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Suddenly Visible: Illicit Drugs As Part of Silicon Valley Culture
The recent death by overdose of Google executive Timothy Hayes has drawn attention to the phenomenon of illegal drug use (including abuse of prescription painkillers) among technology workers and executives in high-pay, high-stress Silicon Valley. The Mercury News takes a look at the phenomenon; do the descriptions of freely passed cocaine, Red Bull as a gateway drug, and complacent managers match your own workplace experiences? From the Mercury News article:
"There's this workaholism in the valley, where the ability to work on crash projects at tremendous rates of speed is almost a badge of honor," says Steve Albrecht, a San Diego consultant who teaches substance abuse awareness for Bay Area employers. "These workers stay up for days and days, and many of them gradually get into meth and coke to keep going. Red Bull and coffee only gets them so far." ...
Drug abuse in the tech industry is growing against the backdrop of a national surge in heroin and prescription pain-pill abuse. Treatment specialists say the over-prescribing of painkillers, like the opioid hydrocodone, has spawned a new crop of addicts -- working professionals with college degrees, a description that fits many of the thousands of workers in corporate Silicon Valley.
Increasingly, experts see painkillers as the gateway drug for addicts, and they are in abundance. "There are 1.4 million prescriptions ... in the Bay Area for hydrocodone," says Alice Gleghorn with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. "That's a lot of pills out there."
is that now that rich white people have drug problems (ie, "real" people), maybe we can muster up some sympathy for other addicted people now?
Nah, I'm dreaming.
Mostly random stuff.
Did you seriously just call Red Bull a gateway drug?
Tim Lord, you're a moron. Stop posting stories, this isn't your personal blog. And no, writing them and then having Roblimo or another slashdot editor post the stories doesn't make it any better. Just stop, we don't want your thoughts.
He didn't call Red Bull a gateway drug, the article(s) did and he paraphrased to ask if anyone else's work environment treats Red Bull as a 'gateway drug.' It might be interesting to note, as we're all aware, that Red Bull is most commonly not treated as a gateway drug. If you arrive new on the job and a sage elder looks at you drinking a Red Bull and says "I remember when that sufficed but give it time and you'll be on the hard stuff like the rest of us ..." *taps his nose* then it might be considered a gateway drug.
The article goes on and on about "workaholism" fueling the need for drugs. My ass - the key story referenced is the one about Hayes getting offed by a hooker injecting a heroin overdose on his yacht. I don't feel a lot of workaholism in that story - ridiculously overpaid unscrupulous douchebag with too much time and money that has saddened and humiliated his family managed to have what looks like plenty of leisure time.
Oh, and this shit is not new at all - been happening in this industry for decades. more noticeable now that a Googler has publicly disgraced himself.
I feel for his family - what a piece of shit.
Ban the 'D'! It's a gateway letter for Drug!
"...illegal drug use (including abuse of prescription painkillers) among technology workers and executives in high-pay, high-stress Silicon Valley. ..."
I know a shit-ton of people whose lives/work is JUST as stressful working their 3 jobs to make ends meet, but since it's not "high pay" that would probably mean they're not worth talking about, right? Certainly, we're less interesting in the 'why' of their drug abuse issues, because they can only afford cheap mood-altering chemistry like booze and cigs.
Personally, I'd say the fact that Silicon Valley folks make stupid-large amounts of money means they have even LESS of an excuse to complain.
Lots of people have more stress for much less self-inflicted reasons than pursuing of giant piles of cash.
-Styopa
It's kind of a gateway drug, in that once you open the Red Bull gate you are entering a world where you pay triple for the equivalent energy of a banana, and the equivalent caffeine of a cup of coffee. It's kind of like a gateway to a world of dummies.
No wonder there's so much shitty software being thrown out. People are too stoned or drugged up to have any idea of what they're doing and as a result we get crap such as Windows 8 or the near-monthly Facebook "updates".
But hey, drugs are cool and in no way should the deaths of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Peaches Geldoff, Cory Monteith, Heath Ledger, Dee Dee Ramone and a whole slew of other folks who felt being high was so great that they didn't care if they killed themselves in the process.
Unfortunately we'll have to keep hearing about how poor [insert name] died, how they were a good person and blah, blah, blah.
Fuck that. You think drugs are cool and being high is the thing to do, go for it. Just don't expect the rest of us to give a shit when you're found face down in your home.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
When I see the kind of shit my colleagues from Sunnyvale, who are on 80+ hours/week schedules, tend to release, I'm not surprised one bit. Of course I'm a lazy European socialist who only work 40-50 hours a week so what do I know.
