I might be wrong, but I know a lot of these people well enough to call them my friends and I have not see anyone taking stimulant nor overheard anyone talking about their consumption. You can contact me too, no problem.
• econner 9y ago
  You should look at Gwern's research on the topic: https://www.gwern.net/Nootropics https://www.gwern.net/Nootropics
  • Eilene 9y ago
    will do.
• oceanghost 9y ago
  Yes. This is something that needs to be discussed. Almost every engineer is using some kind of stim in the morning and sedative in the evening. This can be as benign as caffeine/alcohol, but I've seen this escalate to any one of: caffeine, Provigil, cocaine, (meth)amphetamines on the front end, and alcohol, THC, Xanax and even ketamine on the backend. It's the only way to deal with the abusive hours. We used to joke at a company I worked at-- that if you weren't an alcoholic, you would be in a couple of years. Bad companies, really bad ones are setup like this: you have to break the rules to get your job done. But some people are blessed by management and others aren't. X breaks the rules because he's a brilliant leader, Y breaks the rules because he's a worthless loser. We had a VP and PM doing coke, fucking each other (very illegal in California), abusing the staff with bizarre and drug-fuelled behavior, all of which was ignored and encouraged. I was fired for "writing a rude e-mail." :-) For a time, there was even a dealer in the buildings mail room. You put in an order, and in a couple of days, a DHL, FEDEX, etc. comes with your order. There's a very real human cost to this stuff. I've seen guys have a stroke in the office due to pressure. If there's any way I can help, let me know.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    I'd love to talk to you. Did this happen a long time ago, your experience(s)? or was this in the last 4 years? Also, to reiterate, do not need to use your name, etc. Don't even need to know it to speak to you.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • oceanghost 9y ago
      All recently. I assume the e-mail address listed in your e-mail is an appropriate contact point?
      • Eilene 9y ago
        yes, that's perfect. Thank you.
  • 9y ago
• err4nt 9y ago
  Here in Canada I've seen caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis in the office, all seem generally well tolerated. I have heard of people taking narcolepsy drugs for productivity, but that was just one person I knew and I have never really seen people taking, or talking about taking much else at work.
• jpzisme 9y ago
  I have a daily shot of espresso at the office at 8am. It tastes good and helps me focus. Sometimes there's a happy hour on Friday. I don't drink, but some of my coworkers do in moderation. I'm sure there is a drug/party/binge drinking culture in some companies in the Bay, but it's the mildest I've seen in any industry/geography so far.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    In your professional career, have you been in other industries and regions where it was far more prevalent?
    • jpzisme 9y ago
      I used to work in finance as a banker. It was more prevalent there. I'd say more so with those who were based out of NYC.
• typetehcodez 9y ago
  I drink coffee. Up to three cups a day when working over 12 hours. Beyond that? No. I have an occasional glass of red wine at night, but have little desire to ever try any other drug. I am curious about the effects of micro-dosing LSD for creative productivity, but would only ever consider that in a medical research setting - I am more curious about the results of such a study. I don't know anyone who used/uses illegal drugs in my profession, and I am in my 4th job as a developer. Be careful about the comments here; not everyone uses drugs and you have no idea about sample size and representation in these comments. I am sorry about your loss, and wish you the best in your research and hope it can help others in the future.
• sometimelydat 9y ago
  While working at a local Datacenter in Austin Texas(2016), I was introduced to and regularly used these performance enhancing drugs: ------------ Armodafinil Adderall 4-ACO-DMT ------------ Sleep is the foe that austinites try to vanquish; psychedelic interconnectivity its modus operandi. Community building is the endeavor of this weird little city of Austin, the future its dream.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Are you still working in the industry in Austin and do you still use this?
    • sometimelydat 9y ago
      I moved to Oahu Hawaii, I am no longer using. I decided to slow down and start relying on sleep. My extra ability became more of a problem for me in the work place than a blessing. The harder you work, the more that will be expected of you. It was a fun experiment though; sleeping for 3 hours a night for a month and a half straight at one point. Forget about what 4-ACO-DMT did to me. Sleep is good, balance is good.
    • sometimelydat 9y ago
      Ooh yes, I am still in the industry. I'm currently studying for my Security+ certification (experience validation) and I'm in the interview process with a local company: Network Security Manager.
• brootstrap 9y ago
  did the startup grind for a couple years getting out our MVP and wearing tons of hats. smoked weed on the daily. Still at the same company a few years later. Still chillin on the weeds (only on the weekends now) myself. A lot of my co-workers are pretty straight-edge, vegans, no drinking etc. We are in the midwest though so there is no west-coast fancy cars fast life cocaine shit going on. Its more about buying a 30 pack of cheap busch lite and gettin drunk in some corn fields
• CryoLogic 9y ago
  I worked in a very toxic post-series-A tech startup trying to get acquired. We where all expected to work 8am-10pm and the CEO would always tell us that if we wanted to move up in the company we needed to work weekends as well. Just a 15 minute break would get you a lecture on work ethic from one of the upper-management who really micromanaged engineers. After about a year there I learned about half my team was taking Adderall to keep up. After a two week stint of working until 11am every day of the week I got called back into the office at 12:00 midnight by the CEO and the next day I had to call in sick because I was shivering and cold because of sleep depravation. I started putting out resumes that day.
  • iooi 9y ago
    I wish there was a culture of naming and shaming these companies and executives. This is the sort of behavior that would be really easy for engineers to abolish by simply not working there.
    • kelnos 9y ago
      Unfortunately, doing so can be a risk. If the target of such comments gets wind of it, they could easily sue for defamation or libel, and possibly even win, given that it's probably hard to back up a lot of these accusations in a way that would hold up in court.
      • sanderjd 9y ago
        That sounds doubtful to me. I'm not a lawyer (and I don't think it sounds like you are either?) but at least in the US, my understanding is that courts grant quite a bit of latitude to people speaking freely about their own experiences. I don't really know though, but I would definitely be surprised (and incensed) to find out that this is a widespread problem.
        • kelnos 9y ago
          I wouldn't be surprised at all, and at the end of the day you can sue for anything, even if you don't believe you can win. Mounting a successful defense costs money, even if the claims are without merit.
• deleted 9y ago
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• kretash 9y ago
  Reading the comments I feel like there are 2 polarized sides that state that everyone they work with uses some sort of stimulant or that they have never encountered it during their career. It's hard to get a sense of how common it is to encounter stimulants in the tech sector from reading this thread.
  • opportune 9y ago
    I really think it's that drug users are very good at recognizing who's "cool" and who's not. I wouldn't be surprised if half the people at my undergrad CS program weren't even aware of the stimulant phenomenon because they just weren't friends with people who did that kind of stuff There's also a huge age gap in that older people are probably less likely to abuse drugs for maturity/responsibility reasons, and that no 25 year old developer in their right mind would mention their/their friends' drug use to their 40 year old colleague. And older people didn't grow up in during the era where stimulants were being handed out like candy to kids to get them to shut up
  • DanBC 9y ago
    Water testing is now so good you could just gather samples from the sewage line of various companies to do some testing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516581/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516581/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4746787.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4746787.stm https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z43kk9/the-plan-to-test-cities-sewage-for-drugs-is-a-new-form-of-mass-surveillance-5886b75df1bddf454bd80da8 https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z43kk9/the-plan-t...
• genemachinery 9y ago
  Can opiate addiction be better understood by young people by comparing it to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in sports? Crime in football players may be related to TBI. Both Alzheimer's and TBI patients share Delta FosB peptides. https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/07/traumatic-brain-injury-crime https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/07/traumatic-brain-injury-c... ​ Delta FosB protein is seen in epileptics, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), addicts and Alzheimer's brains. US football and NHL hockey teams too? ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB ​ Can NIH work with Genspace in NYC? They teach neurohacking. https://www.genspace.org/​ https://www.genspace.org/​ Can students learn the effects of aging, trauma and addiction via computer simulations? Can they develop a Brain for Blender TBI model? Showing brain injury? ​See attached file brain_TBI_simulator.txt showing brain injury and cell_TBI_simulator.txt capturing TBI. ​ ​New Mexico went from 100 women at Grants Correctional in 1990, today it is over 600. Opiate and meth addiction is ripping many communities apart. Biology education in NM is basic. https://www.amazon.com/Pastoral-Clinic-Addiction-Dispossession-Grande/dp/0520262085 https://www.amazon.com/Pastoral-Clinic-Addiction-Dispossessi... Many families in NM are broken. When drugs remove women the society breaks down. ​My wife sees released women inmates and their children living out of cars at Santa Fe Community College. We volunteer at the Santa Fe Interfaith Homeless Shelter with addicts to feed and house them. I worked with AIDS patients in Jamaica, WI in US Peace Corps and alcoholic students in Gallup UNM. AIDS patients suffer brain issues as the disease progresses. I also work training women in IT in summer internships at the State of NM. Many work in NM. I completed a thesis on DNA shotgun sequencing at the US Human Genome Project at Los Alamos National Lab. I graduated with MS CS at NM Tech while at LANL. ​My son is now a senior in Chemical/Biomedical engineering at CSU, Fort Collins building Alzheimer's, TBI, and addiction models using neural nets/machine learning. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWN3xxRkmTPmbKwht9FuE5A?app=desktop​ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWN3xxRkmTPmbKwht9FuE5A?app... Unfortunately there are no Chemical/Biomedical Engineering BS programs in New Mexico? My son has studied the Chinese language. How do we stop importation of Fentanyl from China?​ https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/24/china-fentanyl-usps/​ https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/24/china-fentanyl-usps/​ Delta FosB protein is seen in epileptics, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), addicts and Alzheimer's brains. US football and NHL hockey teams too? ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSB ​ Could a plastic contact lens absorb Delta FosB? Could Korean contact lens be used to monitor Delta Fosb in addicts? A lower amount could mean effective drug addiction treatment? Could you develop a contact lens sensor for Delta FosB? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/01/25/these-smart-contact-lenses-could-monitor-your-blood-sugar/1064754001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/01/25/th... Delta FosB may be detected in eyes via contact lens? Cheaper than MRI. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-abstract/635660​ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-a... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11006248 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11006248
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• jfv 9y ago
  Drug abuse is not a big issue in SV in general. There are a few general themes: 1) Some startups have a heavy-drinking bro-y environment. 2) Weed is common outside of work (in all of SF) 3) As part of the burning man culture a lot of people will occasionally let loose all weekend with molly, LSD, shrooms, and anything else you’d expect at BM 4) Some people will use adderall/modanfil to stay productive during work. 5) People in SV are willing to try new, untested drugs more than in any other culture I’ve seen, besides MIT. In summary, I never expect to see someone jonesing in SV. It’s overall a responsible drug culture, not like what I’ve seen with my medical/finance friends. In NY it’s not uncommon to hear ‘I need some coke’ but I never got that sense in SV.
  • PedroBatista 9y ago
    After all that.. "not big issue in SV"
    • jrs95 9y ago
      Well, you don't have tech workers offing themselves with fentanyl in record numbers, at least.
    • jfv 9y ago
      I’d say having virtually nobody dying of overdoses, going through withdrawals or detox, or being dependent makes it not a big issue, yes.
  • bfuller 9y ago
    A lot of "issues" that you commonly hear about with drug use happen when you're addicted and can no longer afford them. I don't think that's a problem in SV.
  • driverdan 9y ago
    This is a good summary. It's the same culture in Austin. I've found that most people don't talk about illegal drugs here, including weed and stims, unless you bring it up first. Once it comes up you may be surprised how widespread those items are.
  • 9y ago
• raphlinus 9y ago
  I'll add a data point, though it's almost entirely negative. I've been at Google over 10 years and have yet to come across a person using illegal hard drugs. I can think of three people with serious drinking problems. There's been a drinking culture (many offices have beer on tap), but I see that changing, as people are more conscious of the negative effects. A bunch of people use marijuana, but off-hours. I haven't seen people seriously discussing stimulants (such as Adderall and modafinil) as performance enhancers; I've come across a number of people using these, but all in the context of diagnosed ADHD. I've also not seen anyone experimenting with microdosing LSD. There's a surprising amount of openness and support for talking about mental health issues in general. I think this is a really good thing. The stigmatization we see in broader society is not actually helpful. Obviously this is all my personal observation, but I think I would know; I definitely saw some serious drug use when I was in grad school at Berkeley.
  • croshan 9y ago
    To be fair, as someone who's been at Google for ten years, you sound pretty senior. From what I've seen, I think there might be significant sample bias. It seems that most people who use/abuse drugs are much younger, and often don't talk about it with people outside of a small group of similar users. I've definitely heard, known, or been close to people using at work, at home, with everything from speed, weed, and microdosing LSD, to modafinil and Adderall (in a non-prescription context). By the time they get older, I imagine they'll either have stopped, or burned out (as I've already seen) and likely wouldn't end up at more structured companies like Google.
  • davidsong 9y ago
    Is it that because you don't use drugs, the people who do use them tend not to discuss them with you? I was just joking with a colleague about trying the gas and air when his wife gives birth, and everyone in our bank of desks thought that would be outrageous behaviour. There's no way I'd admit to these guys that I have a load of N2O canisters stashed at home and will go full-balloonatic during festival season, let alone anything else I may or may not get up to.
