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Drug Use Among Programmers
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story that talks about
Drug use amongst programmers.
The article talks about the high tech industry, stress, and
stimulants (the big ones like Cocaine and Crack, not the
wussy stuff like caffeine :)
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It's the usual War on Drugs (WoD) scare-tactic propoganda. Hint: you can spot it when they talk about the general category of "drugs" without differentiating among them, and without acknowledging that many drugs are socially acceptable (caffeine, alcohol, aspirin, meds). Recreational drugs are all different, have different cultures around them, and it's deceitful and dangerous to make blanket statements about all of them.
I know many many people (including many programmers) who celebrate their use of pot, psychedelics, and Ecstasy, but virtually none who use crack, heroin, or even cocaine on a regular basis.
Starting in college, there was always a faction of the programmers who partied hard, including lots of recreational drug use, especially psychedelics. They weren't stupid about it either; they were careful.
One friend who hardly uses any drugs swears she's a better programmer after smoking pot, because she can picture elaborate and intricate structures better. And she is definitely a talented programmer. (I can picture elaborate things when I'm using psychedelics, but I can't keep my attention span long enough to code it in.)
There are so many problems with this article, I don't know where to start. I just scrolled my browser to a random screenful:
- "We found regular users who were clinically depressed at some stage during the week," Dr Curran said. "Ecstasy makes your brain spill out huge levels of serotonin, the feel-good hormone, and the brain has to work really hard to get it back."
- They lump ecstasy and cocaine together, as if they're similar cultures. Hel-lo? Big difference.
- "If you give four doses of ecstasy to a monkey it still has brain damage two years later," she said.
- "When it comes to the health issues, people poo-poo all the information pushed at them."
OK, that's half a screenful and it's already too long, so I'll stop now.This interpretation is skewed to fit their desired conclusions. Quite possibly, many people take Ecstasy in the first place to relieve depression. I know it helped me a great deal when I was younger and dealing with severe and depressing loneliness. It gave me the first glimpse of "life can be worth living".
Nothing quantified here, just ominous-sounding words. How much brain damage? More than a beer? Brain cells don't regenerate, so *you* still have a teensy bit of brain damage from your first beer. And giving four HUMAN doses to a little monkey is extremely excessive; no educated drug user would take that kind of relative dose.
They poo-poo information from articles like this, whose main function is to scare rather than educate. Smart drug users take real information very seriously, but can usually spot propoganda.
If we had true dug education, young people would have far fewer problems with drugs. For starters, they would know to stick to the good and non-addictive ones. But since our government is saying "all drugs are bad", which the kids know to be absurd (if they've ever smoked a joint), they don't think there will be any problem with PHP or crack.
I take certain recreational drugs not to "escape" or to "cope", but because they enhance my life in many wonderful and insightful ways. And yes, to improve my relationships with other people. I have strong bonds with many of my lifelong friends, enhanced by various drug experiences.
(I'm anonymous here, until our society gets a lick of sense about this stupid anti-drug thing.)
From the caffeine faq:
Toxic dose
The LD_50 of caffeine (that is the lethal dosage reported to kill
50% of the population) is estimated at 10 grams for oral
administration. As it is usually the case, lethal dosage varies
from individual to individual according to weight. Ingestion of
150mg/kg of caffeine seems to be the LD_50 for all people. That
is, people weighting 50 kilos have an LD_50 of approx. 7.5 grams,
people weighting 80 kilos have an LD_50 of about 12 grams.
In cups of coffee the LD_50 varies from 50 to 200 cups of coffee
or about 50 vivarins (200mg each).
One exceptional case documents survival after ingesting 24 grams.
The minimum lethal dose ever reported was 3.2 grams
intravenously, this does not represent the oral MLD (minimum
lethal dose).
In small children ingestion of 35 mg/kg can lead to moderate
toxicity. The amount of caffeine in an average cup of coffee is
50 - 200 mg. Infants metabolize caffeine very slowly.
Symptoms
+ Acute caffeine poisoning gives early symptoms of anorexia,
tremor, and restlessness. Followed by nausea, vomiting,
tachycardia, and confusion. Serious intoxication may cause
delirium, seizures, supraventricular and ventricular
tachyarrhythmias, hypokalemia, and hyperglycemia.
+ Chronic high-dose caffeine intake can lead to nervousness,
irritability, anxiety, tremulousness, muscle twitching,
insomnia, palpitations and hyperreflexia. For blood testing,
cross-reaction with theophylline assays will detect toxic
amounts. (Method IA) Blood concentration of 1-10 mg/L is
normal in coffee drinkers, while 80 mg/L has been associated
with death.
Shawn Asmussen
No, all that's required it to make judgemental, sweeping statements about experiences you haven't had. For example:
- I think drugs
... are ... an attempt to avoid reality because it 'feels good' to do so.
Now, you can't get in the club unless you openly admit you don't know what you're talking about.- I don't even drink alchohol, except when I take cold medicine. The strongest thing I 'do' is Mt. Dew.
Attaboy!- Bill Hicks
The boundaries of my experience are the boundaries of a complete and all-encompassing experience. Anything outside of my experience must suck because I haven't deemed it worthy of my effort. Or it's too scary.
I'm not perfect. However, any flaw I do have is fixed by an invisible, magical being to whom I devote a great deal of time and energy. If people would believe that this magical being would fix their lives, they wouldn't be druggy losers.
You seem to advocate the idea that a person should not have an opinion about something that he/she has not experienced. Do you really believe this?
It's nonsense, of course.
For instance, I believe very strongly that the absence of civilization is bad and to be avoided, even though I have never experienced the absence of civilization and even though there are lots of movies that make the absence of civilization look appealing.
