Drugs, Computers & Cyberculture

Jett wrote to us with an interesting article concerning links between drugs, computers and intellectual culture as a whole. The usage of drugs, ranging from hardcore substances to alcohol and such is an interesting intersection within the computer world. One of the other pieces that I've also liked in Feed was Steven Johnson's piece on Everything2.com. And to be straight: Yes, I am involved with Everything2. But it's because I think it's cool.

Comments

Blame Gibson

[sugarman]

While I love the author's works, I never put the Hacking + Drugs connection together before reading his works. (Of course, I was 14 at the time, but that may be irrelevant).

I'm just curious if his works, the image of Case in the Gentelman Loser (?) was derived from the hacker / drug sub-culture, or if the drug-use only manifested itself later. The breeding grounds (ie University ) for both may intersect, but how much of a cross-over was there between the drug-users and the geek crowd bathed in the glow of their green-screen terminals?

Off hand, the reality-altering effects of drugs and thge virtual worlds that we now have are both 2 different approaches to altering your perception. A 24 hour EQ session will produce largely the same effects (disorientation, inability to focus, difficulty with speech :-)

Besides, whenever I used to surf whacked, all I could manage was a lame 1st post now and then.

Computers and Drugs

[HomeySmurf]

I think that it is clear that there is a strong connection between the counter-culture aspect of computers, drugs and even modern music.

Cyberpunk fiction is full of recreational drug use. Gibson, Sterling and Effinger all include it as essential parts of the new world morality of the settings of their novels.

The internet itself is a uncontrolled form of communication and their is a large amount of information that is useful to people involved in illegal drug use and crime in general.

It is not that computers are linked to drugs, but that computers are linked to the modern counterculture, and drugs are just a part of that counterculture.

A lot of the original hackers were ex-hippies, and a lot of young computer science students I know are involved in the whole techno subculture. The Matrix is a bad example of this, but it shows that such a link exists in the mind of mass media anyway. I think it is save to say that Neo's punk friends were into some stuff heavier than just a few Heinekens.

of course there is a connection

[Hobbex]

While I don't think the article delt with it all, the person outlined, while I agree with many of her ideas, seemed more like a coffee-shop radical than a hacker, I do think their is a link between drug culture and hackers. While everyone has there definition of what hacker means, to me it is "a free-thinker with a compiler" (or maybe more generally "A free-thinking pragmatic").

To me, being a hacker means rejecting all Dogma, be it corporate, religious, or state sponsored. And since the amorility of those drugs that have been marked "bad" by society is just dogma, a hacker faced with drug culture is more likely then others to come out for it.

It is very easy, from the outside, to reject drug users as criminals by prejudice, the way that many people outside the hacker community reject us as criminals. But one cannot forget that just like we have our brilliant free thinking hacker geniuses (you know the names), recent history has been littered by genius free thinking drug users (Aldous Huxely, Carl Sagan,,,).

-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

Re:anyone else catch this?

[dgph]

If you start imagining that you have MSDOS installed in your brain, you are having a bad trip.

Mind Altering, Performance Enhancing

[xenotrope]

Drugs are crucial to computer development. How many projects are fueled almost entirely by caffeine? When the impossible is demanded, the smart programmer will understand that he will perform better -- or maybe just perform more -- under the influence of something, usually coffee, Mountain Dew, or Jolt. He will rely on a chemical to enhance his abilities beyond the norm, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

As for harder drugs, namely those of the narcotic variety, my opinion is split. These drugs can improve performance, but unlike caffeine, where all you lose is sleep, these drugs can have serious effects on your health, your personal life, and your financial status. A good rule of thumb may be that any drug that can cost you your life isn't worth any amount of brilliant code.

Unfounded rumor time: I heard from someone who heard from someone who heard from someone about a computer science professor at my university who tabbed LSD on an hourly basis back in the 60s/70s in order to gain inspiration for his work in artificial intelligence. I don't know if it's true or not, but I know that the professor in question is now absent-minded and socially disabled and hasn't had a promotion in at least a decade. I would not be the least bit surprised if the "rumor" is the reason why his brain is fried.

The caveat: all of his work in AI turned out to be dead ends. His contributions to the field aren't anywhere worth the damage he did to himself. Let's be careful out there.


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Re:Drugs and Geeks

[Crixus]

I'm just curious as to how many hackers and crackers use drugs to enhance their cognitive abilities for brief periods of time?

