Anecdotal but I'm a "programmer" at BigTech™ and smoke all day every day, and at this point I can't tell if it helps me or hinders me, but when you smoke all the time, most of these stories you are hearing about in the comments don't happen. At this point in my life, it's just a little "pick me up". It's by no means a micro dose as I probably smoke a gram or 2 a day. But when you live high it's a different kind of beast. I'll probably stop one day, but at the moment I don't see a reason to. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't, but I like being high and at this point I am addicted for sure anyway.
> Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't, but I like being high and at this point I am addicted for sure anyway.
I smoked occasionally since my 20's and by occasionally i mean 3-4 times a year if even. then around 35 I started smoking on my own and it went from a puff or two at 9pm to help sleep to 3-4 j's a day. Like you I cant tell if it does anything any more. Likely I'm just giving myself lung cancer. And I too enjoy being intoxicated. my family is full of addiction so it figures.
Bottom line is YMMV and be careful with self medicating.
It's just lovely to hear how honest you are about your "situation". I enjoy smoking occasionally. I would say that sometimes I dismiss my thoughts too quickly when I'm sober, and rarely engage in thought process about particular details too intensively when I'm a bit off the ground. Otherwise it's great no matter what's being done, just need to be active.
Thanks, hopefully I am being honest with myself. I think weed can be very different for different people. Also it's not really mentioned here but Sativa and Indica strains also can make a difference as well as the THC % and method of consumption. I vape half a bowl from my Pax 3, I am in Canada so it's legal and we have THC % labels, I typically go for 25%+ which is not the "cheap stuff". I'd say if someone smoked my stuff with me at 9 AM, who doesn't normally smoke, it would probably knock them out for a few hours. But for me, it's like booting up in the morning. Nobody has ever mentioned or asked if I am high because I am more "normal" high than sober. Although I haven't been "sober" (clean for 4+ weeks) in many years, so I admit I have slightly lost perspective. It also has other effects on my life, such as my total loss of recalling my dreams, although I can tell they still occur, I just can't recall them at all.
I'm in a similar situation where I use cannabinoids basically 24/7. But for me I don't like inhalation anymore because it spikes the blood concentration too far and too fast for my liking. Edibles not only provide a more consistent and long lasting effect, but also saves money if you make your own from the flower you would have smoked. Part of this is because a similar inhaled dose compare to eaten, the eaten dose will last longer and be slightly more efficacious due to first pass metabolism.
Yeah the body quickly develops a tolerance when cannabis is used chronically. In stoner culture people talk about taking “T” breaks for this reason. Other people switch strains to try mitigating the effect.
Smoking a gram or two would be enough to get a newbie high as hell for the entire day. For chronic users it’s more like a cup of coffee that wakes you up for the day. And in that respect, many chronic stoners are forever chasing that feeling of the first time they got high. You can feel that way again, just take a break!
Personally, I much prefer the feeling of a THC high when I have a high tolerance. Been a daily smoker for 15+ years (with occasional breaks for other reasons) and one single toke still works wonders, and I never take more than a single puff in a session.
Smoking some potent bud after a long break can be unpleasant, like taking big cup of coffee having no tolerance to caffeine. More likely to experience the negatives like anxiety, paranoia and confusion. The only upsides of low THC tolerance are some more intense spells of nonsensical laughter and things like “munchies” which were novel and fun things as a kid experimenting with a group of friends.
But that is quite different from what I enjoy most about MJ as an adult, which is more akin to adult enjoyment of caffeine. A morning cup of black coffee feels great because I have a tolerance, not despite it.
Haha ya I haven't taken a T break in years, but you are right that when I did and I finally smoked again, it was like remembering why I smoke in the first place. I am at a point in my life where I have kinda stopped trying to have self control in this regard and just made it part of my life. I'm 36 now and had never smoked weed until a trip to Amsterdam when I was 25. I get something from smoking, but it's muted for sure now-a-days with my tolerance, and I need to smoke the strong stuff.
Interesting. That describes me for the past 20 years. But, I am going to turn 60 next year, and have decided that age 60-90 (God willing) will be different than age 30-60. Key in that is that I have returned to my original weed habits prior to age 30: none until evening time. So far, I'm _really_ liking the change. I still like weed, but I'm not allowing it (or anything) to have that much importance to me, and minimizing false 'dependencies' feels very refreshing.
The general benchmark for an addiction is whether or not the substance use interferes or causes issues in other parts of your life. Like continuing tobuse in the face of damaging side effects or damaging effects on one's interpersonal relationships.
I've been a heavy, 1 oz. of Indica a week smoker for decades, while being an extremely productive lead and principal software engineer on dozens of highly visible tech products. I am part of a heavy smoking, high tech collective of startup and career research individuals from companies people use everyday. I start my day with a combination of THC and caffeine, which folds into a deep work and research focus lasting the entire day. Over time, fellow high tech heavy smokers have identified one another, forming a moderately secret heavy smokers network that support one another in non-legal places, sometimes meet at big conventions, or we realize a number of us are at an airport at the same time and all meet in the smoker's den.
The hippie speedball makes me ultra-productive, but unfortunately employers (well, mine) are probably not cool with me being high on Zoom calls. :/
I just wanted to chime in and say that, for some people, THC+caffeine in the right settings can give you a nice hyper-focus. I wish I could use the combo more often.
I haven't ever been high during work hours, but I have tried to program while high. I tunnel vision too hard to get things done. I find it impossible to debug or think about broad solutions. I also am under the suspicion that I'm dumber when high.
Adding caffeine to thc only gives me a lot of anxiety and a sense of generalized dread, honestly. It leaves me unable to sit down and focus on anything, I have to get up and pace around.
Same here in terms of use, except sativa instead of indica, and I've only found one other person like me in my career.
Smoking definitely helps me reach a deep state of focus but unfortunately it's fairly brittle (cars idling nearby, other subtle things can be really distracting) and requires a long period of stage-in if I haven't worked on something for a while (I have little long-term memory for code details).
Maybe you know me, you can check my profile, I've been in the "in" side of like... three? or maybe four? of this super-secret techie psychedelic ultra select clubs even involving VPs of unicorns and directors of tech companies and most of the heavy indica smokers also smoke nicotine like, a lot. Weed and tobacco are a very different thing as just smoking weed, on some cultures that smoke weed heavily like Rastas that's the more common method, like in a spliff or a blunt.
If you don't vape nicotine can I out of curiosity ask about your other super-secret habits? Because in my super secret extracurricular experience in this circles multiple time per year LSD trips and occasional cocaine binges are not unusual and both LSD and cocaine probably effect glutamate receptors in ways that I theorize help with the brain fog or fatigue that for some people regular weed use causes.
The efficiency, the dosage limitation and convenience is amazing, and its been a a few months when I smoked a joint. But I still find the joint to be better experience, not sure why, maybe the trace amounts of CBD.
I got my three kids desks for christmas. Put them down to bed for the night and smoke a little weed. I was shocked how I couldn’t follow ikea desk instructions. Got frustrated and decided to try again sober. I was super shocked the next day how easy it was to follow when sober.
Drugs significantly alter cognitive processes and perceptions. I know that reads like a duh comment because that's literally why people take them, but it's amazing how frequently drugs users forget that the drugs alter their perceptions of how the drug is impacting their lives.
I've fortunately only had a few of my friends succumb to addictions, but it was surreal to watch them remain convinced that the drugs (including alcohol) were actually helping their performance, relationships, and productivity while everyone around them could clearly see that the opposite was happening.
One of the most striking examples is benzodiazepine abuse. Benzos famously mislead users into a false sense of sobriety even when they may be so inebriated that they struggle to accomplish basic tasks.
Within the tech scene, I've also noticed this with LSD microdosing. The few people I know who (openly) tried it were convinced they were smarter and more productive while microdosing, but it was objectively clear to everyone else that they were thinking more slowly, generally more confused, making more mistakes, and so on. The difference is that the drug convinced them that everything they accomplished was a wonderful achievement that made them happy, which led them to perceptions that they were accomplishing more on those days.