Gah. I know very few people who do smoke weed, and they're Mac users. That doesn't say anything about people who use various OSes as it does for statistical clustering. I can't stand pot. It smells nasty, makes me nauseous (I've never smoked it, but have had plenty of second-hand exposure), and tends to make the people who use it, well, stupid.
I had a roommate once who was a major pothead and, as such, had a major pothead entourage. They would always listen to reggae really loud while smoking weed, and have conversations which, although maybe enlightened in their minds, went something like this:
Heh, that's cool.
Uh huhuh, yeah, huh, like, totally.
Yeah, man, like... heh, that was funny when, huh, pfffffft, yeah, this is good shit!
Huh, dude, like... yeah.
Pfffft, bitchin'.
These are, of course, the same types who use Bob Marley as a martyr for the cause of smoking weed. Wow, some cause. So this guy apparently died for their right to smoke a drug which makes them stupid and hungry all the time. Great. What a thing to be remembered for.
Myself, if I want to get high, it'll be on an adrenaline rush from some good ol' FPS gaming. Hell, even a CTF botmatch (CRbot is fun to play with, even if the bot isn't all that lifelike or good; it's fun to have bots which talk smack and actually use the gestures).
I also like getting high on music. Some music, such as Cibo Matto's album "Viva La Woman," have this effect of putting me in a wonderful trance.
There are so many good things to get high on which don't involve introducing toxins into your system. Okay, sure, I abuse caffeine just as much as anyone else, but I'm trying to cut down, and caffeine doesn't affect the brain (at least, aside from being addictive).
Gah. Potheads just make me sick.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Interesting article, in that it almost glorifies drug use. Other than the opening paragraph, all it talks about are a bunch of wealthy Gen X'ers out having a great time and getting wasted on the weekends. This is bad, how?
I personally don't do drugs, but I also don't give a damn whether anyone else does either, as long as they keep their drunken/stoned/whatever nonsense at a reasonable distance.. I think that if this article wanted to have any sort of impact on anyone, it maybe should have told the story of someone in the IT industry who, altho brilliant, is now manning some crap win95 phone desk somewhere because of a felony possession charge.
Said person now gets to spend one day a month for the next, oh, 10 years peeing in a cup and telling her PO how much she likes her job.
And, never, ever, will she get a nice, comfy corporate desk job.
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
I don't find the article surprising at all considering the founders of Apple and Bill Gates (not sure about Paul) have used illicit drugs including cannabis (marijuana) and LSD.
:-;
I personally have used cannabis and experimented with LSD. I found for me that low doses of LSD was useful for some tasks (at high doses is totally useless since one can't concentrate nor even grasp reality). Cannabis is primarily good for relaxation; certainly far better and safer than alcohol.
Anyways, I beleive that as society becomes more advanced drug use will become more prevalent (and legally tolerated - ie. Ritalin). Drug use dates back to the beginning of civilization (over 10,000 years) and is just a reality of life.
Lastly, I generally feel drug testing is a bad idea and it's no one's damn business what people do with their bodies as long as they don't hurt others directly. And note that if Microsoft or Apple had drug testing policies in place back when they started, the founders would've FAILED and there would be no MAC and no Windows
Ron Bennett
The problem with this article is that it reviews industry drug use in one area and attempts to make a generalization across the entire industry.
I'm a computer programmer in Santa Cruz. Surprising fact: about half of the programmers I know here smoke marijuana, use hallucinogens, or both. But that's not a good sample for the industry as a whole; it's too tied up in the side-effects of our local culture.
Same for the UK. It's not possible, yet, to make industry-wide generalizations --- we're too young an industry, and in some sense, too rooted in whatever area we call home, for that to work.
In boulder, if you sell smack, they will send you to prison for life but if you sell pot or mushrooms you just have to be quite and give the cops a price break... and nobody will ever give you a hard time. On the hill there are some dealers who even put signs up (you know how it works if you've been there, back on pleasant street where the deals go down you can often see a vintage bus with a "kind bud" sign in the back window... )
Also, Boulder was a radical place in the 1960's, it was totally a hippy town. I've been approached at work (the largest employer in Boulder... I won't say any more being as how we're talking about drugs) by 40 year old babyboomers who wanted me to hook them up before.. I'm not really even a user but since I'm younger they expected me to be able to get them some good stuff without having to risk a bad deal. In a lot of towns, pot is something you just sort of grow out of once you get out of college but in Boulder a lot of older people are still users.
From my own perspective, and while I know a lot about the drug culture in Boulder I'm not really a user, pot users are recreational drug users. You work a long hard day writing code and you want to come home and relax so you smoke a bowl and chill out. Coke, meth, ice, etc. users generally aren't rec. users. There are definitley some people who like to snort some coke from time to time just for fun but the industrial programmer types aren't them. I think it is much more habitual usage. If you're a programmer I can't think of any reason why you'd want to sniff coke except to stay up and stay alert for coding, after work I would much rather mellow out with some pot, but that' just me.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
In your rather inflamatory satire you dismiss the opinions of those who argue the dangers of drugs with nothing more than mockery.
:)
Further, to say that having not 'experienced' drugs disqualifies these arguements is tantamount to dismissing the dangers of smoking or drinking and driving by claiming that those who recognize them have never smoked or driven drunk.
My apolgies for spelling errors (When do we get real-time spell-checking?
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Ok so programmers use drugs. Or is it more likely that young programmers use drugs? Think about it for a minute - most companies hire fresh talent and fresh talent is usually under 30. Well what age bracket uses the most drugs? People under 30. It's not all that complicated.
I personally would be a little more concerned with the heavy drinking programmers (and sysadmins). I know quite a few pothead programmers and alcoholic sysadmins. The raver crowd tends to burn out too quick, IMHO.
Or, put another way, is this a fad??
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan