7 ms·

Addict Pride?

48 points by jamesbritt 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago
I'd argue this is already to some extent culturally accepted, but mostly only in an "arts" context, and not generally in any formal discussion like medicine. But in general culture, people often do seem to view, e.g., the alcoholism of the absinthe-cafes era, or the drugs of the Beatniks, or the LSD of the 60s-70s, as a type of personality and lifestyle that may, in some cases, be at least worth respecting if not imitating. Mostly relates to the arts, although there are a handful of other examples, such as Paul Erdős's well-known amphetamines usage. It seems like it does need a "why this helps me be productive" hook to convince people it has an upside. Either you need to be an artist and go for a "helps my creativity" angle, or else you need to be in some kind of focus-needing occupation and use drugs you argue improve your focus (amphetamines, off-label usage of Ritalin, etc.). Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. I think people probably will find any concept along these lines more threatening than neurodiversity (possibly for good reason). People "wired differently" often grew up that way, so there's a sense in which you accept that's who the person is, and both they and others have gotten used to them being that person (in some cases). Most such groups are also a smallish percentage of the population, and you can't really "opt into" it on purpose, so it's a fairly fixed set. Parents aren't worried that their non-autistic teenager will one day decide to "experiment with autism", so there's less need to stigmatize it as an option. But nearly anybody can choose to become addicted to heroin, and a significant percentage of people who do, might decide it was a mistake, yet find it hard to get back out of the addiction. So it's a more "dangerous" concept in a sense, because anybody can opt into it, but possibly not opt back out.
- spindritf 14y ago
  > Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. I think they do, among amateur athletes at least.
  - cwp 14y ago
    Tell that to Ben Johnson.
- slowpoke 14y ago
  >Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. On a somewhat cynical note, I often propose having different leagues for popular sports - one with and one without a ban on drugs. Could be interesting.
- opithrow 14y ago
  I'm a reasonably successful software developer in my thirties, successful founder of a well-known company in a certain industry. (And a 4-digit karma on HN.) I'm also an opiate addict; I've been using for over 5 years. Not IV, just OxyContin (time release oxycodone). I've also been diagnosed bipolar I[1]. Opiates allow me to conquer depression and major stress. Working at a company, with massive investment, several employees, and need to keep coding, keep morale up, lead a development team? Opiates turn what would be crushing stress and keep me positive so I can focus on getting stuff done. But could I tell our board about how I cope? Hell no. There are many more folks in my position. Junkies give us opiate users a bad name, just like meth-heads make stimulant users look bad[2]. So, it's just not acceptable to mention usage, even when it's OK to say how "I'll really need a drink tonight" or even take smoke breaks during work. Which is funny, as opiates have very little heath side-effects (obviously overdose, but after that, constipation is the only real issue). And yes, I've opted out several times. Once, like Paul Erdos, I decided to prove to someone that I could, and took a whole month off. Despite being on the equivalent of ~100-200mg of morphine a day, it was not very hard. (Sure, if you start IV'ing heroin, things might be different.) Overall, I decided I do better with opiates than without. Any excuses that remove stigma and get society closer to rational discussion on drugs is an overall win. 1: Opiates are one thing that really work for depression. Mood stabilisers that all doctors want to prescribe leave me content to do nothing - literally. On them, staring at a wall all day is "just fine". Zombification. 2: Except most folks seem to think "meth" is some crazy other drug, not related to what they give hyperactive kids. No one seems to know meth is a legal prescription medication in the US. But then again, most folks don't know Heroin was a trademark of Bayer (name goes with Aspirin).
  - crag 14y ago
    "There are many more folks in my position." Us humans (other animals as well, by the way) have been self medicating ourselves for - ever really. Michael Pollen wrote about this in "The Botany of Desire". His brilliant look at our relationship with four plants that we use to treat our "fundamental desires" of "sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control": the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. Intoxication. We can expand it's list, of course, to include poppies, and the coca plants. Our problem is that many abuse these. The people of South America have been chewing the leaves of the Cocoa plants for thousands of years. Without addiction destroying their societies. We need these plants. And mother nature was good enough to provide them. :) But we also need education. And in American, we'd rather "just say no". Then be honest about being a human being and our need for intoxication. And when I write intoxication I don't mean falling down drunk. That's certainly part of it - to have a moment of rest outside our our heads. But it's also, like the post above stated - to conquer depression, stress and (I'll add) anxiety.
- gojomo 14y ago
  I think the gradients of differing cultural treatment fall along at least 3 axes: • Can the person help it? If you're 'born with' a certain neural style, that argues for greater acceptance (if not 'pride'). Addictiveness might be closer to autism spectrum in this regard than the 'choice' to use performance-enhancing drugs. • Is the benefit conferred something that is relative/private/zero-sum, or absolute/public/positive-sum? In athletic competitions, a steroid-user only gains (the victory or the all-time record) when someone else loses. If everyone responds by also taking steroids, we've just created a new altered variant of the original game -- spending more, having more health effects, creating an 'incompatible' record book -- without any net gain (unless there is some absolute improvement in, say, the spectacle value of the activity). So the culture is more likely to disfavor steroid use, especially if used for secret advantage, or likely to set off a 'red queen race'. But when someone creates a lasting research result or piece of art -- that is not primarily understood as having displaced someone else's achievement, but rather setting some new absolute peak. When an addict/enhancement-user leaves the world a hit song, a great book, a new scientific breakthrough -- a non-zero-sum result -- it's easier to accept the precursor activities, even if usually illegal/taboo. And that goes doubly when we also consider the third axis... • Do usage benefits also impose clear offsetting costs? That is, does the user suffer for the advantages conferred? Otherwise, the use is more threatening: our old taboos and norms are wrong! Late adopters are screwed! What should the rules be, what should I do? Conversely, if the drugs include clear punishment with reward, people can fit outlier users into a comforting moral framework. "The addiction inspired his work but also drove him crazy." "She did brilliant work while addicted but died young of an overdose." Because the use seems to include its own punishment, the social shunning doesn't have to be as strong, and individuals can make the decision "that path is not for me" without resorting to moralizing absolutes.