    • 9y ago
• sphix0r 9y ago
  I don't drink coffee but drink 1 to 3 bottles(0.5L each) of club-mate. It contains caffeine and is not well known to the general public but is in the Berlin techno and hacker scene.
• matte_black 9y ago
  I’m not convinced that productivity is a virtue for software engineers. I have production code running untouched for over 8 years that was produced in the laziest straight forward way as possible, simply because I didn’t feel like working so hard. Indeed, I delayed writing any code until I came up with an idea of the minimum amount of code I could get away with, then I minimized that some more. I’ve eliminated entire features by simply procrastinating them until people realized they didn’t actually need them. Would a crackhead engineer stop and reflect on the best use of their personal time on this Earth? Probably not, they’d probably just bull through and slave away to “get things done” at the altar of productivity.
  • humbleMouse 9y ago
    This is my favorite comment of the thread. I approach my work with a similar mindset. Deliver more value by simplifying and staying relaxed.
  • zer00eyz 9y ago
    By that same token: I know of two engineers who are pot smokers (wake up and smoke type of people) - without pot they are bulls in china shopm with pot they tend to be calmer and more personable. I don't advocate for self medicating but these two have it down to a science and it is of benefit to their code quality. By that same token I can point to two people who smoked pot and wrote the worst code imaginable.... The difference between them is night and day - I get a lot of honest reactions from current drug users because I'm very frank with my past (I ate all the chemicals) - I think that there is a big set of distinctions between recreation, abuse and use of drugs, and that every one not only treats what they take differently but reacts very differently to it as well.
  • romanovcode 9y ago
    > the laziest straight forward way as possible, simply because I didn’t feel like working so hard. Indeed, I delayed writing any code until I came up with an idea of the minimum amount of code I could get away with The quality of a senior software developer.
  • tuxxy 9y ago
• d--b 9y ago
  Developer in finance here. Honestly I've seen zero drug use in the engineering world. Work hours aren't crazy (the max I did was 13hr/day - usual is 9/10), so you don't really need the stimulants like cocaine. Social alcoolism is common, so is recreational marijuana, but it doesn't seem related to work. Finance-wise, I think things are a lot less 'sex and drugs and rock n roll' than people believe. The finance guys are more like what you see in The Big Short: serious geeks.
• icco 9y ago
  I've known a few friends in SF with meth addiction. Vice and Buzzfeed have talked about Meth in the SF gay community, but https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvej4/meth-ghb-epidemic-gay-queer-men-grindr https://thump.vice.com/en_us/article/zmvej4/meth-ghb-epidemi... is a first hand account.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    thanks for the link. And I have found meth is alot more common, it seems, in the gay community.
• throwitaway42 9y ago
  From the Midwest originally. I moved to the Bay Area in the mid-2000s for work right out of college. As a young teen, I had gotten most drug use and experimentation out of my system. Marijuana and LSD were my mainstays then. In my later teens called it quits when I realized grades matter. Fast-forward to moving to Bay Area, I was astounded by the level of cavalier toking up, dosing, or snorting that folks my age and well into their 40s were doing. None of this was typical at the office, but afterwards yes. Never condoned by the Big Company. The folks who did it in the office were known, but they were never fired or pushed out — even though the 2007 financial crisis was underway and everyone was tightening belts. The worst I saw in the office was a poor guy who had a vat of raw powdered caffeine that he continually ingested due to his sleep apnea. Outside the office, damn, was there plenty of abuse within the Burning Man and Oakland scenes. Many were professionals, but they were wrecks. All said they were fine, but you could see that a manager East of the Bay Area would have fried their sorry asses in a heartbeat. To this date, two have died from drug related complications and three have wasted their bodies on MDMA, Speed, and other cosmetic drugs. Shocking to see someone earning North of 250k/year snorting MDA with a rusty razor blade. I moved to Berlin in the intervening years. Everything was tame there in comparison. Just a bunch of low-grade speed masquerading as something better. The folks there who do this match what you would expect: poor mental acumen and lack of patience in the office, and they were everywhere. Alcoholism was especially rampant: I think the dark depressing den of winter there drives folks to it. Since going back to the Bay Area, most of the folks have slowed down or moved away. So many broken marriages, careers, and bodies. Reminds me of the epilogue scene of A Scanner Darkly.
  • tomc1985 9y ago
    Trust me there is much more drug use in Berlin than you saw. The dance music underground there is just as drug-addled as the burner scene here, maybe just not as inundated with tech workers
    • throwitaway42 9y ago
      Yeah, I saw all of that. Oakland’s drug use makes Berlin looks quaint.
• lordnacho 9y ago
  Through a decade and a half in finance, I never came across someone who was using drugs. I always found this odd considering the reputation of the industry. I was working at hedge funds that were the prime clients of certain brokers, and I could go eat out on their account pretty much any night of the week. Perhaps they sensed I was not the type for drugs and hookers, so I was only offered these kinds of things once. Plenty of rumours though, and they make sense. Some of the brokers need to be taking clients out every night and then somehow show up on the desk at 7am. But I know plenty of people in the business and nobody a confirmed user.
• jacquesm 9y ago
  Where to start. Living in and growing up in Amsterdam has exposed me to more drug use than I care to remember. It's pretty ugly when you see super smart people slowly slide down and eventually enter a period of rapid decline and eventual death. A few escaped the latter fate but they'll never be the same people. They serve as very real life reminders for me to never ever even try that stuff. Some of the ones that died left behind wives and kids, some of them only kids because they were single parents. It's terrible to see this sort of thing up close and to realize there isn't anything that you can do about it without at least a minimum of cooperation from the other party. I've seen businesses - good businesses - go under because of drug use, I've seen partnerships go South because of it. From what I've seen up close cocaine seems to be the hard drug of choice for the tech scene in NL, it's not nearly as wide-spread as the media would have you believe but it is a lot larger than what I'm comfortable with and I am always on the lookout for the signs when evaluating companies.
• phyller 9y ago
  I have never known anyone I have worked with to do drugs (in order to aid work). Doesn't mean they don't, but I hadn't even thought about it until I read this post. One of the first things I learned in my (albeit young) career is that my brilliant, complex, I-worked-all-night-to-make-this super code is total garbage that no one wants to work with. Yes, it's amazing, but if no one else can understand it or wants to, it's dead in the water. Making code simpler is more important, being reliable and sustaining a constantly improving level of code quality is pure gold. This will allow my team to be more productive, we will get better quality products out faster and be able to build upon them. I think my natural mind is best suited for the complex demands required by collaborating with others, thinking deeply, and turning thoughts into clear, clean, testable and tested code. Far from wanting to stimulate myself to work more, I'd love to be able to turn my mind off and relax more quickly, and get a good nights sleep to start again refreshed. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of coders had a little alcohol in the evenings, maybe marijuana. The coders I know drink a little (not too much) and one of them smokes weed. That's it. I agree with other comments that I think people self-select into different groups. There are people that take drugs. They hang out with people that take drugs. Maybe some of them have gotten into coding. There are a lot of people who don't take drugs, and they usually work with similar people. I don't think this is a coding vs non-coding thing, but maybe what type of person you turned out to be in high school. I'd bet most coders aren't the drug-taking type.
  • sushid 9y ago
    I've also been at three different startups in the Bay Area (two in SF) and have never had any drug use going on around me or personally at work. Just the daily coffee/tea and the occasional beer during the end of the day. NO one I know uses Adderall to get through the day although I know a few that have taken it during finals week and or studying for job interviews, and a decent number (maybe like 10-15% of my friend group) had a year or so with frequent marijuana use but stopped for various reasons.
• medmj 9y ago
  I work with information security. I have depression and anxiety (I know lots in infosec and software engineering who also has - maybe it's a mix of loneliness, impostor syndrome and the feeling of underachievement?) and I use marijuana (a blunt per night) to help me treat it. It doesn't affect on my daily work in any bad way. Besides that, on the past I've used a lot of alcohol and occasionaly MDMA to party on weekends, which didn't lead me to heavier drugs and/or more frequent uses and it also didn't affect my job. As a side note, I'm not sure about the relationship between this industry (infosec) and mental health issues, but, from what I know/have seen, the numbers are very high compared to other industries. And mental health is sure worth a look to find more about drug (ab)use in a particular industry.
  • chatmasta 9y ago
    The infosec mindset is really mentally unhealthy. Your literal job is to be unreasonably paranoid and distrusting of everybody. I can definitely see how this could take its toll on mental health if you’re not balancing your work with the rest of your lifestyle.
• wcarron 9y ago
  Well, there are recreational and performance-enhancing drugs. The attitudes about the two types are different. Coffee, alcohol, nicotine, and pot are all just normalized. Nobody cares. We chat about it in passing (e.g "so Friday I was high....blah blah rest of story"). Coffee is perf-enhancing but people treat it recreationally. The performance stuff is alluded to but not really in any detail. Cocaine, adderall, ritalin, modafinil are all considered "ok", to some extent. As in, "ok. You do you, I guess" and it's fine as long as productivity isn't impacted. Cocaine is definitely the black sheep of that bunch, but it's still a fairly clean sheep. Psychedelics/dissociatives are never admitted to, at least where I work. I have used them (LSD, DXM) but I wouldn't ever consider doing them at work or on a weeknight. They have little business in programming, I think. Then, finally, the "white-trash" drugs. I don't know anyone who uses opiates, meth, crack, PCP, ketamine, kolonopin, etc. RXs are probably being abused more than I'm aware, but generally, our drug use is pretty elitist. If a poor person would do these drugs, not-poor people stringently avoid it.
  • mnm1 9y ago
    White trash drugs? Benzodiazepines, of which kolonopin is one are used by over 15 million people in the US and over 10 in the UK. It's one of the most widely used, widely prescribed categories of drugs and kolonopin one of the top prescribed in the category. And opiates? Who uses opiates who isn't addicted to them? You think being rich gives you a pass on addiction, and chronic pain?
    • klibertp 9y ago
      Rare, but: > Who uses opiates who isn't addicted to them? You think being rich gives you a pass on addiction, and chronic pain? There's a difference between dependency and addiction. The former is physical, the latter (mostly) psychological. The former is much easier to treat. That being said, it's almost impossible to not be both be dependent on and addicted to opiates if you take them for chronic pain over longer time.
    • linuxps2 9y ago
      > Who uses opiates who isn't addicted to them? Regularly? likely no one but there are a ton of poeple who use recreationally that aren't addicted.
• tryitnow 9y ago
  Drug use is not a problem in my circle of friends - I have friends who have done LSD, molly, coke, and countless others. They're all productive and mostly well-adjusted. This is mostly a Burning Man, techie set, there are also a fair number of qualified mental health professionals. Honestly, I don't think a book on white-collar drug use is a good idea - it's too broad a topic. I would either focus it on unproblematic (and possibly beneficial) drug use or drug abuse - those are too radically different phenomenon, to conflate the two will definitely undermine your credibility. Based on your past work it looks like you're targeting drug abuse, so I would just stay focused on that, especially what factors differentiate it from general drug use by responsible, informed people.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    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 see what patterns emerge.
    • opportune 9y ago
      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 of themselves, not to compete with others. The fact that these people are highly competitive is simply because they are over-achievers.
      • Eilene 9y ago
        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.
• zqfm 9y ago
  I've been doing software development in a small midwestern town for ~10 years. Most people drink coffee, but only a handful that I've known take other stimulants. In my (completely anecdotal) experience, the people who drink coffee or take drugs feel dependent on them for performance, but don't actually perform better or worse than those who don't.
• obv_throwaway_ 9y ago
  I've made a throwaway account to comment on this, and I've not scanned down through all the comments so you may already have similar stories. I am a software developer based in London, UK who uses several stimulants / drugs in my day-to-day work, I also understand that I am the exception to the rule and whilst I do use a number of substances for many reasons, there are very few of my colleagues that do the same - in fact I have very few colleagues that I work closely with anyway. To give you some context - I work for a financial group and mostly work on software to aid their day to day workflows. The simplest terms I can put it in is that I give a lot of rich city boys the tools to make them a lot of money and in return they pay me what I consider to be an obscene salary. I spend most of my days in the basement of one of those buildings in the city, in a small office, pretty much alone with headphones on and sometimes going days without actually talking to people. I like it. I am diagnosed with ADHD which is not as commonly diagnosed in adults in the UK ( but becoming more commonly reconsised ) - for that I take methylphenidate ( commonly known as Ritalin in the US ) and that helps immensely with focus. I also vape cannabis regularly that also helps with the focus as my dose wears off. Sometimes, for those long weekend sessions of coding, I will use LSD. The effects are - I dont have to loathe myself whilst doing my job. In all honesty, I hate my job and the people I work for, but at the same time, I got bills to pay and want to retire at a younger age than most. I also find that the drugs make me zone-in on a task and I am just able to get it done quicker. I write significantly better code high, than not. I'd love to have a story for you, but in all honesty my life is pretty boring beyond the fact that some of the stuff I have to do is questionable, especially for those people who might be using online trading software. Other than that, picture a guy, standing ( yeah, im one of those standing desk people ) in a small, fairly dimly lit office in the basement of a multi-billion pound financial bohemoth, with headphones on blasting some music whilst bashing away at a keyboard and thats pretty much my life.
