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

[Eilene]

Hi HN. I’m a journalist who wrote ‘The Lawyer, The Addict’, a story that ran in the New York Times in July. The story was about my ex-husband, Peter, who was a high-flying powerful partner in Wilson Sonsini (the prestigious, Palo Alto-based law firm) and who died in July 2015, a drug addict. Almost everyone in his life missed the signs. The story wound up with enormous traction and was the 55th most read story in the entire paper in 2017. It also generated several threads of commentary on HN, including https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776864, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14931209 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14777919.

I’m now writing a book based on that story for Random House. Although it is about what happened to Peter, the broader story is about the problem of substance use (and often abuse) in white-collar professions, where the users are well-off, well-educated, working long hours, often with all the outward trappings of success.

What can you tell me about drug use as a professional or in your profession?

I know there is drug use in law, finance, medicine and technology, and am hoping that some of you will be open to discussing with me what you see and what you've experienced in your profession and professional environment. I’d like to use some of your comments in the book and will not know or need to know your names, so I hope you’ll feel comfortable being as candid as possible. I’m not here to make judgements, all I’m looking for is the truth about what’s going on.

I'm interested in whatever you can tell me about drugs you are using or observe being used in your field: which drugs, what effects you see, any stories you have, any details you can share. Thanks.

[woah]

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.

[whalesalad]

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.

[IfOnlyYouKnew]

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]

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?

[neveradmitmyid]

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.

[chillingeffect]

> 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.

Same here. Extremely deep flow state. Anything distracting or urgent is largely ignorable. Rewards from accomplishing things are increased. The problem at hand becomes the main thing. Anxieties, fears and worries are greatly attenuated.

I spend a lot of time meditating, trying to reduce the negatives so I can cope when I'm around normies at my day job. But I get much more done at home alone, vaping.

btw, have you experimented with edibles? Might be easier on your longs than bongs...

[Eilene]

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.

[chillingeffect]

> 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.

Same here. Extremely deep flow state. Anything distracting or urgent is largely ignorable. Rewards from accomplishing things are increased. The problem at hand becomes the main thing. Anxieties, fears and worries are greatly attenuated.

I spend a lot of time meditating, trying to reduce the negatives so I can cope when I'm around normies at my day job. But I get much more done at home alone, vaping.

[nathan_long]

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.

[economics2008]

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.

[majos]

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?

[frenchman_in_ny]

Off-topic & realize it's a throwaway account, but would be interested in discussing the career-switch with you.

[Eilene]

wow, what an intense journey.

[tjansen]

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...

[phyller]

You need to reply to the comment by Blahah who thinks literally every developer in Germany is high all the time.

I think people who do drugs just gravitate to other people that do drugs.

For me, the limiting factor on my productivity is not how god-like my mental state is, it's whether I can get the info I need from that guy on the other team or when the project manager will sign off on a needed change :)

[donquichotte]

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.

[azeirah]

I can add one anecdatum, I'm from the Netherlands and don't know of drug abuse in the two businesses I interned at. I do know that some friends of mine, who are devs/engineers, occasionally use various drugs recreationally, but never for work.

The only drug use I know of is ritalin or other legal stimulants for those diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, and of course coffee/tea/alcohol.

[bewe42]

Same here. I have worked in Germany, Spain and London and never seen any drug use. I would have shocked me for sure. I don't see the point or need.

[Blahah]

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.

[stzup7]

I lived in London for a few years to work in finance (top tier banks as well as hedge funds). I haven't met a single person who takes any sort of stimulants besides coffee. I'm a software engineer myself and your world seems very different from mine despite having worked in the same city. Your normality looks completely foreign to me.

[dumbfounder]

I was diagnosed with ADD in college and put on Dexedrine. It does an incredibly good job of helping you focus and help you get things done.

I feared the drug though and never took it as much as prescribed. I phased it out completely after a few years and later realized that there are other factors that can help just as much with your attention deficit. Sleep, diet, and exercise are insanely important. I believe a lot of people on drugs for ADD could just focus on these 3 things and effectively cure their ADD. Definitely not all people, I am sure there are plenty that need help, but a lot of the time I see it overprescribed (in my non-medical opinion). Just moving to a low carb diet helps a ton. Sleep helps a ton. Exercise helps you feel good and sleep well. On the flip side, bad sleep habits (like those you develop in college) lead to bad eating habits and bad exercise habits. It's a vicious circle. Stimulants help you avoid those healthy habits with some of the same positive outcomes (at the expense of health).

I think you are crazy though if you think prolonged exposure to these drugs is fairly low risk. You build up a tolerance, you need to take more, and it does have long term effects. It seems like you are in your early 30's so you may have been doing this routine for the past 10. If so, when do you think you will stop? Never? Please talk to a professional about it.

[ryandrake]

I’m that squeaky clean guy in high school that (unbelievably) never even encountered anyone smoking marijuana back then. My social circle did not and still doesn’t really include much drug use. Yet I’ve directly observed Adderall abuse in Silicon Valley. That’s how prevalent it must be.

[nemanjaboric]

I live and work in Berlin for years now, working in startups, and I haven't met anybody that (openly) uses anything harder than tobacco or coffee, nor I met anybody who said they knew somebody to do that.

Beer is common after work, once in a while. However, what you describe is definitively not normal. Not that I find that problem, or high-risk, or anything - it's just the fact that it would just surely catch attention if anybody from my work environment (30+ close coworkers) notice somebody like you're describing.

[cryoshon]

chiming in here to corroborate that stimulant use/abuse is heavily prevalent in scientists and startup types that i know.

even the md/phd types who have been in clinical practice for 20 years do it, even after they've had kids etc. most only abuse coffee-- you can tell because the norm is to drink coffee until you're literally red in the face when there is serious work to get done. there are people who abstain, of course. they aren't looked down on, but they're probably not as productive on average.

coffee isn't bad at all. but plenty of others use/abuse prescription stimulants too, usually a bit more clandestinely in my experience. but if you know what to look for it's easy to tell when they're on them.

it makes sense. the point where people need stimulants the most is in synthesizing experimental insights into new hypotheses in light of other literature. it takes a lot of brainpower to keep trucking... you can take a crack at it without stimulants, but you'll run out of steam quickly.

as far as the downside, a handful of people binge drink to come down, but it isn't the norm, except during social events. there are a few who smoke weed / take xanax at work to calm down, but these are frowned upon somewhat.

[Eilene]

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?)

[yannis7]

with all due respect my friend, and honestly I don't mean to insult you, but what you're describing "drugs are everywhere / everyone does them / everyone works best with them / it's all prevalent and normal" is a bit of a drug addict's mentality.

I have friends who are potheads and they swear that everyone smokes weed and everyone who's ever done something meaningful in their life is because of marijuana.

Not everyone does drugs, and not everyone works best with them, it's not normal, it's not enhancement.

[ggg9990]

Wow, a great view into how two people can live probably yards from each other and live in what are functionally two distinct planets.

[s73v3r_]

Have you had your work evaluated by people who are not drug users, to verify if it actually is better?

And what if you're on a team with someone who doesn't wish to use drugs? Are they just cut out of the big ticket tasks?

[mitjak]

This is, subjectively, absolutely insane to me. In your experience do people have an easy time going off these substances?

[raphlinus]

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.

[davidsong]

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.

[croshan]

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.

[ironjunkie]

Simply said, you are biased as people don't talk openly about it. I know a lot of googlers that have a completely different experience than yours

[burner890]

I personally know engineers at Google who drink very heavily and do drugs including ketamine, coke, shrooms and acid.

[taurath]

My experience is that its more prevalent outside of work hours, but far less prevalent AT work than people talk about during these sorts of conversations.

[jfv]

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.

[CryoLogic]

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.

[DanielBMarkham]

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.

[pnathan]

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]

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]

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.

[opportune]

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.

[wcarron]

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.

[anon314159265]

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.

[oceanghost]

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.

[obv_throwaway_]

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.

[phyller]

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.

[geekout]

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.