- MBlume 14y ago
  > It seems like it does need a "why this helps me be productive" hook to convince people it has an upside. [...] Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. Although athletes produce entertainment, they don't become dramatically more "productive" by taking steroids -- they're basically in a zero-sum status competition.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  " But nearly anybody can choose to become addicted to heroin, ..." Can they? Certainly the can become dependent, experiencing withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking it, but do they develop a powerful long-lasting craving?
- chc 14y ago
  > Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. Sports isn't a results-oriented field. It's a deliberately artificial environment. How you play the game is at least as important as how many times you get the ball in the goal. If you get the ball in the goal the wrong way, that's often worse than if you hadn't done it at all.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
invalidOrTaken 14y ago
I think there's a grain of truth here, but holy schnikes does it need to be treated carefully. I never got into drugs, but I'm pretty sure that if I did I'd be a hopeless addict. I have had longstanding issues with video games and internet use. They contributed to my failing out of school. That said, sometimes I wonder if it doesn't make me a better programmer. I lose focus with long debugging cycles, so I write better tools or learn my existing tools better. I have difficulty with routine tasks, so I've learned a lot more about automation (learn your editor, unix utilities, and a scripting language, kids!). But heroin, man...not something you want to be goofing around with lightly.
- BasDirks 14y ago
  I guess I could be called an addict.. to video games. Even made some $$$ with it, traveling around Europe for free. But damn straight will I not drink more than 1 bottle of wine a week. I just don't need it. I enjoy a nice bottle on the weekend, but I just don't give a damn for more; I have too much fun activities in my life to choose from that don't benefit from being tipsy/drunk. What do you live for?
gyom 14y ago
I find it interesting that this article puts forward the idea that people who are having problems right now (ex : those with autism and addiction problems) might turn out to be ideal candidates for some future technology. Maybe they'll just sync more easily with the brain interfaces. With that kind of logic, though, someone could make a case about how having a low percentage of psychopaths could be a good thing for times that call for that kind of behavior (probably in some war situations). And I'm not talking about their psychopathy being beneficial to them, but them being beneficial to their tribe / village in those situations. Anyhow, I don't have a particular example in mind and I'll refrain from giving a bad example instead.
mvzink 14y ago
Foucault's treatment of psychiatry comes to mind. He raises the possibility that psychiatry/psychoanalysis and mental normalcy are effects of bourgeois dominance/the capitalist system: on some level, we care about individual behavior to the extent that it affects productivity. I've often helped my dad as he volunteers with the homeless, and many of them are 'not productive members of society' due to mental illness (often brought on by drugs, including addiction but extending to permanent neurological damage). My dad, and many others, are searching for ways to make productive niches in society for people with 'mental disabilities'. I'm not sure I can endorse addict pride exactly, but I certainly think cultural acceptance of neurodiversity and addiction is a step in the right direction.
- j-g-faustus 14y ago
  > to the extent that it affects productivity I believe that's the key. In a similar fashion, we (society) don't want kids to interfere with productivity, so we stuff them in kindergartens and schools so they are out of our way until they reach their 20s and can be regarded as fully productive. And we put old people in nursing homes for the same reason. I wonder if the current practice of everyone hiring only "the best of the best" is suboptimal for society as a whole, since it leaves a lot of potential productivity on the society table: Someone with a disability might be (say) only 5-10% as productive as the average healthy adult, but add up everyone with some sort of disability and it sums to a nontrivial amount of underutilized capacity. But I'm not sure. It's a game of numbers: There are administrative costs to hiring and managing (say) 10-20 people to do one person's job. If the "less productive" part of the population is small enough and the productivity difference between "less productive" and "more productive" is large enough, it could be a net productivity win to pay the "less productive" some small amount of money to go away and stop bothering the "more productive". Which is essentially what we do today.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    What I think's particularly problematic is that it's a very specific kind of institutionally-oriented productivity as well. Now, there truly are people who cannot function in society in any reasonable way at all (severely mentally retarded, some kinds of psychosis, etc.). But there are a wide range of people where context matters a lot to how problematic or beneficial something will be. I think there are some philosophical problems with defining mental normalcy and illness so strongly based on the oddities of a particular era's employment conditions, even if descriptively it's true that someone out of sync with them will have practical problems.
DanBC 14y ago
Neuro-Diversity has parallels with physical disability. It's common the hear people say that their disability is not a problem, but the way society reacts is. (For example, someone in a wheelchair may not mind being in the wheelchair until they find a shop that has a step and no ramp. The wheelchair is not the problem; the lack of a ramp is.) I would tend to agree with that. I find it harder to agree that addiction is similar. I'm glad that the article points out the serious problems associated with addiction. I strongly agree that current law-enforcement action for addiction is not working and is probably harmful to society. The article has a bit of correlation / causation stuff going on. It's hard to know with an individual whether MH problems are being self-treated by drug use, or were caused by drug use, or a bit of both. And it's impossible to say for the population of drug users. When people with problems turn to drugs I think most people would rather solve the problems than allow drug use.