  • pinchharmonic 9y ago
    Interesting stuff. Around how old are you and around how much do you make? (get as general as you want)
    • obv_throwaway_ 9y ago
• cheez 9y ago
  Not just white collar, but white people. I crossed a border once with thousands of dollars in drugs with a pretty white girl (we worked in finance). No one thought twice. I get the 3rd degree whenever I cross though.
• ptsdhacker 9y ago
  One thing I think is important is that people have such a wide array of backgrounds, I think it's a mistake to simply categorize them as white-collar, without examing how they got to where they were. I've been in IT for years, but before that I was in the military, saw combat, and developed PTSD. IT is just one of the things I'm good at that pays the bills, but that alone wouldn't tell you my story of drugs. I got out and immediately used my GI bill to go to uni. I was drinking a lot at the time though. I got up to about a fifth every two days. This was for a lot of reasons. The transition from infantry to civilian life so quickly was rough. I was the oldest person in most of my classes of smartass 18 year old rich kids who mommy and daddy paid their way to college and bought them vehicles etc. I became bitter about the war and started researching it further and fell further into disgust because I realized how much of it was a lie. I made some ROTC cadets cry because I snapped when I saw them doing a "patrol" on campus with poor dispersion and yelled at them. I failed out of a math class... things were generally not headed in a good direction. Then the tables turned, and it was all thanks to cannabis. See, I was always brought up anti-drug, so I was one of the few outliers who literally never did drugs in high-school of any sort other than alcohol and caffeine. As part of my military goals of getting and maintain clearance I also was very strict with myself about drugs, always feeling contempt and disgust for those who particpated in them. (not realizing the hypocricy and double-standard when it came to tobacco and alcohol). So it wasn't until after two semesters of this downward spiral that a friend pulled me into his room, and said he wanted to talk to me about cannabis. He said he knew my position, but that being scientific minded I should read up on the scientific facts known about it and then read some first hand experience articles from a place called erowid. After a few weeks of reading every scientific paper I could get my hands on, and reading a few erowid posts from other PTSD military types, I finally decided I was a civilian now, I could give it a shot. Cannabis literally saved me from becoming (or staying) an alcoholic. It was an almost instant turn around. I found being drunk disgusting. I stopped smoking tobacco completely. (Smoked a pack of cigs a day in-country, quit cold turkey when I left Iraq for the last time, but continued to smoke cigars/pipe tobacco every once in a while.) I found myself able to process things better. I was getting sleep I had before had to be drunk to get (hypervigilance is a bitch). I was being nicer to other students and not as standoffish, and started making friends. I eventually quit college to do a startup that I left a few years later but that is still going strong. I stayed in the industry and have been in IT since. This sounds like a success story right? That's not all. What I didn't tell you was I lived in the bible belt, in a state where it was/is illegal. I started having issues with the demographic... that is to say the people. I started having issues despite fairly regularly smoking cannabis, and started drinking again at the same time (cross-fading). I eventually got so fed up with the area I was in I jumped ship and moved to the east coast, where I had a support structure, to try to finally get help from the VA. The VA was horrible. They put me on shit that made me feel like a zombie (trazodone in particular, but all of it did it.) Finally I realized the VA was not helping, (the most help I got was from learning how CBT and CBET worked from an independent org), stopped all their bullshit drugs which I think are a major health problem, stopped drinking, and came back to my state. I didn't mean to stay. I just wanted to catch up with family and friends, and was intending to go to Seattle because cannabis had just been legalized, and then I met a that woman I fell in love with. I ended up staying in my state, but my SO had a druggie brother and an alcohol dad, and many concerns about the illegality of it, so my usage of cannabis, no matter when or in what amounts, became a fighting issue. So I tried to quit (because love is more important than anything right?). What ended up happening though is that I fell into this vicious cycle where I would have a particularly rough time for a while and would give in, toke up furiously for a week or two, cause a fight, and then quit only to find myself drinking instead (even once started dipping for a few months as my vice to replace the others, and let me tell you dipping is nasty as hell). Then I'd be "good" for a while until I had another hard time (like a week of super bad hypervigilance at night causing very little sleep), and the cycle would repeat. Obviously this eventually ended the relationship. I tried very hard to keep this all in my personal life though, and protect my professional life from those troubles. This whole time I was performing fairly well in my job(s). I could have been doing so much better, but I was surviving given the double life I was leading. Eventually the stress leaked though, and I ended up quitting my job with very little notice because of an unrelated unhappiness there (being underpayed). So now I am now using the rest of my GI bill to go to an online school and finish my degree while I job search in legalized states so I don't have to deal with the paranoia surrounding it's legality. I determined it was my medicine and I deserve to have my medicine without feeling guilt or ashamed or being scared of being arrested. That said, I wanted to test myself to see how bad things are as a baseline, so I am now two months drug free (minus caffeine) and despite the ol PTSD rearing it's head a bit, it's better than it ever has been and I intend to stay drug free until I make it to a legal state. Right now my main internal discussion is if I am willing to be on a list of patients in a medical only state or if I find anonymity important enough to only go to a recreationally legal state. That's my story. I hope it's useful to you in some way or interesting to others.
• wintercharm 9y ago
  Medical student here. Used to drink tons of coffee. Sleep 4 hours a night, and micronap. Eventually realized that this was hurtin me long term when I found my memory becoming impaired. This only happened when I was in really intense study, so I feel like this thing won’t show for most people. But I eventually changed my ways, stepped down from 4-6 cups a day to 1 cup in the morning, and I get 9.5 hours of sleep every night now. I’m more productive, and healthier, and I know I can SUSTAIN this productivity. Sure, some of my classmates use adderall, others use cocaine... but I know that I’ll have better long term productivity and outlook than those people.
• IfOnlyYouKnew 9y ago
  I remember your article. I hope it helps to have the ability to so beautifully render the tragedy that befell you in words. I'm in tech. My first experience with drugs other than weed, which I just don't enjoy, happened relatively late. I was around 30 at the time when I joined friends of a friend taking MDMA at a club. I have experienced chronic depression for as long as I can remember. I was rarely actually "sad", as one might think. I was simply experiencing most emotions through a sort of fog. The most troubling symptom has always been what one would just call "extreme laziness". Even though I frequently attempted all sorts of methods to motivate myself and acquire discipline, I always failed. Recently, I found a "contract" I made with myself when I must have been around 12 years old, specifying all sorts of activities such as sports, reading, and socialising to be completed on a schedule for certain rewards. Later, I sought help through the medical system. But even though I tried three different anti-depressants and two therapists, their valiant efforts failed to make a dent. After three years of recreational drugs I cannot say that they are the answer to my problem. But it is certainly an experience that has helped me make some inroads. Much like learning to bike with training wheels, they gave me an appreciation of the range of emotions one can experience. Both exhilarating, all-forgetting thrill, as well as content serenity, were states I only knew from literature. I've consumed MDMA, 2CB, LSD, Speed, and Ketamine. I'm staying away from Cocaine, all opiates, and GHB. I do consume speed at work. The enjoyment of working in a flow-like state is magnificent, although it comes with its own downsides, mostly a tendency to dive into time-wasting side-issues. Even though I have overdone it on multiple occasions, sometimes working for four days straight, I've have never had trouble not taking anything for a few weeks when I was travelling, or simply ran out. I've also almost completely stopped drinking alcohol. I've been in a joyful relationship for the last five years, and we've used drugs to find previously unthought-of depts of sexual pleasure.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    it was enormously freeing to finally be able to write about what happened to my family, yes, thank you. I felt like I was living in a John Grisham created hell, afraid of telling anyone what really happened and instead acting like Peter was the victim of his own stringent work ethic (which is true and not true). May I ask you what you do for a living? Are you a developer?
• robg 9y ago
  Please highlight if you can how questions of brain health are often ignored exactly because people seem productive. Learning to do good work under too much stress and with too little sleep is a big part of the problem. We condition ourselves to get the work done, then compensate with drugs and alcohol. But since we're productive, the latter is not seen as a problem. The pattern is repeating itself all over top universities and why rates of brain health concerns and suicides continue to remain high. Those maladaptive behaviors then carry over to workplaces. Stress and sleep concerns are independently public health crises, and yet they are two sides of the same physiological coin - the autonomic nervous system. And of course, being high on stress makes sleeping that much more difficult.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    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?
    • robg 9y ago
      "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 stress and "generalized" or otherwise anxiety, on the one hand, and sleep disturbances and depression on the other. The more certain they seem of the answer you more you know they are not honest arbiters. The most recent work on sleep suggests a glymphatic system that washes toxins from the brain especially well during sleep. More to your question, the best work I've seen suggests that many mental health concerns can not be treated well if there's an underlying sleep disorder. Taking a step back, if any person is under a lot of stress AND not sleeping well, and for years on end, the distinction between mind and brain and body would seem to matter little. They are suffering and in need of serious help and likely to self-medicate. However, doctors still today do not know how to treat sleep or stress concerns and specialists are all over the place, from therapists to neurologists to psychiatrists and behavioral health specialists. Feel free to reach out to me personally. My contact info is in my profile.
• neveradmitmyid 9y ago
  There is a population of media developers that are fairly heavy marijuana users. By 'media developer' I mean animation, VFX, games, and other graphics & entertainment related type of software. We tend to be older, having been in graphics and media for 20 to 30 years for most of us pothead graphics junkies. We have bongs and all the typical pot smoking accessories out in the open at our offices, and they are in active use throughout the day, from the moment the day starts. In general, we are people that write the core software of the renderer, the simulation, the shaders, the production tools, or other somewhat overly complex yet creative element of our work. We've been leads for 20 years, at least. We're all people that enter into deep states of flow when stoned, and many of us believe the pot is required to quickly enter flow and then stay there for hours on end as we develop. We're split between people with pot belly and people that actively work out. The only consistency of this crowd is we all use pot to isolate ourselves into our work, and we're working in media production. Now media production itself drives many people to drugs, simply due to the pressure of that ever present deadline. I'd like to clarify that the pot smoking developers I'm talking about typically ignore this pressure, mocking it, because they have already adopted an obsessive developer lifestyle. These are basically creative stoners that would work like this anyway, and are glad to get paid well doing what they love anyway. Also, this is all we do, pretty much 7 days a week. We're obsessive, the pot seems to aid that obsession, our employers like our productivity and look the other way towards our open smoking in the studio. Personally, I smoke about 1 oz of high grade Indica per week. The typical pot smoker is 1/8th that.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Do you think that the pot is countering any depression or down feelings that may come from being isolated for so long each day? That sounds really hard, even if you really like the work.
    • neveradmitmyid 9y ago
      We are and are not isolated. The studios tend to put us all together in a less traveled part of the lot, and beyond the fact that we all prefer to stare at our screens 12+ hours a day, we are social with each other. As I said, the bongs are in active use throughout the day. Anytime anyone loads a bowl, it gets passed to everyone in that room, who will pause, take a hit, join the conversation or simply look back to their screen. It's social and isolated at the same time.
• joesnuffy 9y ago
  I've been taking Adderall just about daily for 12 years. 15yrs old to 27yrs old. I've been looking for a way to contribute to a study, specifically on the productivity. My theory is that overall a life on amphetamines does result in increased productivity in your target areas and the downside is a serious dopamine problem in areas that people don't typically have problems with. I've quit cold turkey for periods of up to 3 months 5 times in the last 7 years. I NEEDed 3 days to sleep hard each time and then there were no noticeable side effects other than borderline zero productivity in the areas I used amphetamines to increase productivity the most. Amphetamines give me the ability to change my interests completely and when I get off of them my brain seems to reject what it was forced to care about while stimulated.
• drugsthrowaway 9y ago
  I'm a dev at a startup. I was a regular cannabis user in my younger days, mostly by smoking, but some edibles and quit years ago. In the past couple of years I've started to start using cannabis again. I now vape because I don't need all those combustion byproducts in my lungs, and it lasts much longer, and you can reuse the already vaped material (ABV). It helps me relax after work at night, and get to sleep some days. I prefer indica rather than sativa for its relaxing and stoning effects. It helps me deal with the stress and makes sure I sleep and eat.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Have you always found you need some way to decompress from the stress? I'm trying to learn how stressful your work as a developer is. Is it the work or the work environment (a startup). Do most of your peers find some way to come down at night, be it weed or drinking or something else?
    • drugsthrowaway 9y ago
      Here's the thing: when you're at a startup you and potentially your friends have equity in, you have to be ON 80% of the time -nights, weekends, middle of the night for a page, etc. You sit for hours at a time, you eat takeout a lot, etc etc. It's a blast from a technical innovation and engagement perspective, but it is just really stressful to be in such a high octane high risk environment most of your waking life. A couple to a few hours a few nights a week of just forgetting it all, relaxing to a few puffs and a video game or movie or a few episodes of TV or listening to a new album really helps. For me, it also helps me weather the stress at work(i would never come to work stoned), as I'm less liable to get worked up about shit that goes bad or deadlines etc. I just execute instead of dwelling.
