[jimmygrapes]

Yeah well I started smoking weed when I was 16 and I'm a poor man approaching retirement with no family or friends or assets and a tenuous job predicated in my ability to perform manual labor. Now what.

[joshmanders]

You're statistically more likely to become a burnout drunk than a burnout stoner.

Literally every highly successful person you look up to in tech has been a proponent of weed usage, hell some even went farther with psychedelics.

Like op, I too attribute a lot of my success to being a daily user of weed since I was 12.

[somenameforme]

Exceptional success is often associated with exceptional behavior. Not as in good, but as in the exception. For instance many/most highly successful tech people also dropped out of university and don't have many great things to say about it. They may well be right, but that's not a path to success for the average person unless they instead plan on pursuing a skilled trade or what not.

I also imagine extreme success drives social issues. It has to suck not ever truly being able to know if somebody is interested in you because they're interested in you, or if they're simply interested in your money/fame. To say nothing of the fact that a lot of these guys can't even really safely walk around strangers anymore. It all seems like a path to various artificial forms of coping, like drugs. Basically the same reason Hollywood types are also screwed.

[aurareturn]

What was the average THC content when you were a teenager?

[milkshakes]

Weed is a drug. Drugs are tools. Weed makes things bother you less. It's obviously possible to take it too far.

[chris_wot]

Weed is a drug. Drugs affect people differently. The question is: do you want to roll the dice?

[AngryData]

So you are just like 50% of everyone else. It isn't unusual or uncommon nor proof that you did anything wrong at all, statistically a lot of people are going to be in that situation regardless of their own personal merits just based on the luck of the draw in life events and choices. That is why so many people are unhappy with current economic standards because obviously a lot of people that deserve better get shafted regardless, and others who are below average make out like bandits.