- lubujackson 14y ago
  I would say the focus on "addiction" in the article doesn't seem right. Maybe "addictive personalities" would be a better fit, since if you're talking about people's innate neuro-type(?) it doesn't have anything to do with addiction to a specific drug or World of Warcraft or whatever.
- mangler 14y ago
  Everyone is addicted to food. Most people are addicted to food substances that are completely non-essential, such as sugar, salt, butter and caffeine. In places where drugs aren't available people get addicted to certain spices to a point where they feel hungry if their daily intake lacks a certain spice. Some people get addicted to exercise. They feel incomplete if they can't do their nightly run. Exercise alters your internal chemical composition. Just like food and other ingested substances. And coffee, mountain dew, beer, rum, mojito, etc. In the case of some of these its an extreme mix of all sugar, caffeine and alcohol - think JD and Coke.
lubujackson 14y ago
A refreshing perspective. I think we really need to identify the "levers" here, like you might be more focused but more likely to be OCD or addictive; you might be great at computation but suck at subtle interaction, etc. I really like the focus on concentrating on emphasizing strengths rather than muting weaknesses - I'd much rather have great focus AND know how to deal with addictive behaviors than just wipe out that characteristic.
jakeonthemove 14y ago
Pride!? As far as I'm concerned, my ADHD can go f&&k itself! I don't know how many times I cursed and cried because I just couldn't focus on what I need to do, instead finding myself doing some BS that didn't matter. I'm more easily distracted than a rabbit, and sometimes am amazed at how little I give a crap about anything that doesn't matter to me in the short run. There are many factors at play, though, and maybe some people like their "neurodiversity". The way I see it, it's just a way to cope with the fact that these diseases are (currently) for the most part untreatable.
- zxcdw 14y ago
  Word, bro. Word. :(
- jamesbritt 14y ago
  Pride!? As far as I'm concerned, my ADHD can go f&&k itself! :) Whenever I hear someone say how cool it is that they have ADHD and how happy they are about it I get very skeptical. I don't want to armchair-diagnose people, but the inability to control you attention has serious downsides.
- _delirium 14y ago
  I think it varies greatly based on the specific condition and your circumstances. It's quite possible that some are closer to tradeoffs than unmitigated negatives, while others aren't. The positive/tradeoffs view seems to most actively be argued by high-functioning people with Aspergers, and considering that many do contribute quite interestingly to society in ways they might not have if it were "treatable", that's at least plausible to me. That's still consistent with considering ADHD to not be of those cases. Another way of viewing it is that there is a dispute over where to draw the line between "normal human variation" and "mental illness". People agree at the extremes: there must be some variation in personalities and cognitive styles that is not mental illness (e.g., introversion is not a mental illness, but a personality trait), and also some that seems pretty clearly "ill" (like some kinds of psychosis). But where between them to draw the line is less obvious, which is why psychiatrists get together every few years to debate it in a revision to the main diagnostic manual. Besides Aspergers, one active area of debate within psychiatry at the moment is the paraphilias: is being into S&M a mental illness, for example, or just natural variation within the diversity of sexual preferences?
powertower 14y ago
Drug addiction isn't neuro-diversity, nor something that is an effect of a special brain disorder. Give me 100 random people, a year, the right environment, and some strong opiates, and I'll give you back 95 addicts. While some might be more susceptible to drug addiction than others, getting addicted and forming dependence is nothing more than a process. In general (outside the extremes of the dataset) your life's circumstances and details are more important to developing (and maintaining, and quitting) your drug habit than your brain chemistry is.
- alxp 14y ago
  "The right environment" is key to your statement above. A slightly different environment, one that tolerates and is aware of the effects, both beneficial and otherwise, of stimulant and opioid use, would produce some number of people who's enjoyment of life, work productivity and effect on the world will be better when they abstain entirely - but others will have lives that are better when they consume some mind altering drugs some of the time. I imagine the number of people who become cripplingly addicted to a substance would be similar to the rate of severe alcoholics in society today. And we might decide as a society that this is an acceptable rate, and provide addiction care for those who are susceptible instead of forcing them to the margins of society.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  [citation needed] And that citation better reference some twin adoption studies.
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  95 addicts is not what you will get back. There is a difference between dependence and addiction. Dependency is something people are all generally equally susceptible to. Addiction is not equal. Brain chemistry does have much to do with addiction. Specifically, those with smaller prefrontal cortexes are less able to make good decisions and rely more in their natural reward system to make decision for them. In these people our primitive brain has more power and drives them to seek pleasure despite the consequences. Continuing to take addictive substances exacerbates the situation in two main ways. First, the brain readjusts so it becomes less sensitive to being bombarded with huge amounts of dopamine (tolerance) and, if taken at the right time (or wrong time depending on how you look at it), it actually stunts the growth of the brains decision making regions (mostly the prefrontal cortex and the worst time for this is from 12 - 24). What do you even mean by environment? Are you implying that if you make drugs available everyone takes them? That's wrong. Are you implying that addiction affects some social classes more than others? That's also wrong. Studies show that addiction hits everyone equally. We only associate it with certain social classes because it's more visible, treatment isn't as easily available, and it's more talked about. In addition you'll find that different kinds of drugs are used between social classes but the rate of addiction is the same. Upper class tends to use more marijuana and prescription meds while the lower class use the more common "hard" drugs. Even with opiates you'll find that for some reason people think differently about a vicodin addition than a heroin addiction despite them being the same thing. It sounds to me like your comment was based more on personal belief than any hard facts.