This is such a great question. For me it involves being a little drunk and playing the guitar. At that particular moment in time my command of the instrument was never better. It was as if I was having an out of body experience and BECAME the guitar (I know that's cliche, but it was true). I've never had so lucid a moment in my life, prior to, or since then.

Drugs certainly can break down barriers.

As an experiment, the next time I record a friend of mine in the studio we are going to fool around with different levels of intoxication and see what our creative results are. It should be fascinating.

choice of drug and intelligence

[Mister Attack]

There's definitely, in my experience, a strong correlation between the intelligence of a drug user and the types of drugs he/she uses. For the first two years of high school, I went to a pretty standard school - average in most respects. The drugs of choice there were weed (mainly), with some people opting for cocaine, heroin, etc. For my junior and senior years, I switched to a school with a selective admissions process. Once I was there, I only met 2 people who did cocaine. Everyone who did drugs still did weed, of course, but the focus tended to be on psychedelics of every sort - shrooms were extremely popular, as was acid. It was actually standard practice to have the hit of acid on one's tongue during the last class on Friday (first period, I think) so that the trip would start as soon as possible after class got out.

Anyway, I can see that I was rambling for a while there. My point was that the more intelligent folk tend to do psychedelics and mind-expanders, the less intelligent folk tend to do stimulants and downers, and everyone does weed. At least, that's been my experience.
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Where is the reference to my favorite drug?

[Canis Lupus]

It would seem to me that the "drug" of choice would have to be caffeine! By far, this probably the most used (and abused) drug amongst the programmer types that I know. Of course, the effects of caffeine are much less harsh than the hardcore drugs refered to in the article. Well, that is until you try to interact with a caffeine addict in withdrawl. (Do so at great personal risk...).

For me at least, the only concern I have is the vast amounts of coffee I drink (welcome to the startup scene; a pot a day keeps the investors happy :-) ) and the Guiness I drink for fun (less time for that these daze!). "Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine", by Stephen Braun, was a great read about the drugs I abuse on a constant basis.

Drugs,Computers Cyberculture

[crush]

You know what? They left out one very important thing: quantum mechanics

Seriously, I mean they got just about everything else in there:

• feminism
• anarchism
• the military
• the orient
• raves
• capitalism
• computers
• culture

I really took issue with the statement that drugs would expand your bandwidth and increase your processing power. There's no evidence for that. They alter effect sure, but theres no real evidence for increased information processing.
I forget who said it, talking about the use of drugs to treat schizophrenia, but the comparison made was that in the past we did trepanning[*], then we locked people up, then we electroshocked them and now we use a chemical lobotomy. * - yeah, I've actually heard that some people get trepanning for recreational reasons now - some sort of high if it's done over the right area of the brain. I don't know if it's true.

Some do...

[BorgDrone]

I don't know about linux hackers, but I guess some developers working for a certain company located in redmond are on drugs.
There is lots of evidence for that:
- They think they can take over the world
- They are not in touch with reality
- "now, was I programming a word processor or a 3D shoot-em-up game, er... , what the heck, lets make both in one app!"
- Customer: "What a lot of bugs"
Tech. Sup.: "Yeah, I see em too, and they have such pretty colors! "
- Nice colorfull, playfull GUI .... ON A SERVER!
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The Article, My Experiences, and Other Rumblings..

[trims]

As someone else pointed out, the article in question covers quite a bit of ground, but makes no real attempt to clarify or make substantial claims about the interrelationship between hacking and drug use. It seems much more about the visions and ideas of a single person, which while valid, certainly don't have anything to do with a community that I can't really think anyone would count her as a member.

That said, I do see some correlation between drug use (and patterns of drug use) and the hacker community. What follows is my personal experience (both in use, and observing others), and generalizations I make are unique to me, though I think they are a bit more valid the Ms. Plant's.