• sulam 9y ago
  In the 90's startup environment I knew a surprising number of engineers who regularly took meth and/or cocaine (and probably other uppers -- they were after productivity boosts). It tended to travel in packs -- particular companies had a decent percentage doing it, while others had zero (as far as I knew). These days I hear more about the "focus" drugs -- which seem like pharmaceutical versions of the same stuff, with reduced dosage.
• 7ero 9y ago
  This isn't me. But there is Paul Erdős, who made great contributions to mathematics. He was known to use amphetamines regularly. He even made a bet with one of his colleagues on his amphetamine use, betting that he could give up amphetamines for a month. In which he ended up subsequently winning but complained that mathematics was set back by one month.
  • giardini 9y ago
    Yes, Paul Erdős apparently was capable of using amphetamines without excess. I don't know how someone would know whether they could prove capable of doing the same. Also, at the start of World War II the German soldiers took amphetamines. Accounts of the invasion of France describe some unusually daring/reckless and physically daunting tasks that likely, w/o amphetamines, would not have been done. Staying awake for days seemed to be part of the job: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amphetamines+and+invasion+of+France&t=opera&ia=about https://duckduckgo.com/?q=amphetamines+and+invasion+of+Franc...
• kcorbitt 9y ago
  I worked at Google for a year, and am currently at a much smaller company in San Francisco. There's plenty of alcohol consumption at semi-official work social events, and I've seen some recreational marijuana use as well and nobody bats an eye. But I've never heard of developers using drugs for performance enhancement. It may happen, but it's certainly not part of the general culture, and I've never felt any pressure to use stimulants to keep up. I consider myself to be a high performer.
• lpa22 9y ago
  I started a large latte habit (which sounds silly) a couple months ago at my new startup job, but I've been working in tech for 3.5 years now. My tolerance is low so thats all I need to get kickstarted... but now I'm pretty dependent on it and can't get nearly as much done without it. At my last job, some SEs would have 5+ cans of coke a day. I think it was an overdose of caffeine/sugar.... which actually might be more unhealthy than Adderall. I'd be curious to see what people think of that.
• formerpothead 9y ago
  An important and interesting topic that could definitely use solid (professional) journalistic treatment. Some suggestions, in that vein: (1) The tech sector is quite different from other white collar sectors -- and I gather you'll find their usage profiles to be quite different, also. So really, drug use in the tech sector deserves to be a story (or a series) all its own. (2) Within tech, there's always been a huge divide between the engineering and business sides (they're almost from different planets, in some respects). So basically we're talking about completely separate analyses for these groups. (3) You may want to completely exclude the Wall Street crowd from your surveys as well -- or at least be careful to note it as a distinct subclass. They're also something of a culture apart from the rest of tech, so if you put to much focus on them, your research will definitely be skewed. (4) My own observation from the engineering crowd (over many years and having lived in various geographic areas) suggests that the use of normalized (or "mostly normalized") substances (alcohol, marijuana, caffeine, "smart drinks" / herbal stimulants, psychedelics (and ecstasy) and very rarely, low-grade amphetamines) is probably about what you'll find in any high-skill, sometimes stressful line of work. Perhaps alcohol and caffeine are used a bit more, and marijuana a bit less (except in places where it's been legalized or effectively legalized). (4b) Added qualification that psychedelic use seems quite rare outside the Bay Area, but I could be wrong. (5) Use of harder substances (cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin) on the other hand appears to be exceedingly rare among engineering types -- for the simple reason that they're effects are fundamentally incompatible with the "head space" geeks need to be in 24x7 to be even remotely capable of doing the work they do. I'm not saying there are no heavy users or tales of abuse among engineers - of course they are. But if anything the general rate of incidence is probably distinctly less than that of other white-collar professions. (6) Finally, by far the most serious substance problem in the industry is alcohol. This has definitely changed over the years, and a serious examination of the reasons behind this shift would also be quite welcome.
• DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  There are several topics here that are related in this community. 1) Hacking your mind/body through the use of physical/mechanical environment changes: meditation, exercise, diet, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this. 2) Hacking your mind/body through the use of Over-The-Counter chemicals: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, roots, nootropics, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this. 3) Hacking your mind/body through the use of prescription drugs: adderall, opiates, etc. Some hackers do this, many have probably experimented at one time or another and walked away. (They are hackers, after all) 4) Classic drug addiction, which is where all the drama is. I've been in the business a long time and haven't seen a lot of junkies -- but I've seen many folks who looked unstable one way or another and drugs may have been the cause. Don't know. My point is this: the hacking community screws around with stuff, including their own bodies, all the time. It's the mindset. There are HNers right now that can tell you to the gram how much protein, carbohydrates, and fiber they've consumed in the last month, along with providing you a chemical analysis of their stool. We're an odd bunch.
  • unimpressive 9y ago
    This. I would very much appreciate if the author managed to take a more nuanced view than darpa_escapee here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16468350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16468350 This entire thread is probably being massively selection biased by one crowd that wants to costly signal their purity by talking about how no one they know does things in that nebulous 'drugs' category and they would never consider it. And then it's being selection biased by another set that wants to countersignal their insight by talking about how actually, everyone secretly does drugs, how do you think people manage those all nighters, clearly they sit on a throne of stimulants. I suspect the reality is less dramatic. ADHD is one of the most common adult mental disorders, just on this basis alone we should expect a lot of basically non-abusive stimulant use (and some basically abusive stimulant use, it is an addictive drug after all). My informal impression is that ADD is more common than base rate in programmers, I don't have any formal proof of this but the LessWrong Community survey indicates a rate far above normal. http://lesswrong.com/lw/nqa/2016_lesswrong_diaspora_survey_analysis_part/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/nqa/2016_lesswrong_diaspora_survey_a... Of course, that almost certainly has other selection biases involved than just being a computer programmer. Beyond that you have a large number of people who are higher on Big Five Openness than normal, and are probably willing to take substances in a cautious way for benefit. The entire 'nootropics' strain is testimony to this particular brand of cultural oddity. I suspect these people are distinct from the sort of people you normally think of as meth junkies. And then of course, nobody wants to talk about this but even just reading hacker news you'll get people occasionally come onto anon accounts to discuss their struggle with heroin or ridiculously unhealthy doses of stimulant drugs. These people are often invisible because their sort of drug use is not fashionable, and so it's often assumed that they simply don't exist in polite society. They of course do, and I suspect their mindset and lifestyle look different from the groups mentioned above.
• drugsintech2018 9y ago
  Temporary account for obvious reasons, feel free to direct message me, if you'd like to discuss in further detail. I apologize for the length of the post in advance :) Most of my experiences are filtered through the lens of working at companies in the SF Bay Area, with "a good work-life balance". This is effectively code for "we recognize that the work week is approximately 9-5 or 10-6, Monday-Friday". California has had legalized medical Marijuana for a few years, and recently legalized commercial sale of recreational Marijuana. In this comment, I'll try to offer a survey of what I've seen other people in tech doing, as well as what I myself have been doing. By far, the most prolific and most visible mood-affecting substances are Alcohol and Caffeine. In every company where I've worked, these were freely available to employees, and consumed socially. Caffeine feels like a major component of programmer culture. There's a plethora of boutique coffee shops peppering San Francisco, and having a discriminating coffee taste seems to be a mark of refinement. It's worth noting the popular software engineering book, Code Complete - the cover most prominently features a keyboard, and a cup of coffee - suggesting these are the essential tools of programming. Personally, I consume coffee once or twice a day, and make a bit of conscious effort to limit my dependence, and not become too tolerant. I have a bit of difficulty keeping a regular sleep schedule and getting enough sleep, and caffeine helps counteract that. At multiple companies I've worked at, beer was freely available, on-tap from a keg. However, it generally was not consumed during work hours, but after-hours, socially. Companies also tend to host happy hours on certain Fridays, with a variety of mixed drinks available and a party theme. Tech-related meetups are typically sponsored and hosted at a company office, and free beer is provided. Broad use of public transit, or Uber, likely resolve potential problems with drunk driving, I'm unsure on that point. I've not typically seen people drink to excess at work functions, but it's not unheard of for someone to get themselves fired at a holiday party. A taste for unique beers seems to also be a social mark of refinement. Personally, I don't consume alcohol. This is a bit unusual, and usually raises some questions from coworkers, but the choice is generally respected and I don't experience any pressure to drink. That said, it still feels a bit alienating to have an unusual stance on drinking, and a bit alienating when there's a variety of unique mixed drinks or small-brew beers available, and only water/coke for non-alcoholic options. Non-drinkers are respected, but not considered. I know a few people who smoke Tobacco, but it seems to be very rare. It's looked down on a bit, and there's several health laws restricting where it's permitted. Vaporizers have made it marginally more accepted. I personally don't smoke. My impression is that many coworkers enjoy Marijuana at least occasionally, but this is far less visible. I've never noticed someone at work smelling skunky, and it seems like a substance that would completely prevent any kind of productivity at work. I recently had my first marijuana experience, via edibles, and quite enjoyed it. It's not something I am going to make a regular habit of, but it was fairly inexpensive, and I had basically no negative effects the next day at work (except for some worse-than-usual sleep). Purchasing marijuana was one of the most privilege-demonstrating experiences I've had. Being aware of decades of racial discrimination, of dime bags being exchanged surreptitiously, etc. With all that, I was able to walk into a well-lit store, peruse products, stand in line with several respectable-looking folks wearing tech company hoodies, present an ID, and walk out the door. That feels a little mind-boggling to me. At a previous company, I've heard at least one employee openly talk about having tried mushrooms in the past, and recommending other people try it at least once. Other than that, I'm generally unaware of _any_ use of any other mood-altering substances. In terms of productivity, it seems much more typical for people to be very concerned with diet or fitness. There's quite a few vegans, vegetarians, gluten-free, etc., and many people are involved with a gym, or some outdoor activity. My personal philosophy is that good development is a marathon, not a sprint, and properly maintaining physical and mental health is a key component of being happy and productive. Outside of physical substances, video games are also quite popular as a recreational activity, and my use of them has, at times, bordered on addictive and life-interfering.
• monksy 9y ago
  Is this observational, a study, or do you get to do "research" with the participants?
• geekout 9y ago
  I'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 adderall has on my attention span and ability to churn through code is close to 2 to 3 times what my ability is without it. When I'm on adderall and focused on coding, I often find that I can see several steps ahead of where I am now and I cannot physically code fast enough to keep up with my mind. It feels like I can hold more variables in my head at once. Sometimes, when I'm sober, I look at code that I programmed on adderall and find that my approach to solutions can be designed in completely different ways than I would have normally. I never had a very reliable source of adderall, which meant that there were breaks in my use. This also kept my tolerance relatively low so I never had to take more than 5-10mg per day to feel the full effect. I noticed during the sober weeks in between that there is always a significant lull in motivation that first week before I feel entirely like myself again. My story with adderall doesn't end well, though. Adderall can affect other areas of your life (like impulse control) and cause you to do things that aren't necessarily characteristic of your personality (especially when mixed with alcohol). I'd be happy to share more if you'd like. This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons, and I setup a throwaway email address because this is an issue I've thought long and hard about. If you're interested, feel free to reach out (contact info on my profile). I'll check the email for one week. In summary: the short term benefits of adderall are not worth the longterm inconsistency or effects on other areas of my life such as mood, sleep, and anxiety. At least not for me.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Hi geekout. I tried you via email but I have a protonmail account now. So if you want to reach me there it's eilenez@protonmail.ch Thanks, Eilene
  • malmsteen 9y ago
    > cause you to do things that aren't necessarily characteristic of your personality Would you mind giving details if it's a throwaway ? My mind went straight to sexual assault of some sort reading this.
• ohmichel 9y ago
  I'm a professional developer. Some weekdays I use cannabis after work to relax. In my experience using THC and trying to code doesn't work, I just can't get focus as when sober.
• drugstorytaway 9y ago
  Adderall, cocaine, caffeine, any number of research stimulants. disclaimer, I have a long history of drug and alcohol use pre-serious coding, so it wasn’t coding that got me started but it got me off everything but stimulants. I was going for school for something other than computer science and saw it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Thusly I turned to adderall and research chemicals to increase my focus and productivity learning to code. I worked all day and night, 7 days a week. For coding, it worked wonderfully. I was able to learn a tremendous amount in a short time and it opened up many opportunities. However it wreaked havoc on my personal relationships. I didn’t have any friends, I just worked. I became a jerk to my then girlfriend. My work outside of work and heavy use of stimulants came to a holt when we broke up which led to excessive drug use of all sorts of things from disassocatives to opiates. Eventually I started microdosing LSD and got over it, got back to work. After college it was hard to find adderall and my research stims of choice weren’t available so I started using cocaine which often tested positive for amphetamines. I wasn’t using for my day job, I was using on the weekends to have 24 hour coding marathons for side projects + prepping for a new job. Using cocaine was cool for awhile but it led to chronic sinus problems and after a couple months it became more about using all weekend than getting work done. I quit using when I noticed strong urges when I got home on, say, a Tuesday night. Now I have a prescription for adderall and I take it responsibly. It helps me focus at work and usually take a day off on the weekend or at the least, take a half dose. A couple of weeks ago I didn’t take it at work because I was planning on taking it after to work on side project. Interestingly enough, I had a hellish day wherein I didn’t get much done and just watched the clock until the end of the day. I was very depressed that night. I felt so bad I didn’t wind up taking it. Instead I laid around and watched TV. I don’t have any plan to get off of adderall but I find the random drug testing pesky because I like to smoke marijuana to unwind but if I get caught, I get discharged.