vbtemp 14y ago
> " tolerance for repetition that characterize her condition are also pretty much a recipe for success in ... computer science" Obviously, the author knows nothing about computer science, since a tolerance for repetition is pretty much a recipe for failure in computer science.
- Johngibb 14y ago
  I know where you're coming from, but I'd like to present a counterpoint based on a potential misunderstanding. On the one hand, repetition expressed as writing the same code over and over again smells of poor engineering. Abstraction, code reuse, refactoring - all and productive means to avoid repetition. I don't think that's what's the parent meant though. There IS a lot of secondary repetition in our field in terms of sitting at same desks every day, working long term on the same project, fixing similar types of. Ifs, responding to emails erc. Basically, the auxiliary facets that are required to be a good coder but don't directly involve coding are pretty repetitious. Don't get me wrong - there are alternatives for some of these, working from home, better productivity tools, better management etc. but my experience in this career after 5 years leads me to believe there is a somewhat intrinsic aspect of repetition. To me, it's lot as assume, because as You were pointing out that good code doesn't involve repetition and I agree and am ok with it because of that.
- robryan 14y ago
  It makes sense in a research context, where there is going to be a lot of repetition with small differences before you hit on a real improvement to current methods.
azakai 14y ago
Maybe I'm pedantic, but the term "neurodiversity" is a little premature. We don't actually know what causes autism or for that matter a tendency to addiction. It might be neuronal, or it might be genetic, hormonal, environmental or something else or a combination of all of the above.
bpatrianakos 14y ago
I actually am an addict (heroin, 4 years sober) and besides my day job as a developer I'm also on the board of a non profit that is about helping addicts and their families (you may have seen me on CNN a few weeks ago talking about it in fact). So I have personal experience with this and I also have access to some really smart people doing research on this exact thing. I can tell you that this article is true but dangerous. I've been arguing for years that the same traits that make people like me addicts are the same ones that can help us achieve more than what "normal" people can. It's a blessing and curse. More often it's a curse. Before I get into what's wrong with this story, I'll say what's right. Addicts tend to be impatient, impulsive, risk takers who often feel more vividly than others. We're often perfectionists and harder on ourselves than anyone else would be. We can also be incredibly insecure and many of us self medicate. We internalize a lot of negative feelings about ourselves and choose a path of self destruction or a pursuit of perfectionism in ourselves. We can take our impatience and work harder, faster to achieve what we believe (many would argue mistakenly) should be accomplished right now. Right now doesn't have to literally mean that but it does mean sooner than what anyone else would expect from themselves. Failure to achieve this makes us continue using. The frustration makes us give up and instead just use drugs to feel the satisfaction we would have felt from any accomplishment. Our perfectionism lets us pay great attention to detail. Our desire for a dopamine rush can allow us to take on great challenges and see them through to the end. And our tendency to be risk takers let's us take on goals with very uncertain outcomes. In fact, I'd argue that an addict mind is the perfect kind of mind for a startup founder. It's the kind of mind prone to taking big risks, working fast, and craves the rush of satisfaction, the sooner the better. But addicts don't start out that way. Most underachieve. That's because we live in a society that isn't set up in a way that helps us foster our "gifts". Addicts need to learn how to channel these impulses for their own good and that's tough because humans are wired to take the path of least resistance and in the case of addicts, that path is of escapism. The article is wrong when it suggests that maybe we should allow addicts access to various substances instead of stigmatizing them. This line of thinking only takes into account the physical dependency aspect of addiction. Addiction is just as much about physical dependency as it is a way of thinking. What do you do about gambling addicts or sex addicts then? Let them gamble wi monopoly money and have sex still? Allowing an addict to continue using will not help them. It may prevent the spread of disease and allow them to function in society but it doesn't allow them to live up to their potential. Abstinence is the best treatment. Addicts should not be stigmatized. It is a real disease. We should make every effort to get them help, and help them stay clean. What we're missing now are programs that take an addict's natural tendencies and channel them in such a way that it benefits them. That's a huge challenge. After four years clean I still struggle and have my moments where I feel like going out to the west side of Chicago and scoring. These times usually coincide with me trying to cope with something or accomplish a challenging task. The sad thing is that I don't think most addicts can get the kind of help I'm proposing even if it were widely available because you really can't spot an addict until they begin using and are already on their way to destruction. It seems that only after they've been to that low point that they can harness those "bad" tendencies for good. I'm really glad this article was written. This is the first time I've seen this idea put forward and it really makes me feel vindicated. The danger in this idea however is the part that talks about simply allowing addicts access to their drug of choice so they can function. Also, just putting forth the idea that addicts are neurodiverse runs the risk of giving addicts an excuse for their behavior and an excuse to continue with it. No matter what, the consequences of ones drug use and their behavior while using is not acceptable under any circumstances. Addicts do need our empathy and help but at the same time it's important to make sure they know that what they're doing is not acceptable and needs to stop. (By the way, you'll probably see me as a new account - I've actually been around here as user billpatrianakos for over a year. My other account got hell banned last week for some reason and I was so pissed I almost didn't come back but I saw this post and just had to comment on it)
rsanchez1 14y ago
Reading this, something occurred to me. If we are to champion "neurodiversity", should we not aim to accomplish neurodiversity in each individual, instead of neurodiversity in the population? By that, I mean diversity in neural activity, such that it doesn't reach extremes characterized by autism, depression, bipolar disorder, etc. In that sense, isn't embracing autism, depression, bipolar disorder, etc. actually the antithesis of "neurodiversity"?