• A little background: I'm 29, grew up in rural Western PA, and went to college in Boston. That's my frame of reference. Now on to the meat...
• Drug use amongst "hackers" doesn't deviate from society at large. Generally, all the hackers I know don't use drugs in any greater or lesser amounts than my non-hacker friends. What does differ (often dramatically) are the drugs of choice
• Hackers tend to use two categories of drugs: stimulants and what I call relaxers. Stimulants are obvious: caffeine, crystal meth, dexadrine, etc. Fairly obvious why - their use tends be be tied usually to their favorite activity (hacking). The relaxers - alcohol, pot, maybe some low-level psycho-tromatics like 'shrooms - tend to be used exactly for that reason: as a break/vacation from hacking, or as a social thing to do with friends over for the evening.
• I don't see to many hackers with the "damn-the-man, I'm doing drugs" thing going on, though I might be a bit old for that now (sigh>). Drug use tends to be a rather personal choice. Honestly, I don't remember getting any pressure from any of my hacker friends to "do" a particular drug. It was "here, use it if you want, if you don't, well, OK" from them. All my drug pressure came from non-hackers (look at the pressure to use alcohol).
• I don't remember any of my hacker friends using drugs for the "mind-expanding" stuff that some of the intelligensia (and the bourgoise pretend to) seem to be so into.
• Also, I don't think a person's drug use can be neatly categorized, just like a person's life doesn't fall into neat categories. Yeah, most of us here are hackers. But we're also a wide variety of stuff, and I venture to guess that most hackers over 20 have at least 3 sets of different friends that they do things with. For instance, me (heehee): I like to club, I play soccer and swim, and I go to church (gasp!). The rings of friends I have from each of those activities overlap somewhat, but I'm certainly going to behave differently in each group. So trying to categorize my overall drug use as relates to a single one of my activities is silly.

I've seen some claims from people above, but I honestly can't say I know anyone who can hack on anything but stimulants. Interesting ideas you might get on pot/LSD/whatever, but the coding process is very rational and process-oriented, which I can't see anyone doing well under anything but stimulants. Speaking of which, everyone notice that performance curve from crystal due to sleep deprevation? I've friends who were up for 72 hours on crystal, and though they functioned fine up until the very end, couldn't code after about 30 hours or so...

Anyway, my $0.02.

-Erik

Clear thinking dogma

[RobertGraham]

Hmmm. The general tone of the comments to this article are generally pro drug use. I thought I'd throw in a counter-point.

Hackers tend to be anti-authority. Therefore, hackers gravitate toward drugs because the religious authorities say that drugs are immoral and the government says drugs are illegal. In order to justify drug use, they invent benefits (like enhanced "insight" or "intelligence").

On the other hand, there is also the science/psychology "authorities" that say drugs are simply bad for you. (Of course, people dismiss this as tools of the authoritative state).

For example, the author claims that drugs enhance "insight". Certainly, if you talk to your average heavy LSD user, he/she will claim that the drugs provides all sorts of philosophical insights into the world. Unfortunately, they can't communicate exactly what those insights actually are, and such insights don't prove useful in their daily lives. Psychologists have studied this to a large extent and found that LSD does gives only the "illusion" of insight: the users are just fooling themselves.

Similarly, scientists have studied Extasy and found it has massive detrimental longterm effects to your IQ.

If you are looking for insight, read widely. In particular, read stuff that challenges your beliefs. The most interesting people I know are those who are widely read; the most boring people I've ever known have been heavy drug users. Similarly, I've noticed that the "insights" drugs give people does not change their beliefs. On the other hand, I've notice significant alteration in people's views on life when they start to read widely.

In the end, while wannabe hackers partake in anything counterculture, but all the interesting/talented ones I know are not into heavy drug use.

PS: I don't think drugs are immoral or that they should be illegal; just something that virtually never leads to anything useful.

heh.

[Chris Johnson]

I genuinely needed drugs to function when I was a teenager. Unfortunately this wasn't because they gave me anything- it was simply because I was so totally alienated, self-hating and unable to cope, that all the time I _wasn't_ on drugs I was hurting so bad that I couldn't function. When I did drugs (pot was the main one really, the anchor), I was able to get out of my own head, which was vital. Only then did I see things like a normal un-screwed-up person would. I didn't see it that way at the time, of course. I thought it was making me better.

Unfortunately, what happened to me is what happens to some people- it stopped working for me. It stopped buffering me from the increasingly horrible reality, but I kept getting more and more compulsive about it, and then I'd still be able to step back and look at myself and wonder, what the hell? I'd always put drugs into me like they were fuel, but I began questioning whether a life like that (in worse and worse surroundings) was even worth living.