• drugsguy 9y ago
  Modafinil is surprisingly popular in the nootropics communities. Most people I know have tried piracetam (and other *racetams). I think everyone in tech settles on supplements eventually -- choline, tyrosine, and 5htp. I've had a surprising number of people recommend L-Theanine to me to "take the edge off" stimulants. If someone is willing to take drugs in the tech sector, they tend to be experimental about it, slowly incrementing their doses and trying research chemicals. Most people come to the conclusion that drugs are too unreliable to use frequently for improving performance and use them as occasional bumps. People who try cocaine during their professional careers tend to consider it unreliable and dont use it, but those who tried it before their career may continue using it. Caffeine abuse is pretty common, but rarely makes people more productive, so you see that for about 1-2 years until they realize it's not helping. Alcohol abuse is really common in high-stress jobs like operations, disenfranchised developers also drink. I don't see many engineers using alcohol as a "social lubricant". Entheogens (mdma, lsd, 2ci/b, doc/doi, etc) are popular as a party-drug and "social lubricant". Opioids are under-represented in my experience, probably because their affects dont lead to productivity in tech.
  • opportune 9y ago
    I take choline (lecithin) and l-tyrosine too (not 5htp because it makes me incredibly nauseous) and you're the only other tech worker I've encountered that even knew about them.
• purplezooey 9y ago
  Loved that story in the nytimes. Keep up the good work. I think you're on to something here.
• russelluresti 9y ago
  I've worked in SV for the last 3 years at one of the top 5 tech companies, and I haven't seen much drug use, personally. I would say that there's a significant percentage that have/had medical marijuana cards and would either smoke or partake in edibles, but marijuana use is the only drug I've seen first-hand. I haven't even heard of anyone doing other drugs here, though I'm sure it happens.
• sudosteph 9y ago
  Seattle based techies I know definitely seem to enjoy weed. With legalization and advances in weed tech (e-nails), dabbing concentrates or vape pens are the typical mode of usage. It's a daily thing for most of the ones I know. I do see some stimulant usage (adderall, modafinil, caffeine, 5 hour energy), but it's usually in people with ADHD who are taking prescribed medication. Sometimes others will take it too, though I suspect some of those are are people who probably have ADHD and aren't getting treatment. Hyperfocus and love of novelty make tech an appealing field for ADHDers and those with ADHD tendencies. I've only known one techie to use coke, and thought he was crazy and way out of the norm for my group.
• werber 9y ago
  I have had a fairly large amount of coworkers who microdose LSD to tackle heavy problems. They all seemed to speak of it very highly, but a few of them ended up using harder drugs because they bought it along with their LSD via whatever dark web channel they used. One person in particular moved from just microdosing to using Crystal Meth, while still being a highly functional developer.
• opportune 9y ago
  I can't believe so many people here think none of their colleagues use stimulants. If you don't think they do, and you work somewhere that attracts young competitive people, it's just because nobody told you. I know plenty of people that take them every day and a smaller group of people that take them as-needed (if they need/want to do a marathon-session of coding). I don't know anybody that abuses them, in the sense that they use them to stay up for more than an all-nighter or who takes unreasonably high doses I'm both surprised and not surprised that so many people aren't aware of this. There is a definitely a self-selection effect in that I would guess that certain demographics (e.g. government contractors in Alabama) have wildly different cultures compared to SV. Drug users are also very good at knowing who does and doesn't take drugs (or at least who would be non-judgmental about them). In part that's because everybody's run into that mormon/teetotal developer or two who would think you're the devil incarnate if he even knew how much you drank, let alone did anything else. And even for well-meaning people who don't abuse drugs, I think they may not know about it simply because their friends and colleagues don't want to implicitly pressure them into it or to normalize it for them.
  • s73v3r_ 9y ago
    I also think that, for me at least, it's because I tend to avoid those high pressure, perform at all costs companies because, quite frankly, I'm not interested in that kind of environment. I like doing things outside of work.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• samplesizeone 9y ago
  Let me clue you in on something: Your bias is showing, and while I'm sure it comes from a serious place of care, concern, and pain, it's offensively reductive. As in I already hate your book for supposing substances used or abused is a problem. Life is a monumental series of problems and our species has adapted for thousands of years. Unless your book is 90% about alcohol then it's starting from a premise of Puritanism that will not sit well with probably a large swath of your intended audience. They will - and research will - shred it without mercy, and rightfully so. How we treat our bodies and lives as individuals is incredibly diverse. I would submit switching out "drugs" with "Religion of Choice" and see how interested people are in joining your perspective. I've been medicated by necessity for my entire life and not by my choice. I choose to identify any and all substances I take as medication now, and I will admit that I'd call my lifestyle inherently addicted to modern medicine. I would not be here without a wide swath of legal and stigmatized substances, from basic stuff like tobacco over the years, to more exotic compounds like designer steroids or other mind-bending, reality questioning opportunities throughout the years. I guess what it really boils down to, in my case and - I don't want to infer here, but it's hard not to with my 20 plus years of adulthood - is that it's none of your business what I put into my body whether it's between me and a dealer or doctor, and I have a gut feeling Peter maybe felt a similar sense of privacy and shame. You know, because people like to publicly shame drug addicts and throw them in jail in the US on the regular, and unless your book has a roadmap to fix this terrible misunderstanding of human nature and lack of compassion, well, it's part of the problem a lot of society refuses to recognize, accommodate, and adapt our lifestyles to understand and address. I think Ozzy Osbourne said it best: "Sobriety sucks"
  • programmarchy 9y ago
    You may have legitimate medical conditions that require treatment with drugs, but that is no reason to minimize the problems of drug addiction. It's a plague on society, and causes massive amounts of damage to not only the addicts themselves, but also their friends and families. Sobriety sucked for Ozzy because he had heroin withdrawals. He was obviously not endorsing drug abuse, but empathizing with the struggle of overcoming addiction. Unhealthy people may say working out sucks, too, because it's hard. But in the long run it's rewarding. Sobriety should be celebrated.
• balls187 9y ago
  Do you have contact info you can share for those of us who wish to not publicly disclose information.
  • tmp-20150107 9y ago
    +1
• rthomas6 9y ago
  The company I work for does a lot of defense sector work, so most of us have a clearance. I know of zero drug use besides the occasional social drinking. It seems like half of us, including me, practically live off of caffeine, but that's it. Using any drug could result in loss of your clearance (and hence, job), so if anyone were using, they would be unlikely to let it be known.
• nicholas73 9y ago
  Non-software engineer - don't use any drugs, no idea if any of my coworkers do. Probably not... my job environments have been way too stale. I don't even drink coffee - I fall asleep regardless. Smoking weed never got me "high" or whatever that's like - I just end up with a scratchy throat. I can drink my share but don't do it on my own - and now that I rarely drink, I just get the shits even having a couple of beers. Either I'm a really boring person, or the drug scene is way overblown.
• Lazare 9y ago
  I think it's interesting how some drugs (including very dangerous drugs) are normalised. Alcohol, caffeine, and (with a prescription, and in some cultures, even without) amphetamines[1] are just seen as "fine". People use them dangerously, openly talk about using them, joke about using them, participate and encourage a culture of abusing them, and nobody blinks. An acquaintance of mine ended up in the hospital after abusing caffeine to try and hit a project deadline, yet how many caffeine/coffee jokes have you heard? It's a dangerous, addictive, abusable substance. Hell, I'm writing this while drinking a caffeinated beverage. It's nuts. Conversely, research seems to suggest that modafinil is vastly safer than caffeine, non-addictive, not habit forming, doesn't build tolerances, essentially impossible to overdose from. The fact there's a coffee machine in my offices breakroom and free beer on Friday's, but not a basket of modafinil tabs[2], is one of life's mysteries. People die from alcohol (especially), amphetamines, and (to a much lesser extent) caffeine all the damn time. There are no recorded deaths due to modafinil. [1]: By which I mean Adderall, of course. But it's still speed, with all the danger that implies. Adderall is habit forming, tolerance building, and can and has killed people. [2]: Not suggesting that would actually be a good idea (although...), just that if we live in a world tolerant enough of dangerous drugs that we encourage the use of caffeine and alcohol, then why don't we tolerate drugs which are, at a minimum, an order of magnitude safer? (And probably more like several orders of magnitude.)
  • programmarchy 9y ago
    It's not mysterious. Coffee has been around over 500 years, and modafinil was discovered less than 50 years ago. Most people haven't even heard of modafinil. Plus, coffee tastes good.
    • Lazare 9y ago
      Well... 1) We've banned a lot of dangerous drugs that have been around for centuries. Opium has been used since at least 1500 BCE, so over three THOUSAND years. 2) I think coffee tastes awful and can't even stand the smell. So maybe I'm biased. :)
    • samirm 9y ago
• shiado 9y ago
  All the responses I have read here discuss illicit drugs but it would be worth trying to gather some information on prescription psychiatric drugs like SSRIs, SNRIs, and Benzos. I know a lot of people who take these drugs and they are often not even talked about as being drugs. I believe the use of these drugs isn't entirely about having a serious mental disorder and are often an indicator of people being in toxic environments that breaks them down. Doctors hand out prescriptions for these drugs like candy on Halloween.
• nordicnarcotic 9y ago
  I'm a programmer. 22M. And oh boy do I love telling other people about drugs! It started from pure taurine. It made me talkative like coffee and was in white powder form like cocaine. Nowadays, it has come to the point that a friend of mine has started giving me a notice that once I am drunk, I don't shut up about drugs. Last time he said, in a very lightweight manner, that maybe I have a drug problem. Couple weeks later, I sent him some giddy messages, and I got a response asking am I baked again. I got upset, as I was not, I was merely having a happy moment. Then it drew upon me. I had taken modafinil that day. I've also powered myself with caffeine, usually in the form of Red Bull and coffee. I also cut pure caffeine when I need an extra kick. I do it with a razor blade, as it looks cool. The terrible thing is, I have to remember which stack is the caffeine one and which one is modafinil. That's easier though if I'm cold, then I use pseudoephedrine, which is in capsules. The Ritalin which I have is stashed elsewhere. I did not always use amphetamines. At one point, I consumed 60oz of coffee a day instead. Then one day the wall appeared, e.g., I crashed, and I was sent to ER. Doctors thought I have a blood clot in my heart, and I might die. That experience gave me a PTSD, to which I got opioids. The opioids are the best drug I've ever had. Later on, a co-worker asked me whether I had thought about just moving to Adderall, which some of them have a prescription for. I also use cannabis. I find it the best way to start the weekend. It gets my thoughts away from work and school. Some of my friends use LSD instead. For example, my roommate might lock up to his room, ask not to be disturbed. That means drugs. But, he sold a company and is in VC now. This validated substance use as a fair thing to do. But, I've worked on two different continents. Where I am from, the Nordics, condemns brain doping. In the US, all the answers were in a pill form. Ask and get it. Here, it's a bad idea. You get in on a record, but you don't get the pills you _wanted to_. Tobacco products, snus or smoked, and alcohol, are fine of course. I also use those. Snus during work sometimes, alcohol never. The sad thing is, and worth mentioning is that the working hours are different. I don't have to put myself on the line here to qualify for a good contractor. It's almost as people lack the ambition, but I guess that's more or less what a work-life balance means. I don't like it here. Which brings us to the sad part. Despite comfortable life, I continue to push myself with stretch goals, which bring me back to substance use. I think I have a problem with wanting to do more than necessary. In the US, I came to my flat every day empty-headed, drank chamomile tea and went to sleep. I was mentally drained every day, but it felt like this is what my hefty paycheck is substituted off. Now I'm paid more, and if it just would suffice for me, I could bare it with coffee only. Unfortunately, I feel like there are two phases in my working life. The first one was without amphetamines, and the next one was with them. So it is not just about working anymore, it is working without amphetamine.
• bitL 9y ago
  I personally haven't used any drugs (and started drinking socially only in the past 3 years), but I know some founders (CxO) level using amphetamines almost daily (Adderall from kids' prescriptions or faked shipments from India/Russia) to keep them high performing and focused (US). It also made them more robotic and less compassionate. I haven't seen anyone taking other types of drugs regularly; some smoke cigarettes or weed, but that is becoming acceptable in Europe recently.
• outsidetheparty 9y ago
  The usage patterns I've observed in other techies matches suspiciously closely to my own -- which really tends to support the selection bias that many other people have mentioned: drug users tend to be very much birds-of-a-feather, they cluster among their own kind and tend not to notice the other types unless they're being really unsubtle about it. So with that grain of salt in mind, here's what I've got. The context here is long-term contracting at a wide variety of different offices ranging from button-down big corporate, to tiny angel-funded startups, over a couple decades. All US, mostly outside silicon valley. Pot: not uncommon, but also not noticeably more or less than the general population as far as I can tell. Most often as a wind-down-after-work thing, very occasionally as a brainstorming tool among the design folks -- never seen this done openly in-office, but on a telecommute day or after hours it wouldn't be too terribly unusual. I did some work with a company in post-legalization Colorado; people there had much the same attitude toward it as in areas where it's still not legal. Which is, increasingly, No Big Deal. Alcohol: I have the general impression that coders tend to drink slightly less than the general population. With a few exceptions, the ones really hitting the bar hard at the sales meetings and the corporate retreats tended to be from sales and marketing. For what it's worth I know a lot more people who are alcoholics (or former alcoholics) outside the tech industry than I do inside it. Stimulants: I'm sure there are people using Adderall or the like as a productivity enhancer, but I've never heard anyone discuss it, and have no idea how that usage would compare to the rest of the population. The idea that "everyone has to take adderall to keep up with the rest of the team, it's just so competitive!" is a common thing sounds... odd. (I'm not saying it never happens or doesn't exist. I'm saying that in 20 years of work I've never seen an office that worked that way.) I know of exactly zero coders or designers who use stimulants recreationally. There was one obvious cokehead of a CEO, who was the subject of a fair amount of eye-rolling behind his back; and I've known a few sales guys, investor types, and non-technical managers who were prone to the occasional burst of jitteriness and sniffles, but I've never seen anything like that among the tech people. (I had honestly been under the impression that cocaine had mostly gone out of fashion, until some friends who work in the restaurant industry set me straight. If you want coke, talk to a line cook, apparently.) Hallucinogens / psychedelics: Not at all uncommon as a "oh yeah I used to do a lot of that back in the day," or, like, "only when I go to burning man / firefly / my pagan festival / etc". Not so much beyond that. Nobody has that kind of free time. Other: It's difficult for me to imagine downers or opiates being at all compatible with technical work, but perhaps that's just naivety on my part. Prescribed antidepressants are quite common, and have little stigma attached these days. Tobacco smokers are few and far between. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to learn that some of the younger developers are doing ecstasy or whatever counts as club drugs now, but I'm too old to get invited to that sort of party anymore, so have no direct information for you.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• tmp-20150107 9y ago
  so, 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 problem, and encouraged me to take steps to fix it when he saw my work was suffering (time management for things other than 'obtaining heroin' often suffers as a heroin addict) but not told anyone else. there was a bad situation at a previous job where i had good health insurance that enabled me to enter a private rapid detox program (then naltrexone implants to stop opiates having any effect for the next six months, plus CBT/counselling) but then my immediate manager got me fired essentially for completely arbitrary and made up reasons, but i was unable to do anything about that due to not wanting anyone else to know i was an addict. various interesting things happened to me while travelling to conferences or remote customer offices, often in other countries. it's actually fairly easy to buy heroin on the street anywhere in the world, it turns out, even without speaking the language. if you'd like more information, feel free to ask me anything and i'll try and reply if i can. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tmp-20150107 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tmp-20150107
  • s73v3r_ 9y ago
    "(time management for things other than 'obtaining heroin' often suffers as a heroin addict)" This is horrible, but now I can't help but see your boss creating a Jira ticket for "Acquire heroin".
  • Eilene 9y ago
    thanks, I'd like to email you to the address in your profile, ok?
    • tmp-20150107 9y ago
      no problem...
• mncolinlee 9y ago
  I haven't really noticed much of anything in recent years. That should be surprising, since many of our sites are in states that have legal weed. However, there's a decent amount of coffee use and many of us drink a microbrew beer late in the afternoon once or twice a week. I believe the Ballmer Effect is real, but it's also risky and no one wants to be perceived as having a drinking problem.
• superfamicom 9y ago
  I am a web developer, male, early 30s. I consume marijuana/weed every day in some form, typically vapepen but sometimes flower or beverage before yoga. I was microdosing LSD for about a year with great results, but enjoy it more not microdosing but social interaction becomes more frustrating, other trade offs. I've used DMT and derivatives, but they weren't as beneficial as LSD. Lots of experimentation but these are the ones that stuck around.
• Power_User 9y ago
  I will say first that my current position in life comes with exceptionally uncommon circumstances and so I'm not a good measuring stick to use against others. I've been a programmer for decades but I am also a combat veteran, during which time I saw and did many things that even the movies don't show. I was an alcoholic for many years, mostly in response to those things. But besides that, I am am a lifelong recreational drug user. I have a special relationship with addiction in that I stop myself from getting in too deep. Before I continue, I'll address the overbearing people who think all people should live the way they do and say that yes, I'm completely and utterly aware of my own vulnerability and the knowledge that I'm not invincible or exceptional is actually what keeps me so acutely aware of my own drug use. I keep myself as informed as possible about the substances I use through the use of dose journals, where I track every substance I put into my body (including e.g. caffeine and regular food), along with as much ancillary information as possible, such as my sleep patterns and mood. I spend money to test the substances I buy to ensure they're not adulterated. As for the addiction, I've been bitten a couple of times over my entire life of drug use, early on as a young adult, but for example if I recognize that I'm flirting with addiction, I will just cold turkey whatever substance I'm using and allow my body and brain to "heal". I think it's a willpower issue which allows me to maintain control over the substances, because I've never in my life chased after a high such that I got to a point where it would be dangerous. Even with pharmaceutical opiates, I would completely stop taking them far, far before I ever let myself get to a point where I might be in danger. Willpower and also being informed. I am the only person I've ever met that cares so much about testing my drugs, keeping logs of my drug use, and never taking drugs in dangerous amounts in combination or chasing a high. So, for the sake of productivity and mental efficiency, I take stimulants pretty regularly these days, but rarely on a daily basis. Adderall and methylphenidate (Ritalin). I swap these prescriptions with my doctor pretty regularly to avoid addiction. I occasionally smoke marijuana. I occasionally take kratom. I do drink caffeine almost on a daily basis, but I can get too busy to remember to make a cup of coffee or grab a Monster from the fridge. In the past, for recreation, I have used pharmaceutical opiate painkillers, MDMA, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine, and raw opium. I am extremely careful not to chase the high! I am completely at peace with the fact that I cannot feel good at all times, and feeling down or "just okay" is as much a part of life as sleeping. As far as others in the companies where I've worked, I am aware that a small minority of my coworkers used some drugs recreationally, and I am aware that a minority of my coworkers used pharmaceutical stimulants, although the vast majority do use stimulants on a daily basis through caffeine. I think the "drug-using" proportion of my coworkers is a minority, and mostly clustered around the use of pharmaceutical stimulants and marijuana, if we're not counting coffee and tea.
• throwaway23221 9y ago
  I've took everything under the sun... Now I don't touch anything but cannabis due to experiencing mental health issues myself and seeing a lot of my peers, who also took drugs, have similar issues. I've had more than a few peers who were upstanding, intelligent and well presented members of society, end up in a mental hospital for the rest of their lives or in a grave. You can't place every drug in the same category, no, but excessive use of anything leads to negative consequences, especially for males under 25 who haven't fully matured. I'd say in the UK, in those professions, most people are middle class and have not seen the damage that various drugs and alcohol can do. Most people in these professions can afford the habit and it does not affect their lives. From growing up in a poor area I have seen the damage that drugs can do, but even then it was never something that never really entered my mind when deciding what drugs to take or how excessively I was going to take them until I had a scare myself and lost close friends. I still have a weed habit though, consumption has increased along with my wage, but I haven't touched anything else for years and have no intention of doing so. Before I used to really want to take hard drugs, now I really don't.
• anon314159265 9y ago
  I am a successful engineer with a wonderful loving family. I'm also addicted to hydrocodone. It's been about 7 years. It started I'm sure like many others, a bad back, a wisdom tooth, and a little slip of paper good for 3 refills. One day I asked myself what these wonder pills would do for me when I wasn't in pain. It was instant bliss, like nothing I'd ever imagined life could be. I confined my indulgence at first to weekends, then a few times a week, then.... I'm at 50mg a day now, down from 100 so there's that. The real junkies will be laughing at me, and perhaps rightfully so, but I'm not laughing. I've experienced withdrawal a few times, and never longer than 3 days. Just as words cannot describe the sensation this drug gives me, it is equally impossible to explain the nightmare that occurs when my lazy mu-opioid receptors don't get what they are accustomed to. I keep myself on the edge of withdrawal all the time, only taking when I'm about to get the shakes, to ward off the demons for just a few hours more. I have a fighting chance to kick this thing, unlike many and I realize how lucky I am, but also I know I may not live long enough to reach my goal. I'm very good at spotting the fakes, but the fakes are getting better every year. The sad consequence of the tightening of supply in the past several years--closing the pill mills, rescheduling, limits on number of prescriptions a doctor can write--is a sharp increase in the black market price, a surge of demand from addicts whose doctors have written them off, and a massive incentive for counterfeits, many containing fentanyl. Prohibition doesn't work, people are dying. But who cares, right? We're just a bunch of junkies. I keep a note in my wallet explaining to my family that I love them and that I am sorry.
• forapurpose 9y ago
  A tangential question for the journalist @Eilene: > I'd like to use some of your comments in the book and will not know or need to know your name How do you verify the stories? I'm sure you don't just trust random postings to Internet forums and print them as truth (I hope?). Personally, I've been in SV for 20 years, founded several successful startups, sleep 4 hours a night on average, and eat only nuts and berries. Or I live in my parents' basement amid a haze of pot smoke, and spend my days trolling the Internet. Or I'm a 16 year old provocateur writing this when I should be paying attention in trigonometry class, but I'm not out of spite for the ADD meds my parents make me take. Or I work down the hall from you and I've really wanted to ask you this question in person, but I only have the courage when I drink. Or maybe I'm someone else today ... let me think ...
• alexandercrohde 9y ago
  What I wish people were saying on this thread are: 1. Do their friends in tech partake more/less/same than non-tech friends? Because I know people in tech who've done shrooms etc, but way way less than the ones outside of tech. 2. This would be better viewed quantitatively, seeing the whole gambit of responses here.
  • ryandrake 9y ago
    Yea, if there is one conclusion from this thread it’s that this topic is in dire need of solid academic study and measurement.
• unsayable 9y ago
  I have strong opinions about this, because like most developers, I've tried to see how I can use drugs to augment my life. As a programmer at a startup, everyone seems to accept marijuana, alcohol, and caffeine as acceptable, though I think it's considered unacceptable to be high at work (but probably nobody would care). Opiates are considered taboo, and rightfully so. Adderall is prevalent and easily available. For me personally, after an exploratory phase of trying all the drugs, I've figured this much out: * MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, 2-Cs, etc can be great for expanding your world view and generating new ideas or as therapy, but aren't really helpful in a white-collar worker sense. None of my peers would judge each other based on use these weekend drugs, but IMO they shouldn't really have a routine place in anyone's life. I'm pretty sure this is why people go to burning man, as a sort of drug-induced retreat. * Dissociatives (ketamine, DXM) are a strange class of drugs. I believe that ketamine or dextromethorphan will ultimately be seen as the most effective treatment for chronic depression. These probably don't have any place for daily use, but could be useful to get out of a depressive state. The research isn't in yet on this though, so tread with care. * Cocaine has supply chain issues, so I refuse to try it, but it's also very expensive and doesn't seem to be that effective for productivity compared to alternatives. * Modafinil and armodafinil have gained popularity lately (probably because of grey-market sales), and they're super effective for staying awake, but not very effective for improving productivity. * Amphetamines (adderall, vyvanse, dexedrine) and phenidates (ritalin, focalin) are super useful, but have to be used with care. I have an adderall prescription which I use a couple times a week to power through the week's work. This is great for me because I work from home and can spend an uninterrupted day or two crushing the work for the week. These drugs are unfortunately prescribed daily for ADHD patients like myself, but you'd have to be insane to take them every day. You'll quickly burn out after about a week and be worse off than you were before you started taking them. People consuming massive amounts of caffeine probably need one of these drugs instead. These drugs are addictive, but not seriously so... stopping will mean a couple days of rest before going back to normal. * Benzos (xanax, klonopin, etc) are super useful for anxiety, but the same rule applies to be careful. They're only useful a couple times a week before you develop an addiction problem. Xanax is great for getting to sleep and resetting your schedule, and klonopin is great for when you're going to have a super stressful day with things outside of your control and you'd like to temper your emotions a bit. These drugs make you not give a fuck and feel great, which can be a problem for some, but is another tool in the toolbox of the responsible drug user. I have also have a prescription for both klonopin and xanax, but my doctor knows I don't take them daily. Almost anyone drinking alcohol daily probably actually needs a benzo and counseling about responsible use. I don't use alcohol for stress relief, but I will have a few drinks at a party. These drugs are addictive, but very seriously so... stopping suddenly once you've developed an addiction can cause erratic behavior and seizures. * Tobacco seems generally frowned upon, but vaping is somewhat acceptable. Sometimes I vape low amounts of nicotine to help deal with stress, but I always regret it and end up quitting. It's much easier to quit than cigarettes. * Marijuana I use daily, usually after work and before bed. My doctor thinks I might have PTSD from various life events, and I have some very disturbing dreams. Marijuana both lets me change my perspective, which helps to end the work day or shift my mood when I'm really upset about something, and it lets me turn off dreaming while I sleep so I can get better rest. If I stop using marijuana, no withdrawal happens, but disturbing dreams do. * I don't like opiates, so I don't take them and don't know that much about them, other than they seem to cause the most problems for the most people. I would love to understand how people enjoy them though... They make you feel warm and sleepy, but with nausea and constipation. I don't think this is a good trade. If I wasn't a relatively privileged person as a tech worker, I would likely not be able to go to my doctor and demand adderall, xanax, and klonopin while being open about my marijuana use. It is nice, however, to have a drug toolbox that's completely legal and insurance paid (well, except for the weed). All together, I would say that drugs (whether prescription, off-label, or illicit) have had a hugely net positive impact on my life, both professional and personal. Let me know if I can answer any questions for you and good luck with your project. I hope you'll find that education and safe access are better than prohibition.