48 points by jamesbritt 14y ago

I'd argue this is already to some extent culturally accepted, but mostly only in an "arts" context, and not generally in any formal discussion like medicine. But in general culture, people often do seem to view, e.g., the alcoholism of the absinthe-cafes era, or the drugs of the Beatniks, or the LSD of the 60s-70s, as a type of personality and lifestyle that may, in some cases, be at least worth respecting if not imitating. Mostly relates to the arts, although there are a handful of other examples, such as Paul Erdős's well-known amphetamines usage. It seems like it does need a "why this helps me be productive" hook to convince people it has an upside. Either you need to be an artist and go for a "helps my creativity" angle, or else you need to be in some kind of focus-needing occupation and use drugs you argue improve your focus (amphetamines, off-label usage of Ritalin, etc.). Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. I think people probably will find any concept along these lines more threatening than neurodiversity (possibly for good reason). People "wired differently" often grew up that way, so there's a sense in which you accept that's who the person is, and both they and others have gotten used to them being that person (in some cases). Most such groups are also a smallish percentage of the population, and you can't really "opt into" it on purpose, so it's a fairly fixed set. Parents aren't worried that their non-autistic teenager will one day decide to "experiment with autism", so there's less need to stigmatize it as an option. But nearly anybody can choose to become addicted to heroin, and a significant percentage of people who do, might decide it was a mistake, yet find it hard to get back out of the addiction. So it's a more "dangerous" concept in a sense, because anybody can opt into it, but possibly not opt back out.

spindritf 14y ago
> Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. I think they do, among amateur athletes at least.
- cwp 14y ago
  Tell that to Ben Johnson.
slowpoke 14y ago
>Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. On a somewhat cynical note, I often propose having different leagues for popular sports - one with and one without a ban on drugs. Could be interesting.
opithrow 14y ago
I'm a reasonably successful software developer in my thirties, successful founder of a well-known company in a certain industry. (And a 4-digit karma on HN.) I'm also an opiate addict; I've been using for over 5 years. Not IV, just OxyContin (time release oxycodone). I've also been diagnosed bipolar I[1]. Opiates allow me to conquer depression and major stress. Working at a company, with massive investment, several employees, and need to keep coding, keep morale up, lead a development team? Opiates turn what would be crushing stress and keep me positive so I can focus on getting stuff done. But could I tell our board about how I cope? Hell no. There are many more folks in my position. Junkies give us opiate users a bad name, just like meth-heads make stimulant users look bad[2]. So, it's just not acceptable to mention usage, even when it's OK to say how "I'll really need a drink tonight" or even take smoke breaks during work. Which is funny, as opiates have very little heath side-effects (obviously overdose, but after that, constipation is the only real issue). And yes, I've opted out several times. Once, like Paul Erdos, I decided to prove to someone that I could, and took a whole month off. Despite being on the equivalent of ~100-200mg of morphine a day, it was not very hard. (Sure, if you start IV'ing heroin, things might be different.) Overall, I decided I do better with opiates than without. Any excuses that remove stigma and get society closer to rational discussion on drugs is an overall win. 1: Opiates are one thing that really work for depression. Mood stabilisers that all doctors want to prescribe leave me content to do nothing - literally. On them, staring at a wall all day is "just fine". Zombification. 2: Except most folks seem to think "meth" is some crazy other drug, not related to what they give hyperactive kids. No one seems to know meth is a legal prescription medication in the US. But then again, most folks don't know Heroin was a trademark of Bayer (name goes with Aspirin).
- crag 14y ago
  "There are many more folks in my position." Us humans (other animals as well, by the way) have been self medicating ourselves for - ever really. Michael Pollen wrote about this in "The Botany of Desire". His brilliant look at our relationship with four plants that we use to treat our "fundamental desires" of "sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control": the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. Intoxication. We can expand it's list, of course, to include poppies, and the coca plants. Our problem is that many abuse these. The people of South America have been chewing the leaves of the Cocoa plants for thousands of years. Without addiction destroying their societies. We need these plants. And mother nature was good enough to provide them. :) But we also need education. And in American, we'd rather "just say no". Then be honest about being a human being and our need for intoxication. And when I write intoxication I don't mean falling down drunk. That's certainly part of it - to have a moment of rest outside our our heads. But it's also, like the post above stated - to conquer depression, stress and (I'll add) anxiety.
gojomo 14y ago
I think the gradients of differing cultural treatment fall along at least 3 axes: • Can the person help it? If you're 'born with' a certain neural style, that argues for greater acceptance (if not 'pride'). Addictiveness might be closer to autism spectrum in this regard than the 'choice' to use performance-enhancing drugs. • Is the benefit conferred something that is relative/private/zero-sum, or absolute/public/positive-sum? In athletic competitions, a steroid-user only gains (the victory or the all-time record) when someone else loses. If everyone responds by also taking steroids, we've just created a new altered variant of the original game -- spending more, having more health effects, creating an 'incompatible' record book -- without any net gain (unless there is some absolute improvement in, say, the spectacle value of the activity). So the culture is more likely to disfavor steroid use, especially if used for secret advantage, or likely to set off a 'red queen race'. But when someone creates a lasting research result or piece of art -- that is not primarily understood as having displaced someone else's achievement, but rather setting some new absolute peak. When an addict/enhancement-user leaves the world a hit song, a great book, a new scientific breakthrough -- a non-zero-sum result -- it's easier to accept the precursor activities, even if usually illegal/taboo. And that goes doubly when we also consider the third axis... • Do usage benefits also impose clear offsetting costs? That is, does the user suffer for the advantages conferred? Otherwise, the use is more threatening: our old taboos and norms are wrong! Late adopters are screwed! What should the rules be, what should I do? Conversely, if the drugs include clear punishment with reward, people can fit outlier users into a comforting moral framework. "The addiction inspired his work but also drove him crazy." "She did brilliant work while addicted but died young of an overdose." Because the use seems to include its own punishment, the social shunning doesn't have to be as strong, and individuals can make the decision "that path is not for me" without resorting to moralizing absolutes.
MBlume 14y ago
> It seems like it does need a "why this helps me be productive" hook to convince people it has an upside. [...] Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. Although athletes produce entertainment, they don't become dramatically more "productive" by taking steroids -- they're basically in a zero-sum status competition.
Daniel_Newby 14y ago
" But nearly anybody can choose to become addicted to heroin, ..." Can they? Certainly the can become dependent, experiencing withdrawal symptoms when they stop taking it, but do they develop a powerful long-lasting craving?
chc 14y ago
> Although, oddly, steroids for athletes don't get the same cultural free pass there. Sports isn't a results-oriented field. It's a deliberately artificial environment. How you play the game is at least as important as how many times you get the ball in the goal. If you get the ball in the goal the wrong way, that's often worse than if you hadn't done it at all.