I see similar trends in acquaintances with excessive marijuana habits: A general belief that the drug is helping them do more of the things they want to do, but they're clearly doing very little on the days they smoke. Obvious from the outside, hard to see from the inside when your perceptions are being bent to extremes.
I think that people thinking that mind altering substances cannot be a useful tool should keep an open mind about it and let those people who are getting real results out of it keep doing their thing. And yes these people do exist. They are not going to be too open about it because of how taboo it is.
It’s well known that many of the greatest rock bands, highly productive mathematicians like Paul Erdos and comedians like George Carlin found great benefits in the disciplined use of mind altering substances. Not the addictive side which he regretted but the occasional one as a creative boost.
Steve Jobs swore that it changed him. Not that it was perfect but he himself claimed it played a pivotal role in shaping him into the unique person that he was.
There are peer reviewed studies that show that psychedelics are among the most effective tools for treating depression. ADHD medication is prescribed quite often today and it’s a game changer for many people.
This is not without its dangers so proceed with caution and have other people in your life to check on you often. But let’s not deny the enormous power.
Why should some stimulants like caffeine or alcohol be permitted for responsible use while others have to be kept away ? Many of them are less addictive than either.
And besides far beyond any argument about utility it’s also one about aesthetics and spirituality. It’s an entire new dimension to the human experience.
If you don’t have a good track record of practicing moderation then stay away.
My experience with LSD in my 20s was about as far from "micro" dosing as you can get. With that in mind, I found that while I did have some truly profound experiences, most often it was more along the lines of wasting time having fun. And things that seemed really deep while tripping were obviously and unambiguously superficial afterwards.
From various experimentations over the years, the only drugs that make a real positive difference in my cognitive function are caffeine (in large doses) and alcohol (in small to moderate doses).
Anecdotally, I was a daily cannabis smoker for many years, had to quit about 5 months ago and have noticed persistently decreased focus and productivity since then.
From my experience and some of the comments, it seems like a common thread is that weed is good for "clean the garage" tasks - not cognitively challenging but tedious, something you'd like to be distracted from - and not good for reading and retaining new information.
In programming terms, I think it's great for refactoring, or let's say working through a bunch of corner cases on some weird business data you have to parse, and terrible for learning a new framework or implementing something new you where you need to read several articles about something and combine them into a coherent plan.
Generally agree with this, with one specific addition:
Spend some sober hours wrapping my head around some new concept (e.g. programming pattern/paradigm or theory topic) or just reading a large codebase for the first time. At a certain point, my brain is just “done”. Then a small toke of some good weed with the intention of checking out and relaxing. More often than not, the effect is the opposite: the complex material i had spent the previous hours analyzing starts to piece itself together in new ways and my energy and interest in the task is restored to 100%.
While it may not be the right time to hammer out a complete implementation, it has often assisted in that crucial step of “getting it”. This happened for me often with topics that require a new perspective e.g. vector calculus and functional programming patterns
Edit: for reference, I am a heavy user (typically on 2+ doses/day), with occasional long breaks of weeks/months. I believe “tolerance” plays the dominant role in programmers’ experience with this. After a month long break, there is NO way I’m able or interested to work with complex systems of any sort when under the influence.
Hard disagree, at least for me. I’ve tried doing lots of different programming tasks and they all take longer. Now it might not be as annoying to do the refactor but it takes more time since I lose track or get distracted. Not sure about the quality of the code either since it’s hard to measure objectively when you’re making mistakes in the moment.
Maybe creative technical problem solving it has a benefit. However, from listening to interviews from successful comedians, there are many that express that worry about not being funny off weed, and it rarely if ever works out that way so I’m the “it likely has no to mild negative effect” on most (but not necessarily all) creative problem solving
This fits mwith my experience. When my tasks are defined and are left only to implement I can plow through a lot of work.