A couple of years back I broke my leg. I was given a prescription of hydrocodone and being afraid of them due to all of the addiction stories and the fact that, for some odd reason, my leg never really hurt that badly, I did not take them but I did keep them around. A few months after recovery I was working on my gait and felt something pop in my lower back. The next day I was in severe pain (it was at least 11) and I was told it was a pinched nerve.
I broke down and took one of the hydrocodones and about 20 minutes later, through the slightly lightheaded haze, I experienced some of the most intense, intense hours of extreme focus. I dedicated my time and wrung out tomes of code. It just flowed forth, from the mind of the keys to the screen. After about four hours, it would subside and I'd look back at my work in astonishment. The code was really, really good. I remember thinking to myself "I wrote that!?"
I continued for the next two weeks while my pinched nerve slowly became less inflamed and everything returned to normal. I had about two weeks worth of hydrocodone left in the bottle. But you know what? I had absolutely no desire to take them once the pain in my back was gone. I had no withdrawl symptoms, no shakes, fevers, or anything else. I also did not have a dimwit Valley manager breathing down my neck to finish a project so they could get their next bonus at my expense.
Having spent time working in the Valley, I have little desire to return, if any. Between the terrible drivers, rude hipsters, astronomical real estate prices, strange inexplicable odors, ridiculous grocery prices, PG&E, Comcast, the diseased hot-zone known as Fry's, wall to wall people who are completely oblivious to their surroundings and stand right in the goddamn middle of every aisle in every store ... living in the Valley is absolutely madness! If you live there and like it, you're either nucking futs or you've never experienced normalcy.
That was Airplane!
I've known a lot of people with very poor time management and life skills, who lived in constant panic and crunch time as a result. Rather than managing the introspection required to address their personal failings that were leading to this, they'd just down as much Red Bull as they could under the misguided belief that it'd give them the energy to deal with all of their crap.
So is it any surprise that they then turn to meth or other real drug to try and improve on the boost energy drinks may or may not have been giving them? (I have no idea if they work, they just made me short term wired and irritable.)
Red Bull's not a gateway drug - but it's often co-morbid with personality types that are going to find their way into meth. Obviously the vast majority of people aren't using it as some kind of "gateway" to meth, or else we could call coffee a gateway drug too.
There are those who would test all welfare recipients for drug abuse on the grounds that poor folks are users. Never mind that the data shows most people on welfare work and stuff.
Those really looking to solve societies ills might do better to test the other end of the economic spectrum.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I suspect that this conversation is a lost cause; but it's worth pointing out that that is one of the reasons why public health types get twitchy about prescription opiates.
Among those otherwise without access or interest in fairly serious drugs, an attempt at pain management following injury or illness can be a compelling introduction to the exciting world of stuff that's pretty close to heroin with better quality control. Not everyone develops a habit, of course; but it's an introduction that can happen regardless of circumstance.
I guess the Mormons were on to something.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Why did they "have" to start taking drugs in the first place?
Depends on the situation. Some people take them out of pure pleasure seeking. Others get addicted to chemicals like opiates as a result of circumstances well beyond their control like surgeries.
Furthermore just because someone made a bad decision doesn't mean we simply abandon them. Maybe you are the one person who has never made a bad choice in life but I doubt it. Sometimes people make bad choices and a civilized society tries to a reasonable degree to help them through it. We're going to pay for it one way or another anyway so why not do the humane thing and help those who are willing to be helped?
If you take drugs and get addicted, that's your responsibility. Not anyone else's.
Think so? I can introduce you to some former surgery patients and war veterans among others who were introduced to opiates to control pain by their physicians for very real pain problems and as a result were unable to avoid addiction. I can point you to some suffering from PTSD (not their fault) who are trying to find some way to cope who sometimes turn to chemicals because they don't understand what has happened and it is the only relief they can find before they understand what has happened. Some addictions are not the solely the fault of the person taking the drugs.
It's easy and wrong to paint every drug addict with the same broad brush. Some, like the sort you are thinking of, are simply idiots seeking pleasure or escape. If you are snorting cocaine on your yacht for fun, yeah that's on you and if you die I'm not going to cry a river for you. Others are decent people trying to cope with a real problem not of their own making. You really think that a wounded veteran who gets unintentionally addicted to opiates while trying to control pain is solely responsible for his situation? If so you are a very cold hearted person.
feel the same way about marijuana. the real gateway drug is liquor. i know so many people who were partying on liquor and were talked into cocaine.