deleted 14y ago

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invalidOrTaken 14y ago

I think there's a grain of truth here, but holy schnikes does it need to be treated carefully. I never got into drugs, but I'm pretty sure that if I did I'd be a hopeless addict. I have had longstanding issues with video games and internet use. They contributed to my failing out of school. That said, sometimes I wonder if it doesn't make me a better programmer. I lose focus with long debugging cycles, so I write better tools or learn my existing tools better. I have difficulty with routine tasks, so I've learned a lot more about automation (learn your editor, unix utilities, and a scripting language, kids!). But heroin, man...not something you want to be goofing around with lightly.

BasDirks 14y ago
I guess I could be called an addict.. to video games. Even made some $$$ with it, traveling around Europe for free. But damn straight will I not drink more than 1 bottle of wine a week. I just don't need it. I enjoy a nice bottle on the weekend, but I just don't give a damn for more; I have too much fun activities in my life to choose from that don't benefit from being tipsy/drunk. What do you live for?

gyom 14y ago

I find it interesting that this article puts forward the idea that people who are having problems right now (ex : those with autism and addiction problems) might turn out to be ideal candidates for some future technology. Maybe they'll just sync more easily with the brain interfaces. With that kind of logic, though, someone could make a case about how having a low percentage of psychopaths could be a good thing for times that call for that kind of behavior (probably in some war situations). And I'm not talking about their psychopathy being beneficial to them, but them being beneficial to their tribe / village in those situations. Anyhow, I don't have a particular example in mind and I'll refrain from giving a bad example instead.

mvzink 14y ago

Foucault's treatment of psychiatry comes to mind. He raises the possibility that psychiatry/psychoanalysis and mental normalcy are effects of bourgeois dominance/the capitalist system: on some level, we care about individual behavior to the extent that it affects productivity. I've often helped my dad as he volunteers with the homeless, and many of them are 'not productive members of society' due to mental illness (often brought on by drugs, including addiction but extending to permanent neurological damage). My dad, and many others, are searching for ways to make productive niches in society for people with 'mental disabilities'. I'm not sure I can endorse addict pride exactly, but I certainly think cultural acceptance of neurodiversity and addiction is a step in the right direction.

j-g-faustus 14y ago
> to the extent that it affects productivity I believe that's the key. In a similar fashion, we (society) don't want kids to interfere with productivity, so we stuff them in kindergartens and schools so they are out of our way until they reach their 20s and can be regarded as fully productive. And we put old people in nursing homes for the same reason. I wonder if the current practice of everyone hiring only "the best of the best" is suboptimal for society as a whole, since it leaves a lot of potential productivity on the society table: Someone with a disability might be (say) only 5-10% as productive as the average healthy adult, but add up everyone with some sort of disability and it sums to a nontrivial amount of underutilized capacity. But I'm not sure. It's a game of numbers: There are administrative costs to hiring and managing (say) 10-20 people to do one person's job. If the "less productive" part of the population is small enough and the productivity difference between "less productive" and "more productive" is large enough, it could be a net productivity win to pay the "less productive" some small amount of money to go away and stop bothering the "more productive". Which is essentially what we do today.
- _delirium 14y ago
  What I think's particularly problematic is that it's a very specific kind of institutionally-oriented productivity as well. Now, there truly are people who cannot function in society in any reasonable way at all (severely mentally retarded, some kinds of psychosis, etc.). But there are a wide range of people where context matters a lot to how problematic or beneficial something will be. I think there are some philosophical problems with defining mental normalcy and illness so strongly based on the oddities of a particular era's employment conditions, even if descriptively it's true that someone out of sync with them will have practical problems.