If I have to develop (or much worse, alter) abstractions that make use of generics and OOP I do not feel productive at all. I get very confused, easily. (Though I often power through it just fine)
I do not smoke during business hours while working on client systems however, that does not sound appealing at all.
I have used cannabis extensively on personal projects for inspiration and to make easy but mundane programming tasks interesting for motivation. Refctoring is very boring sometimes, and getting high can keep you focused on how nice it will be to complete it and get to the end result. I often am able to uncover a bit of fun in the refactoring process after smoking.
My personal projects benefit from a pattern of: program for an hour or two (completely engrossed), short video game battle or two, smoke up a bit, program...repeat. I can chew through a tremendous amount of work in a five hours (measured by git commits and the complexity within those commits) that would easily take me weeks in a corporate setting. The pattern or rythum triggers "flow" consistently.
I’ve experienced this. Generally following ikea step by step style directions is just boring af when high and my mind wonders. But if I put that same energy towards something more creative I can really lock in. Although, sometimes my brilliant creative ideas are complete garbage when seen through sober eyes.
I can't do much of anything that requires concentration once I put my three kids to bed. The nights that my wife is out give me a lot of sympathy for single parents.
(But I will admit that there are times that I've had to just wait until the effects wear off.)
same. complex logical thinking is quite hard.
but feeling is great. listening high to classical sound sometimes opens the story, the memory or the feelings the creator wanted to transport. for example.
so, a day in remote-meetings can be quite nice high, a complex migration hardly..
€dit: could we pair our experiences with our "handed"-style? i'm strongly lefthanded.
i have a theory, with left handeds the possibility is higher to the "logical stuff does not work anymore" component than for righthandeds
I'm a daily consumer (and right handed FWIW) and while I can usually focus on decently complex tasks unless I'm really stoned I definitely notice an effect on like abstract/symbolic reasoning type stuff. I notice it with video games especially. I was playing a lot of Factorio earlier this year and there's some stuff great to do high, like drive around and clear area to expand your base, but other stuff like planning/designing blueprints is too much. I think anything where you've kind of decided what you're going to do and just need to go execute on it is nice but when you're doing stuff that's requiring active logical decision-making it's tough.
I'm a prolific consumer of THC and have done considerable professional and personal work to a good quality under the influence. I suspect tolerance and dosage can lead to a variety of experiences.
Sometimes smoking completely makes me suck at programming. I can't get my thoughts into the text editor as code. Other times I work just as well as I would have sober.
Most of the time getting high is a good way to get ideas for what personal project to work on next.
I am super shocked by your apparent ignorance of such well-known effects from the drugs you're using. Especially at such a late stage in life, having multiple kids under your purview.
Maybe I'll just assume you were high when you wrote that comment.
For me weed is not really something that actively aids in problem-solving or brainstorming, but rather acts as more of a motivation booster. When it's 11pm and I have a handful of less-demanding tasks to slog through, that's where I've found weed to be a lot of help. It helps make otherwise routine tasks more engaging. It even gives me sufficient motivation to actively refactor and improve parts of codebase that I might've otherwise ignored or ticketed away in the backlog.
Sorry if you have heard this before but you may have ADHD or something similar. I found myself in a similar pattern of using cannabis to motivate myself to do the more boring tasks that inevitably come up being a full time software engineer and after several months of therapy was diagnosed with ADHD.
FWIW, I find that if I have a boring task and attempt to use cannabis to power through it, half of the time I complete the task with vigor and then other half of the time I do literally anything else. So my story is as similar to yours as those saying that cannabis leads them to be anything but productive.
I tried getting help for ADHD years ago but found it very difficult to get help for an adult that is high functioning. I'm pretty sure I have it but all the diagnostics focus on young children. The office where I had evaluations was loaded with whacked out kids. They just don't see it as a problem compared to those kids and the diagnosis is heavily focused on childhood behavior and excludes adults. The doctor, who I struggled to find, was really disorganized and lost my case file and forgot about me after several visits. Total joke.
Wow, thanks for this viewpoint. It's cool how weed can have such opposite effects for different users. For me (and apparently for tons of other weed smokers given the "And then I got high" song), it is 180 the opposite - weed makes me completely useless.
I love smoking weed. I smoke pretty much every day. Just a little bit, a puff on the vape pen to get my groove going after work. I find it USELESS for problem solving or productivity, but hey: I don't need to be productive 24 hours a day. I just want something to take the edge off while I play a strategy game or fart around on a game prototype.
I NEVER do it during work or when I have to drive.
I started smoking weed when I was 16. I remember it was New Years day and the cool older kids from the nearby city took a liking to me and offered to smoke with me. We all got high, and it was extremely fun. Still friends with those people today. They all did quite well for themselves.
It was my rebellion growing up in a small town where there wasn't really much to rebel against. I had good parents and a good family. Little did I know my dad was also toking...
Then I went from my small town to the big city for college, and life got really hard. I didn't have the money to pay for weed anymore, and my mental health wasn't great due to all of the stress of college and work, so I stopped for around 6 years.
Then, about 3 years ago, I moved to a state where it as legal, and the first thing I did was buy some weed just to have the fun experience of purchasing it legally. And I smoked it. And I discovered something!
It wasn't just youthful rebellion, or following along with the cool kids, or anything like that. I actually really enjoy the feeling of being high! It makes me feel calm and relaxed.
And that is a good thing! Doing drugs is amoral[0]. There is this puritanical vein through US society that altering your state of mind, and making yourself feel good is a BAD thing. It even extends to coffee and caffeine sometimes.
But altering your state of mind is not inherently wrong! Clearly, it can sometimes be used as a crutch for avoiding other pain in your life. I am sure we have all seen it. But the same can be said of video games, and television, and even exercise when overdone. If it doesn't have any other effect on your life, doing a drug is fine.
- 0: Legal, not funding drug lords. I avoid illegal drugs for this reason.
> not funding drug lords. I avoid illegal drugs for this reason.
I hate to break it to you...
[Edit: it's best if I expand this comment. The people who currently sell "legal" weed whitewashed illegal operations and coordinated it with lawmakers to put them at the top. Chinese, oddly enough, play a big part at this, since we're on an anti-China bend right now it might be useful to know. This whole legal drug thing... no, it doesn't exist. Anyone thinking otherwise needs to get a wake up call. You're supporting massive drug lords that wear suits and work alongside law enforcement.]
This is an incredibly ignorant, racist, presumably US-centric comment.
Lots of areas (like here in Canada) have well regulated, legal Cannabis businesses. The product even goes through thorough testing procedures [1]. As far as I can tell, it's a very similar setup to alcohol related businesses.
I would love to see a source on this supposed Chinese involvement. This sounds like some early 1900's opium den stereotyping to me.
Can you expand on this a bit more? I've never heard about this. Are you saying when I go down to my local dispensary that it's owned by China? Or that the local bud is not actually local?
In Canada it's not so much how that works especially Ontario where I am at. Yes some illegal sales got rolled up into the legal market, but very little. It's very strict to be legit here. All the illegal money for rolled up into real estate instead looks like. :)
And the people who work at the farms are exploited pretty terribly as well.
Same with the meat packers, the fruit pickers. Same with the people working in all of the factories and shipping plants and driving the trucks. The invisible labor we are all surrounded by every day that touches literally everything I can see right now, aside from the tree outside my window.
And all of the money I spend inevitably trickles upwards to people who are going to use it to do things I consider evil like destroying our natural world for profit.
But! That is not a problem I am going to solve over-night. I can try and tailor my consumption to products that I vet and are hopefully more ethically sourced than alternatives. Even doing this is of questionable utility.
“No ethical consumption under capitalism” and all that.
What about common nootropics people take to get into 'programmer flow', like nicotine, lions mane, choline, caffeine, theanine, etc
Surely they're more effective than cannabis, which typically makes everything feel great, but in a sober frame of mind, and on hindsight, seem trivial and over-hyped when sober.