• trenhard 9y ago
  I've a got a bit of a different use case than seen in here. I'm not sure I would go as far as calling it an addiction but it's probably pretty close. I've been BnC (blast and cruise) steroids for the last few years. This means that I never completely come off so my body hasn't had to produce test naturally since I started which may mean it might not ever work again if I do come off steroids. Currently on a blast of testosterone enthanate and trenbolone acetate. Going to add in an oral soon as well. As far as getting an edge in work I don't know if theres anything there but I have had people comment on how I just never get tired. I also never get depressed since I started using high doses of test. Of course I'm also working out a lot and it changes the dynamic of social encounters with people when you're all jacked. Some times it's good and some times it's bad. Now by bodybuilding standards it's still very mild doses and I have not yet gotten into insulin and hgh yet but because of my salary I've been contemplating going on hgh Because of all the benefits of it. (HGH even the under ground and Chinese stuff is very expensive but has great benefits to regular people, see Elon Musk as an example of an obvious user)
• throwaway4speed 9y ago
  I'm a male in my mid-40s. I own a web development shop, code daily and employ about a half dozen people. Relatively healthy, although should work out more than I do. Long history with stimulants and work. These days my main stimulant is coffee, but it makes me very jittery. I go through phases, maybe weeks to months at a time where I ditch coffee and take small doses (< 5 mg) of Adderall. I think I'm starting one of those phases now. This morning I was stressed about a new client kickoff, so I took about 5mg of Adderall IR, along with the rest of the dozen or so supplements that I normally take. But I didn't drink my normal morning coffee and now I have a wicked headache. I hate overdoing it on the Adderall, because it changes my personality too much--makes me cold and distant from my friends and family. My last startup, with big time VC funding--the whole startup team, myself included were heavy daily users of Adderall. It was an open secret. The CEO was the worst, with a 40-50mg/day habit. The COO was over the top neurotic, I'm sure made worse by her Ritalin habit. Biggest victim in that situation? Empathy and true friendship. My last startup before that one, was a YC-backed bay area with a CEO also on mega doses of daily Adderall. This guy was the worst person I've ever worked with, and that is quite an accomplishment. He didn't sleep and insulted everyone on a regular basis. Would criticize everyone behind their backs about not working enough. My own stimulant use and abuse dates back to my very first startup when I was just a programmer, during the first dotcom boom. My partying friends introduced me to meth, and I rationalized taking it based on the fact that it is available in prescription form, so "how bad can it be?" and that also I was clearly suffering from extreme ADD. I was a daily user for over a year and a half. Would crush up the crystals and snort them. Was terrified of smoking or injecting the stuff and never tried it that way. Totally rationalized my use as necessary for the insane hours my team was putting in at work. 60-70 hours per week were normal. On some weekend I'd go out and party all night and not get any sleep. Eventually as the needed dose went up, I started losing a lot of weight, was down 100 pounds from my peak at one point. People were definitely noticing I was strung out although nobody ever really said anything at work. My close friends were aware and supportive. Some of them would do it sometimes too. I quit when it seemed my girlfriend was going to start using too--she wanted to be skinny and beautiful and popular, in her words. My conscience hit me too hard in realizing what was about to happen with that particular situation. Also I didn't really recognize my face in the mirror anymore. I flushed about 500 dollars worth down the toilet and quit cold turkey, knowing that I wouldn't be able to afford to buy more even if I wanted to do so. My boss fired me about 2 weeks later. Said something had changed, that I had lost my spark. I'll never forgive that asshole for that. He knew what was going on and didn't care. It was only fine because my next job had me flying all over the place and making new friends, which made quitting a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. I still miss meth sometimes. It gave me invincibility. I would code for what felt like days at a time, and all the practice really let me make strides in my skills very quickly. For a brief period of time I was superhuman, but there was almost always a crash. During those days I was using a lot of other drugs too and going out partying a lot, it all kind of blurred together. I barely remember it now more than 15 years later. Quitting meth left me paranoid about getting hooked again for quite awhile afterwards, but after maybe 2-3 years realized that the ADD is real and that I really did need some meds to cope. I went to the shrink and easily got a script for Adderall. The first time around I remember that I was on it daily for almost a year before realizing that I didn't like who I had become. It made me cold and unloving and I hated it. I quit again. Ever since I've only taken it sporadically, when I really really have to focus something that I really really don't want to focus on. Don't really have any regrets. Drugs should be legal--all of them. People should be able to decide how to use them and live with the consequences. Sometimes they're not that bad. Just think of how many people do coke on a regular basis and don't really have any ill effects. It just comes with the lifestyle of going out and staying out til dawn. And then eventually you grow up and don't want to do that anymore. At least that's what I've seen amongst my friends.
• samirm 9y ago
  Hi Eilene, interesting questions, but I don't have anything to share except for a few questions of my own. Have you done any of these drugs listed in the responses? Would you ever try any of them and why/ not? What is your understanding and general ideas on things like addiction, the war on drugs and the typical taboo impression of these substances and culture? Thanks.
• Dowwie 9y ago
  I drink two to three cups of coffee a day. Black. No sweetener. However, I have a major sweet tooth. Oversized Trader Joe's dark chocolate bars are my drug of choice. I can eat two or three pieces from a bar a day. I enjoy the chocolate largely as a dessert after dinner. I find that it doesn't interfere with my coding. I have an uncle who destroyed his heart by abusing stimulants to get through med school, residency, etc. Ultimately, he needed a heart transplant. As a child, I learned from his mistakes and so my only stimulants in life are sugar and caffeine. I am also a pizzaholic. I would eat an entire New Jersey thick crust pizza under the right circumstances, such as there being a pizza in front of me and no one there to stop me from eating it all. When I see pizza wasted at a meeting I cry inside. I'm 37.
• skookumchuck 9y ago
  I drink a lot of coffee.
• Uhhrrr 9y ago
  I 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 years afterward. I've known a couple of people who combined intensity and dullness to an extent which might indicate Adderall usage, although I've also known completely drugphobic people who come off the same way.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • Eilene 9y ago
    What kind of work do you do?
    • Uhhrrr 9y ago
      I have worked as a developer in EDA, educational software, and streaming video. Mostly writing code in C++ and Java.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• hacknat 9y ago
  10 years in tech and I’ve never seen drugs in the workplace, other than alcohol at the occasional mixer. I would say pot usage is pretty high, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone come to work stoned (thought I had a customer who was smoking on a call once). Honestly, you have to operate at such a high mental capacity all day long in this profession that I think consistent drug use (beyond weed and alcohol) would be evident to your coworkers after a couple of weeks. I’m sure drugs are done by lots of people in this industry, but I’ve never even heard it referenced openly, let alone seen anything.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• Snowwombat 9y ago
  IT devops here, Australia, also worked in Electronic engineering, as well, about 20 years experience all up. Stimulants are heavily abused,usually various forms of legal ones like Dexi Amphetamine, Adderall, Vyvance etc You get the occasional cocaine user, but not a lot of meth heads, they tend to burn out fast. There is a pretty big work hard / play hard culture so a lot of drinking after hours, and party drugs during the times we have off. (Cocaine, MDMA) Not a huge amount of weed smokers in IT Devops, not much use of drugs like LSD.
• sarahmm100 9y ago
  I have a masters and I’ve been taking adderall and other forms of it for 10 years. I now live in San Fran and have a lot of inside info on founders and tech people who use all sorts of drugs. Email me if you would like to talk further lifeofsarahmiller@gmail.com
• sarahmm100 9y ago
  Email me and we can talk lifeofsarahmiller@gmail.com. It won’t be a waste of time. I live in San Fran , have a masters, date someone in tech and have been taking adderall and other forms of it for 10 years.
• jes5199 9y ago
  last year, someone was telling me that at an Ayahuasca retreat in Peru (?) they bumped into a team of programmers from a startup who hoped to use the visionary trace to come up with new applications for the Etherium blockchain
• jernfrost 9y ago
  Where I work it doesn't seem to be much, but there are certainly people who have tried weed. Some have done cocaine I know. I colleague of mine many years ago started doing cocaine at around 25 and he got into a lot of problems. I remember him talking about how drugs were much easier to handle when you start late and is much more mature. Turned out he was wrong and couldn't control it. But I live in Norway, where I think drug usage is somewhat lower than in the US, at least for weed. I hear much more crazy stories about drug abuse from my blue collar friends from my old industrial home town. Personally I don't even drink coffee. Occasionally I drink red bull to stay awake. I've tried soft drugs in the past many years ago but that had nothing to do with the industry, workload or anything like that. However I do suffer a kind of burnout/mild depression and often think I would have loved to do drugs just to get through the days. But I know that is a horrible idea so I have no plans on acting on it. People never seem able to control their drug usage, no matter how certain they are before they start.
  • aaron_m04 9y ago
    > I remember him talking about how drugs were much easier to handle when you start late and is much more mature. Turned out he was wrong and couldn't control it. No, he was right. It's just that this drug still wasn't easy enough.
• exelius 9y ago
  Depends what you define as drug use; but yes. I’m on the consulting side, and I personally take stimulants for ADHD, but I don’t abuse them. Stimulant abuse is pretty obvious on the job, be it coffee or meth, so it’s best to avoid them if you can get by without them. I don’t drink or abuse illegal drugs; but I have known plenty of functional alcoholics and more than one literal code junkie. The culture honestly enables the alcoholics, and there’s nothing worse than being on a project with an alcoholic partner because they’ll make you go with them to the bar every night. Ugh. Marijuana (normally hash oil in the form of vape pens) is a whole other thing. It’s nearly universal among consultants given our mobility and the high level of stress — nearly everyone has a friend on a project in a recreational state who brings back vape cartridges for their pals. Depends widely on the location and how illegal it is in various places of course. Everyone has done it on the DL for years, but we’re just now starting to talk about it.
• petercooper 9y ago
  Only mentioning this because no-one else has, but.. beta blockers (e.g. propranolol). Even at a very low dose, these have been a game changer for me when dealing with being on stage or heavily social situations where I might ordinarily fall into fight-or-flight. This is all legal and apparently quite common though, so not the "sexiest" story for sure.
• burner890 9y ago
  I'm in my 20s and have worked as an engineer at a top tech company for over a year. I've seen a moderate amount of drug use during that time. I wouldn't characterize it as ubiquitous by any means, but it also isn't that uncommon. I've never heard of any of my coworkers doing drugs at work, but many of them do them recreationally outside of work and occasionally at work functions. This all may sound a little judge-y but this is what I know: Two of the engineers on my team do drugs with some regularity. One likes to consume MDMA and other club drugs socially when going out with friends (I'd guess he does it on roughly a semi-monthly basis). The other is a regular cocaine user. He's somewhat cagey about this, but I suspect he does cocaine at least weekly. They have told me stories about doing cocaine together with other people in the office including college interns. At my company there are also multiple managers in their early 40s/late 30s who frequently get drunk to the point of blacking out as part of after-hours work functions. These are guys with wives and kids at home, some of whom are very senior. Best guess as to why they tell me this stuff is because my coworkers seem to assume I smoke a lot of weed (I don't) and therefore feel comfortable telling me what they get up to outside of work. I also typically drink liberally with them at the aforementioned work events so I'm seen as somewhat trustworthy. It's unusual enough that I'm still surprised when I find out my coworkers do some of these things but try not to judge them for it as I tried a few drugs in college. I'd probably do them too if I enjoyed drugs more. The attitude of my manager and others towards this kind of behavior is best summarized as "the less I know the better". My boss is also pretty young and definitely has some idea of what young engineers at tech companies get up to. I get the feeling he willfully turns a blind eye so he doesn't have to feel responsible for the indiscretions of my teammates. My take is that there's a little bit of denial about substance abuse within tech. It becomes very easy to see the drug use described above as normal when you're in an environment where lots of your peers are doing it and everyone is extremely well-paid and well-educated and able to rationalize self-destructive behavior in ways that are hard to argue with. It's a symptom of an industry that puts a premium on people with a lot of raw intelligence and high work ethic but not much self awareness. If you are interested in hearing more feel free to reach out at the email on my HN profile.