DanBC 14y ago

Neuro-Diversity has parallels with physical disability. It's common the hear people say that their disability is not a problem, but the way society reacts is. (For example, someone in a wheelchair may not mind being in the wheelchair until they find a shop that has a step and no ramp. The wheelchair is not the problem; the lack of a ramp is.) I would tend to agree with that. I find it harder to agree that addiction is similar. I'm glad that the article points out the serious problems associated with addiction. I strongly agree that current law-enforcement action for addiction is not working and is probably harmful to society. The article has a bit of correlation / causation stuff going on. It's hard to know with an individual whether MH problems are being self-treated by drug use, or were caused by drug use, or a bit of both. And it's impossible to say for the population of drug users. When people with problems turn to drugs I think most people would rather solve the problems than allow drug use.

lubujackson 14y ago
I would say the focus on "addiction" in the article doesn't seem right. Maybe "addictive personalities" would be a better fit, since if you're talking about people's innate neuro-type(?) it doesn't have anything to do with addiction to a specific drug or World of Warcraft or whatever.
mangler 14y ago
Everyone is addicted to food. Most people are addicted to food substances that are completely non-essential, such as sugar, salt, butter and caffeine. In places where drugs aren't available people get addicted to certain spices to a point where they feel hungry if their daily intake lacks a certain spice. Some people get addicted to exercise. They feel incomplete if they can't do their nightly run. Exercise alters your internal chemical composition. Just like food and other ingested substances. And coffee, mountain dew, beer, rum, mojito, etc. In the case of some of these its an extreme mix of all sugar, caffeine and alcohol - think JD and Coke.

lubujackson 14y ago

A refreshing perspective. I think we really need to identify the "levers" here, like you might be more focused but more likely to be OCD or addictive; you might be great at computation but suck at subtle interaction, etc. I really like the focus on concentrating on emphasizing strengths rather than muting weaknesses - I'd much rather have great focus AND know how to deal with addictive behaviors than just wipe out that characteristic.

jakeonthemove 14y ago

Pride!? As far as I'm concerned, my ADHD can go f&&k itself! I don't know how many times I cursed and cried because I just couldn't focus on what I need to do, instead finding myself doing some BS that didn't matter. I'm more easily distracted than a rabbit, and sometimes am amazed at how little I give a crap about anything that doesn't matter to me in the short run. There are many factors at play, though, and maybe some people like their "neurodiversity". The way I see it, it's just a way to cope with the fact that these diseases are (currently) for the most part untreatable.

zxcdw 14y ago
Word, bro. Word. :(
jamesbritt 14y ago
Pride!? As far as I'm concerned, my ADHD can go f&&k itself! :) Whenever I hear someone say how cool it is that they have ADHD and how happy they are about it I get very skeptical. I don't want to armchair-diagnose people, but the inability to control you attention has serious downsides.
_delirium 14y ago
I think it varies greatly based on the specific condition and your circumstances. It's quite possible that some are closer to tradeoffs than unmitigated negatives, while others aren't. The positive/tradeoffs view seems to most actively be argued by high-functioning people with Aspergers, and considering that many do contribute quite interestingly to society in ways they might not have if it were "treatable", that's at least plausible to me. That's still consistent with considering ADHD to not be of those cases. Another way of viewing it is that there is a dispute over where to draw the line between "normal human variation" and "mental illness". People agree at the extremes: there must be some variation in personalities and cognitive styles that is not mental illness (e.g., introversion is not a mental illness, but a personality trait), and also some that seems pretty clearly "ill" (like some kinds of psychosis). But where between them to draw the line is less obvious, which is why psychiatrists get together every few years to debate it in a revision to the main diagnostic manual. Besides Aspergers, one active area of debate within psychiatry at the moment is the paraphilias: is being into S&M a mental illness, for example, or just natural variation within the diversity of sexual preferences?

powertower 14y ago

Drug addiction isn't neuro-diversity, nor something that is an effect of a special brain disorder. Give me 100 random people, a year, the right environment, and some strong opiates, and I'll give you back 95 addicts. While some might be more susceptible to drug addiction than others, getting addicted and forming dependence is nothing more than a process. In general (outside the extremes of the dataset) your life's circumstances and details are more important to developing (and maintaining, and quitting) your drug habit than your brain chemistry is.

alxp 14y ago
"The right environment" is key to your statement above. A slightly different environment, one that tolerates and is aware of the effects, both beneficial and otherwise, of stimulant and opioid use, would produce some number of people who's enjoyment of life, work productivity and effect on the world will be better when they abstain entirely - but others will have lives that are better when they consume some mind altering drugs some of the time. I imagine the number of people who become cripplingly addicted to a substance would be similar to the rate of severe alcoholics in society today. And we might decide as a society that this is an acceptable rate, and provide addiction care for those who are susceptible instead of forcing them to the margins of society.
Daniel_Newby 14y ago
[citation needed] And that citation better reference some twin adoption studies.
bpatrianakos 14y ago
95 addicts is not what you will get back. There is a difference between dependence and addiction. Dependency is something people are all generally equally susceptible to. Addiction is not equal. Brain chemistry does have much to do with addiction. Specifically, those with smaller prefrontal cortexes are less able to make good decisions and rely more in their natural reward system to make decision for them. In these people our primitive brain has more power and drives them to seek pleasure despite the consequences. Continuing to take addictive substances exacerbates the situation in two main ways. First, the brain readjusts so it becomes less sensitive to being bombarded with huge amounts of dopamine (tolerance) and, if taken at the right time (or wrong time depending on how you look at it), it actually stunts the growth of the brains decision making regions (mostly the prefrontal cortex and the worst time for this is from 12 - 24). What do you even mean by environment? Are you implying that if you make drugs available everyone takes them? That's wrong. Are you implying that addiction affects some social classes more than others? That's also wrong. Studies show that addiction hits everyone equally. We only associate it with certain social classes because it's more visible, treatment isn't as easily available, and it's more talked about. In addition you'll find that different kinds of drugs are used between social classes but the rate of addiction is the same. Upper class tends to use more marijuana and prescription meds while the lower class use the more common "hard" drugs. Even with opiates you'll find that for some reason people think differently about a vicodin addition than a heroin addiction despite them being the same thing. It sounds to me like your comment was based more on personal belief than any hard facts.

vbtemp 14y ago

> " tolerance for repetition that characterize her condition are also pretty much a recipe for success in ... computer science" Obviously, the author knows nothing about computer science, since a tolerance for repetition is pretty much a recipe for failure in computer science.