I've tried various nootropic 'blends' (stacks) over the years and they've all been great. Cannabis has its uses, like experiencing the various vibes and feel of a new city for the first time, or making a snowman when it's snowing, but it's not some panacea that makes you super-productive.
Not saying nootropics are a panacea either. You have to have the base multiplier before using nootropics, and already be in a flow state before getting any leverage from them. They don't automatically make you more productive or creative.
Yea, I'm useless on weed and feel slower for a day or two afterwards but have had luck with nootropics. Just a warning about nicotine tho, it works well for me but it is addictive and I feel dumber for a couple days after stopping. Nicotine and substances like adrafinil almost feel like overclocking my brain.
I read there's some research on Lion's mane, and there's a lot about caffeine and theanine but none of this are magic productivity pills. Like it's not that the concentration and productivity effects are obvious and reproducible among all humans. Caffeine has the "keep you awake thing" that cocaine also has and it's pretty reproducible but in most studies I've read about caffeine and L-theanine the flowy non-jittery productive state or any cognitive enhancement are spotty.
I think the other problem with cannabis as a workday desk-job productivity enhancement substance that you are not mentioning is its interaction with other drugs and the unpredictable and really deep tolerance buildup. Like giving an average someone a curve of how much they need to smoke to get the same "effect" among weeks or months is probably really hard.
after seeing some fresh lion's mane at [fancy supermarket] for the first time, I'm convinced it's reputation is just because it looks and feels soft and squishy like a brain.
It is extremely common for more enterprisey jobs, or anything dealing with finance or gov. I wouldn't expect many smaller orgs or startups on the west coast to test very much.
Most regular smokers I know just use fake piss to get around it.
That’s a pretty old sample. The war on drugs was full throttle 30 years ago. Boomers were the millennials and the greatest generation had all the real power. Their straight laced policies were on everything.
These days it’s 50/50 for me. Depending on how conservative the corp culture is. But I work in finance and could literally embezzle their money. I’m actually surprised when i don’t get drug tested.
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I smoked occasionally since my 20's and by occasionally i mean 3-4 times a year if even. then around 35 I started smoking on my own and it went from a puff or two at 9pm to help sleep to 3-4 j's a day. Like you I cant tell if it does anything any more. Likely I'm just giving myself lung cancer. And I too enjoy being intoxicated. my family is full of addiction so it figures.
Bottom line is YMMV and be careful with self medicating.
Smoking a gram or two would be enough to get a newbie high as hell for the entire day. For chronic users it’s more like a cup of coffee that wakes you up for the day. And in that respect, many chronic stoners are forever chasing that feeling of the first time they got high. You can feel that way again, just take a break!
Smoking some potent bud after a long break can be unpleasant, like taking big cup of coffee having no tolerance to caffeine. More likely to experience the negatives like anxiety, paranoia and confusion. The only upsides of low THC tolerance are some more intense spells of nonsensical laughter and things like “munchies” which were novel and fun things as a kid experimenting with a group of friends.
But that is quite different from what I enjoy most about MJ as an adult, which is more akin to adult enjoyment of caffeine. A morning cup of black coffee feels great because I have a tolerance, not despite it.
How do you define being addicted to it, what is your benchmark?
I just wanted to chime in and say that, for some people, THC+caffeine in the right settings can give you a nice hyper-focus. I wish I could use the combo more often.
Is it the caffeine gives you focus, but the THC removes the jitters and antsy-ness that goes along with it?
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Do you prefer smoking over edibles because of the instant rush versus a slow ramp up?
Smoking definitely helps me reach a deep state of focus but unfortunately it's fairly brittle (cars idling nearby, other subtle things can be really distracting) and requires a long period of stage-in if I haven't worked on something for a while (I have little long-term memory for code details).
Maybe you know me, you can check my profile, I've been in the "in" side of like... three? or maybe four? of this super-secret techie psychedelic ultra select clubs even involving VPs of unicorns and directors of tech companies and most of the heavy indica smokers also smoke nicotine like, a lot. Weed and tobacco are a very different thing as just smoking weed, on some cultures that smoke weed heavily like Rastas that's the more common method, like in a spliff or a blunt.
If you don't vape nicotine can I out of curiosity ask about your other super-secret habits? Because in my super secret extracurricular experience in this circles multiple time per year LSD trips and occasional cocaine binges are not unusual and both LSD and cocaine probably effect glutamate receptors in ways that I theorize help with the brain fog or fatigue that for some people regular weed use causes.
Dead Comment
I've fortunately only had a few of my friends succumb to addictions, but it was surreal to watch them remain convinced that the drugs (including alcohol) were actually helping their performance, relationships, and productivity while everyone around them could clearly see that the opposite was happening.
One of the most striking examples is benzodiazepine abuse. Benzos famously mislead users into a false sense of sobriety even when they may be so inebriated that they struggle to accomplish basic tasks.
Within the tech scene, I've also noticed this with LSD microdosing. The few people I know who (openly) tried it were convinced they were smarter and more productive while microdosing, but it was objectively clear to everyone else that they were thinking more slowly, generally more confused, making more mistakes, and so on. The difference is that the drug convinced them that everything they accomplished was a wonderful achievement that made them happy, which led them to perceptions that they were accomplishing more on those days.
I see similar trends in acquaintances with excessive marijuana habits: A general belief that the drug is helping them do more of the things they want to do, but they're clearly doing very little on the days they smoke. Obvious from the outside, hard to see from the inside when your perceptions are being bent to extremes.
It’s well known that many of the greatest rock bands, highly productive mathematicians like Paul Erdos and comedians like George Carlin found great benefits in the disciplined use of mind altering substances. Not the addictive side which he regretted but the occasional one as a creative boost. Steve Jobs swore that it changed him. Not that it was perfect but he himself claimed it played a pivotal role in shaping him into the unique person that he was.
There are peer reviewed studies that show that psychedelics are among the most effective tools for treating depression. ADHD medication is prescribed quite often today and it’s a game changer for many people.
This is not without its dangers so proceed with caution and have other people in your life to check on you often. But let’s not deny the enormous power.
Why should some stimulants like caffeine or alcohol be permitted for responsible use while others have to be kept away ? Many of them are less addictive than either.
And besides far beyond any argument about utility it’s also one about aesthetics and spirituality. It’s an entire new dimension to the human experience.
If you don’t have a good track record of practicing moderation then stay away.
From various experimentations over the years, the only drugs that make a real positive difference in my cognitive function are caffeine (in large doses) and alcohol (in small to moderate doses).
In programming terms, I think it's great for refactoring, or let's say working through a bunch of corner cases on some weird business data you have to parse, and terrible for learning a new framework or implementing something new you where you need to read several articles about something and combine them into a coherent plan.
Spend some sober hours wrapping my head around some new concept (e.g. programming pattern/paradigm or theory topic) or just reading a large codebase for the first time. At a certain point, my brain is just “done”. Then a small toke of some good weed with the intention of checking out and relaxing. More often than not, the effect is the opposite: the complex material i had spent the previous hours analyzing starts to piece itself together in new ways and my energy and interest in the task is restored to 100%.
While it may not be the right time to hammer out a complete implementation, it has often assisted in that crucial step of “getting it”. This happened for me often with topics that require a new perspective e.g. vector calculus and functional programming patterns
Edit: for reference, I am a heavy user (typically on 2+ doses/day), with occasional long breaks of weeks/months. I believe “tolerance” plays the dominant role in programmers’ experience with this. After a month long break, there is NO way I’m able or interested to work with complex systems of any sort when under the influence.