Roughly around the point where I didn't give a damn anymore and would settle for anything as long as it was different, I quit using, also drinking alcohol. That hasn't changed though I'm somewhat older now. One funny thing- I ended up drinking coffee so intensely that I shook and couldn't think straight! So I ended up giving up coffee 'cos I couldn't use it like a normal person :) still consume caffeinated beverages, but only ones like Coke and black tea.

Last of all I gave up smoking (tobacco), again only when I was good and ready. Good and ready constituted having the flu, smoking anyway (of course ;) ) and being rendered literally unable to breathe at times, in acute pain. I threw away big freezer bags full of tobacco (being a good hoarder I keep bulk amounts of such things). Never did manage the 'use the last bits up then quit' maneuver, for me it's always had to be dumping the whole habit at a random moment of "Augh! ENOUGH!".

I'm not terribly surprised so much of Slashdot is on drugs. Hell, most of the world is. It is jarring that you can have a Slashdot discussion on copyright and musicians and so many people will leap in arguing in defense of THE LAW and yet, drugs? Those don't seem to count, you don't see the same arguments, the same ferocity. I am for decriminalization, though, mostly so you can get a tax base on drugs, and so we can start dealing with the unpleasant realities of the situation out in the open rather than having them still there but always kept secret. Criminalization doesn't do shit to diminish drug use, frankly.

If anybody needed to see someone saying 'I stopped using drugs, you can stop', I'm quite happy to say it. If that sounds real trivial then you wouldn't understand :) now, I know loads of people will flame me as usual and eat my karma for daring to suggest that a person might be happier without drugs. Well, that's too bad, because that's what I found. These days I'm not a balky machine running on drugs and keeping a constant quiet inventory of my 'fuels'- I'm just me (albiet with plenty of coca-colas :) )

It seems to me that this is a good thing to be- anybody else wanting to try it, ask yourself- do you want to be free?

Re:The Article, My Experiences, and Other Rumbling

[ajs]

Hackers tend to use two categories of drugs: stimulants and what I call relaxers. Stimulants are obvious: caffeine, crystal meth, dexadrine, etc. Fairly obvious why - their use tends be be tied usually to their favorite activity (hacking).

Yes, I've seen a lot of stimulant abuse (and boy howdy do I mean abuse) in the techie crowd. There's a clearly lowered defense against stimulant use (and for the addictive ones, this usually ends up leading to abuse) among hackers due to odd-schedules and that drive to create that many hacker/coders have. I've been doing more and more coffee since my job moved to 1+1/2 hours from my home, and I'm starting to notice a bit of withdrawral over the weekends....

The relaxers - alcohol, pot, maybe some low-level psycho-tromatics like 'shrooms - tend to be used exactly for that reason: as a break/vacation from hacking, or as a social thing to do with friends over for the evening.

I've seen a lot of psychadellic use over the last 12 years of being in the hacker community. The drugs of choice seem to be psilocybe mushrooms ('shrooms) and LSD (acid). X (as in extacy, not X11) was never a very popular hacker drug on the east coast as far as I can tell. Many hackers come to psychadellics via simple experimentation, as they tend to be empirically minded and "Just say no" doesn't work very well against that mindset. After a short time, though, most hackers who do psychadellics get caught up in the "how does my brain work" game. Oddly enough I've never seen this have as much negative impact on one's life as a minor addiction to alcohol. Makes one wonder about the relative legallities, doesn't it?

One common thread among all of the hackers I know. None of them do the hard stimulants (e.g. cocaine et al.) or narcotics (e.g. opiates such as opium or morphine). I think this is because intelligent people of any sort tend to do a little research before taking any drug, and the side-effects of these drugs coupled with their massively addictive qualities makes bungie-jumping look like a nice safe passtime.

I feel like this post is an endorsement of drug use, and I want to be very clear: it's NOT. You have to live with your body and brain for the rest of your life, don't get stupid with it. "Just say no" isn't a terrible rule, but if you feel you need to live by another one, take all due caution. Do research. Say no the FIRST time, so you can think it over with a clear head and give it the same priority you would give any major life decision. And, most importantly: peer pressure to do anything you're not comfortable with indicates you have the wrong peers. Talk to them about it, or just find new friends.

If you're still confused, concerned or just want someone to talk to, send me some email, maybe some of what I've seen or been through can help, or maybe I can just help by listening.

Of course, these are all my thoughts and opinions, and my employer would probably be happier if I didn't state them, so there's little chance they agree.