Johngibb 14y ago
I know where you're coming from, but I'd like to present a counterpoint based on a potential misunderstanding. On the one hand, repetition expressed as writing the same code over and over again smells of poor engineering. Abstraction, code reuse, refactoring - all and productive means to avoid repetition. I don't think that's what's the parent meant though. There IS a lot of secondary repetition in our field in terms of sitting at same desks every day, working long term on the same project, fixing similar types of. Ifs, responding to emails erc. Basically, the auxiliary facets that are required to be a good coder but don't directly involve coding are pretty repetitious. Don't get me wrong - there are alternatives for some of these, working from home, better productivity tools, better management etc. but my experience in this career after 5 years leads me to believe there is a somewhat intrinsic aspect of repetition. To me, it's lot as assume, because as You were pointing out that good code doesn't involve repetition and I agree and am ok with it because of that.
robryan 14y ago
It makes sense in a research context, where there is going to be a lot of repetition with small differences before you hit on a real improvement to current methods.

azakai 14y ago

Maybe I'm pedantic, but the term "neurodiversity" is a little premature. We don't actually know what causes autism or for that matter a tendency to addiction. It might be neuronal, or it might be genetic, hormonal, environmental or something else or a combination of all of the above.

bpatrianakos 14y ago

I actually am an addict (heroin, 4 years sober) and besides my day job as a developer I'm also on the board of a non profit that is about helping addicts and their families (you may have seen me on CNN a few weeks ago talking about it in fact). So I have personal experience with this and I also have access to some really smart people doing research on this exact thing. I can tell you that this article is true but dangerous. I've been arguing for years that the same traits that make people like me addicts are the same ones that can help us achieve more than what "normal" people can. It's a blessing and curse. More often it's a curse. Before I get into what's wrong with this story, I'll say what's right. Addicts tend to be impatient, impulsive, risk takers who often feel more vividly than others. We're often perfectionists and harder on ourselves than anyone else would be. We can also be incredibly insecure and many of us self medicate. We internalize a lot of negative feelings about ourselves and choose a path of self destruction or a pursuit of perfectionism in ourselves. We can take our impatience and work harder, faster to achieve what we believe (many would argue mistakenly) should be accomplished right now. Right now doesn't have to literally mean that but it does mean sooner than what anyone else would expect from themselves. Failure to achieve this makes us continue using. The frustration makes us give up and instead just use drugs to feel the satisfaction we would have felt from any accomplishment. Our perfectionism lets us pay great attention to detail. Our desire for a dopamine rush can allow us to take on great challenges and see them through to the end. And our tendency to be risk takers let's us take on goals with very uncertain outcomes. In fact, I'd argue that an addict mind is the perfect kind of mind for a startup founder. It's the kind of mind prone to taking big risks, working fast, and craves the rush of satisfaction, the sooner the better. But addicts don't start out that way. Most underachieve. That's because we live in a society that isn't set up in a way that helps us foster our "gifts". Addicts need to learn how to channel these impulses for their own good and that's tough because humans are wired to take the path of least resistance and in the case of addicts, that path is of escapism. The article is wrong when it suggests that maybe we should allow addicts access to various substances instead of stigmatizing them. This line of thinking only takes into account the physical dependency aspect of addiction. Addiction is just as much about physical dependency as it is a way of thinking. What do you do about gambling addicts or sex addicts then? Let them gamble wi monopoly money and have sex still? Allowing an addict to continue using will not help them. It may prevent the spread of disease and allow them to function in society but it doesn't allow them to live up to their potential. Abstinence is the best treatment. Addicts should not be stigmatized. It is a real disease. We should make every effort to get them help, and help them stay clean. What we're missing now are programs that take an addict's natural tendencies and channel them in such a way that it benefits them. That's a huge challenge. After four years clean I still struggle and have my moments where I feel like going out to the west side of Chicago and scoring. These times usually coincide with me trying to cope with something or accomplish a challenging task. The sad thing is that I don't think most addicts can get the kind of help I'm proposing even if it were widely available because you really can't spot an addict until they begin using and are already on their way to destruction. It seems that only after they've been to that low point that they can harness those "bad" tendencies for good. I'm really glad this article was written. This is the first time I've seen this idea put forward and it really makes me feel vindicated. The danger in this idea however is the part that talks about simply allowing addicts access to their drug of choice so they can function. Also, just putting forth the idea that addicts are neurodiverse runs the risk of giving addicts an excuse for their behavior and an excuse to continue with it. No matter what, the consequences of ones drug use and their behavior while using is not acceptable under any circumstances. Addicts do need our empathy and help but at the same time it's important to make sure they know that what they're doing is not acceptable and needs to stop. (By the way, you'll probably see me as a new account - I've actually been around here as user billpatrianakos for over a year. My other account got hell banned last week for some reason and I was so pissed I almost didn't come back but I saw this post and just had to comment on it)

rsanchez1 14y ago

Reading this, something occurred to me. If we are to champion "neurodiversity", should we not aim to accomplish neurodiversity in each individual, instead of neurodiversity in the population? By that, I mean diversity in neural activity, such that it doesn't reach extremes characterized by autism, depression, bipolar disorder, etc. In that sense, isn't embracing autism, depression, bipolar disorder, etc. actually the antithesis of "neurodiversity"?