• dqpb 9y ago
  I drink three cups of English Breakfast a day. If I try going without it I get a really irritating headache. If Im feeling extra sluggish I'll upgrade to the strong stuff - PG Tips!
  • alex_hitchins 9y ago
    Without wanting to sound like a pusher, you tried Yorkshire Gold? Go on, give it a go.
• asyouare 9y ago
  People taking drugs to be more productive at the keyboard. Now that’s not exactly the scene from the movie where the hero wins the girl. Don’t worry though, just remember - you’ve been instructed - that everything is getting better. As you are.
• inDigiNeous 9y ago
  I am a software developer and someone running their own project. I am a recovering stimulant addict, and a recovered cannabis addict. And by stimulants, I mean caffeine in it's various forms. In the beginning when I was under 20, it started with coding through the weekends with the power of Pepsi. I used to vomit this black goo out of my body after quickly guzzling down a 1.5l bottle, and I thought it was just ok, the sugar and caffeine rush was worth it so I could code through the night. When I started coding professionally later in my life, when I was 28-29, I would go back to this connection and always drinking strong black tea while coding. Did this for many years and though of nothing wrong in it. At some point I started to gravitate towards green tea and mate. Yerba mate became my favorite stimulant for a long time. I thought the caffeine gave me a way to get into the zone, to go deep in the code and continue that for hours and hours. What I didn't see in the long run until later, was this habit was eating away my core power, slowly and bit by bit, and giving me trouble sleeping, something that in combination with deep depression led to me to discover cannabis as a cure for those. Couple of years of daily cannabis use by vaporizing, and I thought it was the best thing ever. Now I could be more creative, focus better, and even get sleep. At this point when I was bored with my work, I would vape in the morning sometimes and go to work slightly stoned, thinking I was acing it. I didn't do this very often, but definitely during a period when I was thinking of quitting my job I was many times stoned at work, just trying to cope with it. But slowly this habit started to have it's toll, I was becoming weak, addicted, I couldn't function without cannabis. I thought it would be easy to quit, but man, the habit and addiction is strong. Took me over 7 years of periodical on and off usage to really decide and see how continous use of cannabis made me make bad decisions, made me think I was creative and able, while I was making silly creative decisions and letting the drug affect my work. Many times while high I would think my work and designs were really beautiful, but when looking at those sober I would see they were really not something I would make when I was sober. The drug had it's effect on my work, and it was not coming purely out of me, but through the filter of that drug. Cannabis also made me really sensitive to things, not being able to stand my own opionion, I really didn't care in that mood, I just wanted to escape to that bubble and be there. I managed to get out of that habit and thought pattern with serious inner work. Meditation was the most strongest thing that stayed with me during those years. It helped me during all the ups and lows and I never needed anything external to do it, I could rely it being always with me. I wish somebody had taught me this skill, or told me about it with more persuasion. I always tought I was ADHD and that I couldn't focus on things long enough. Then I learned how to quiet my mind, with meditation. It calmed my mind down. It clears the plate so to speak when done habitually. And it's always with me. It's the best thing that has happened to me. Seriously. Anyway, I'm still recovering from the stimulant use. While starting to work on my own project and startup thing, I went to coffee because I could go to a nice coffee place and work there without having a workplace, drink one cup of coffee. Later I would combine this with L-teanine to get the perfect combination of stimulation and calming down. Little did I know how addictive coffee was, man that is one strong drug right there. After one year I started getting panic attacks, something completely new to me, just from drinking one cup of strong coffee. Anyway, long story short, caffeine started to put me really towards the edge and in the long run just drained my energy, I had to quit. Now, finally I have also gotten out of the psychological pattern of combining coding with caffeine, it took serious work but now I see that by being sober I have more focus and sustainable work time, if I am well rested and nutritioned. If the rest, nutrition or exercise is out of place, I have to fix that first, not try to push it with stimulants. I've also worked with many entheogens and psychedelics during the years, which psilocybine mushrooms, LSD and ayahuasca being the most beneficial for me. I can't stress enough how much especially mushrooms and ayahuasca have helped me to heal myself from chronic depression. But those are again only tools, the inner strength is the one that carries through all of these external tools. In the software development field, I see many people taking LSD and other psychedelics, it's really common place, to get visions, to see how to build things, to heal one self to be able to contribute for making this world a better place. Heavy stimulants like amphetamines are not really talked about, but I feel many are doing that also, many with a prescription drug for their ADHD/ADD perhaps.
• sidcool 9y ago
  This is a great initiative. The hyper enthusiastic nature of our tech industry hides many of the underlying problems. You can also mention about the tech addiction that is ruining so many people. I am one of the victims and not a recovering tech addict. But one particular friend of mine had it worse. He is borderline ADHD, high sugar and fat due to sedentary lifestyle, anxiety issues, eye problems, headaches, insomnia etc. I am not sure how many people will have to suffer before this problem is addressed.
• anonymus1 9y ago
  :)
• burnermoto 9y ago
  dont work in tech, Work in direct patient-care. When patients are admitted as in paitientswe ask health hx questions. People tend to be very honest with health care workers and always tell the truth about their substance use. Whenever i see a (usually) Caucasian male btw 25-45, its always cardiac issues and there's always coke in their hx. These are not losers living in their moms basement, it's Yale town yuppies, coal harbour finance guys,north van architects etc that thought they could handle it, till that angina kicked in. These guys get the benefit of the doubt, but First Nation males and people that live on the DTES dont. You have no idea how many patient charts i see, that clearly say " DO NOT DISCUSS SUBSTANCE ISSUES WITH FAMILY/FRIENDS IN ROOM" as the patient hasn't told them and doesn't want them to know. At least we have a more progressive approach to substance abuse. This abstinence, just say no Nancy Reagan BS is unrealistic
  • kridsdale1 9y ago
    I appreciate seeing the Vancouver perspective. I don’t live there anymore but I went to UBC and the openness about drugs in Canada was surprising. Like everyone’s attitude was “we’ll be fine, have some fun, none of it really matters”.
• HappyThrowaway 9y ago
  I have been suffering from depression for a long time... decades. I have tried many antidepressants; none of them help, and/or the side effects are worse than the depression itself. Until I took oxycodone one day. I don't remember the reason... perhaps a toothache... but my wife had them at the time (for pain) and I took half a pill. (Not sure about the dosage.) Suddenly, euphoria! That was a really strange sensation, considering I had not been feeling good in... years, probably, except for the (very) rare mood swing that went "up" instead of "down". Of course, the next time you take it, it doesn't work as well, so you take a little more. The usual addiction cycle. Except that didn't happen in my case; a higher dose (say, a whole pill) would not make me feel good; it would just make me feel weird and nauseous and dizzy. So I would wait a day or two, then take the half pill again. This went on for a little while without any bad side effects (that I am aware of). (At some point my wife stopped taking it, and so I had to do the same. I don't think there was much of a withdrawal, probably because of the low dose.) I think oxycodone might actually be helpful for me, as an antidepressant. Feeling better every three or four days is not a cure, but it sure beats feeling miserable all the time. There is even some evidence that for some people with non-addictive personalities, it might be beneficial. [1] But, needless to say, I am very reluctant to bring this up to doctors or counselors, and even if I did, they probably could not, or would not, prescribe it anyway. It's frustrating though, to know that there is a medicine out there that at least does something against my depression, yet I am unable to get it. [1] https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.12.2017?code=ajp-site https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.156.12...
• mrmondo 9y ago
  I can answer any questions you have around Modafinil and Armodafinil over a 4~ year period. If that’s of interest to you free to contact me via DM on twitter - @s_mcleod
• pandaZz 9y ago
  I am working in tech sector as a software developer and also do a little marketing/consulting. I use cannabis to boost my creativity and it also helps me calming down after hard days of work. Of course I drink coffee in the morning and until afternoon, don't know many people who don't do at my work. I smoke (e-cigarette) and many colleagues do, too. When partying I like to drink (beer, wine, cocktails). So pretty normal in my opinion and nothing to hide for in 21st century.
• geff82 9y ago
  Ok, just my datapoints: mid-30, married, 2 children, never smoked a single cigarette, never taken any other form of stuff that is covered by the „War on drugs“ or that soon could be (or any other „prescription“ drug like painkillers). I drink a glass of champagne maybe 4-6 times a year and coffee about 3 cups a day. I prefer a glass of fresh orange juice (which I perceive as real luxury) and self-baked bread over any sort of alcoholic beverage (I like beer a lot, but 99% drink the non-alcoholic version).
• hguhghuff 9y ago
  Drugs make you less smart and you need to be as smart as possible to program. I've never once in 30 year career noticed anyone taking stimulants to enhance their work.
• drakonka 9y ago
  I just take a few basic supplements regularly: creatine, fish oil, caffeine with L-Theanine. We also have quiet/"nap" rooms in the office to take a break in when needed, which are nice.
• bad_dev 9y ago
  I'm a software developer. I've taken adderall for the last 15 years. I have ADHD. Adderall changed my life for the better. I thought ADHD was bullshit until I saw the difference adderall made in my life. I don't function without it. I don't see it as a performance booster or a productivity aid. For me it's a necessity. It's the difference between remembering to pay my bills and having my car repossessed even though I had the money (true story). Negative side effects... I have an essential tremor. The adderall makes it worse. Eating peas is a frustrating experience. Beyond that, nothing. I wish it curbed my appetite, but it doesn't. I wish it gave me superhuman coding skills, but it doesn't. For me it enables me to hold a job. I understand that it's a different experience if you don't have ADHD. Friends tell me that they buzz. Their heart pounds. It's speed. None of that is true for me. I take 60mg XR daily. At this level I'm a functioning member of society. Nothing more.
• dekhn 9y ago
  I'm an ex-scientist and software engineer at a major tech company. I consume cannabis and have for several decades, on a regular basis. I find it helps tremendously when dealing with long, tedious work (common in software engineering) as well as being helpful with creativity. There are positives and negatives; cannabis affects the memory, ability to concentrate and think, and mood. One time, my health provider pushed me into a rehab program when I just needed a prescription refilled. I spent time hanging out with other cannabis consumers, alcoholics and narcotics addicts. TBH, there was a distinct difference between the regular cannabis users and the regular users of alcohol and narcotics (physical, mental and emotional). I worked for a boss who was very successful but after an injury got addicted to narcotics/opiates. He had about 4-5 years of unhappy life before he died. Nobody at the job ever confronted him- they just let him wallow until he died, because he brought all the money into the department. Many tech companies and elsewhere seem to have problems with alcohol- too much of it on site and off site and it leads to abuse and harrassment. Personally, I wish my company would serve joints or vapes at TGIF instead of crappy beer. I'm not worried about people knowing I consume cannabis, because it's legal in my state, I have a medical prescription (it helps tremendously for my anxiety), I have a long and successful career, and hell, it's CA- 60-75% of people puff occasionally. Some people look at my usage and consider it abuse, but I don't. I feel like I've found a sustainable medicine that's preferable to pharmaceutical alternatives, and use it responsibly. I expect to raise my kids, retire, and live to my 80s.
  • Eilene 9y ago
    Are you aware of others in your company or at other companies that also use cannabis as much as you? Or are you aware of people using narcotics/amphetamines?
    • dekhn 9y ago
      Based on my understanding of the Bay Area, where I've worked, my usage is definitely more frequent and in larger dosages than 99% of employed individuals, but many people consume cannabis on a semi-regular basis. Dunno about the narcotics or amphetamines, it's not something I hear about regularly.
• guiseroom 9y ago
  Can we email you?
• instaheat 9y ago
  Sales 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.
• mannanj 9y ago
  I'd love for to investigate caffeine. At least in American society, coffee is the most utilized in office jobs and also seen as the most accepted. Does this lead to a lack of scientific and corporate interest on the long term affects? What are the adverse affects on various job performance factors: quality of sleep, memory and attention, actual productivity vs perceived productivity? Personally I'm an active drinker of caffeinated tea. And I feel less productive drinking it than when purely sober after a month of fasting in Ramadan. While this is a small sample size, and maybe not even correlated, I feel like year after year after re-introducing caffeine I lose productivity and eventually sleep.
• propman 9y ago
  Did you take a look at that google executive Forrest Hayes who died from heroin OD injected by a sugar baby from seeking arrangement? I think that's a huge story in itself. The Bay Area has created a lot of wealth, a substantial amount given to individuals who display characteristics of introverted, libertarian, extreme individuality, which along with high drug use has resulted in a burgeoning sex for money trade. In my extremely limited and potentially erroneous pov, this has indirectly further increased drug usage for both the women and men. There are a lot of negative externalities from Silicon Valley and multiple threads to pull on but the extremes of everything from politics to high costs of home ownership has resulted in some quite depressing realities.