Maybe creative technical problem solving it has a benefit. However, from listening to interviews from successful comedians, there are many that express that worry about not being funny off weed, and it rarely if ever works out that way so I’m the “it likely has no to mild negative effect” on most (but not necessarily all) creative problem solving
If I have to develop (or much worse, alter) abstractions that make use of generics and OOP I do not feel productive at all. I get very confused, easily. (Though I often power through it just fine)
I do not smoke during business hours while working on client systems however, that does not sound appealing at all.
I have used cannabis extensively on personal projects for inspiration and to make easy but mundane programming tasks interesting for motivation. Refctoring is very boring sometimes, and getting high can keep you focused on how nice it will be to complete it and get to the end result. I often am able to uncover a bit of fun in the refactoring process after smoking.
My personal projects benefit from a pattern of: program for an hour or two (completely engrossed), short video game battle or two, smoke up a bit, program...repeat. I can chew through a tremendous amount of work in a five hours (measured by git commits and the complexity within those commits) that would easily take me weeks in a corporate setting. The pattern or rythum triggers "flow" consistently.
I can't do much of anything that requires concentration once I put my three kids to bed. The nights that my wife is out give me a lot of sympathy for single parents.
(But I will admit that there are times that I've had to just wait until the effects wear off.)
Must be the drugs.
so, a day in remote-meetings can be quite nice high, a complex migration hardly..
€dit: could we pair our experiences with our "handed"-style? i'm strongly lefthanded. i have a theory, with left handeds the possibility is higher to the "logical stuff does not work anymore" component than for righthandeds
When I'm high I can follow the instructions so hard that I won't notice a person standing next to me addressing me by name.
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Most of the time getting high is a good way to get ideas for what personal project to work on next.
Maybe I'll just assume you were high when you wrote that comment.
FWIW, I find that if I have a boring task and attempt to use cannabis to power through it, half of the time I complete the task with vigor and then other half of the time I do literally anything else. So my story is as similar to yours as those saying that cannabis leads them to be anything but productive.
I have to keep self medicating I guess.
Late at night is the only time I can get any deep work done.
I NEVER do it during work or when I have to drive.
I started smoking weed when I was 16. I remember it was New Years day and the cool older kids from the nearby city took a liking to me and offered to smoke with me. We all got high, and it was extremely fun. Still friends with those people today. They all did quite well for themselves.
It was my rebellion growing up in a small town where there wasn't really much to rebel against. I had good parents and a good family. Little did I know my dad was also toking...
Then I went from my small town to the big city for college, and life got really hard. I didn't have the money to pay for weed anymore, and my mental health wasn't great due to all of the stress of college and work, so I stopped for around 6 years.
Then, about 3 years ago, I moved to a state where it as legal, and the first thing I did was buy some weed just to have the fun experience of purchasing it legally. And I smoked it. And I discovered something!
It wasn't just youthful rebellion, or following along with the cool kids, or anything like that. I actually really enjoy the feeling of being high! It makes me feel calm and relaxed.
And that is a good thing! Doing drugs is amoral[0]. There is this puritanical vein through US society that altering your state of mind, and making yourself feel good is a BAD thing. It even extends to coffee and caffeine sometimes.
But altering your state of mind is not inherently wrong! Clearly, it can sometimes be used as a crutch for avoiding other pain in your life. I am sure we have all seen it. But the same can be said of video games, and television, and even exercise when overdone. If it doesn't have any other effect on your life, doing a drug is fine.
- 0: Legal, not funding drug lords. I avoid illegal drugs for this reason.
I hate to break it to you...
[Edit: it's best if I expand this comment. The people who currently sell "legal" weed whitewashed illegal operations and coordinated it with lawmakers to put them at the top. Chinese, oddly enough, play a big part at this, since we're on an anti-China bend right now it might be useful to know. This whole legal drug thing... no, it doesn't exist. Anyone thinking otherwise needs to get a wake up call. You're supporting massive drug lords that wear suits and work alongside law enforcement.]
Lots of areas (like here in Canada) have well regulated, legal Cannabis businesses. The product even goes through thorough testing procedures [1]. As far as I can tell, it's a very similar setup to alcohol related businesses.
I would love to see a source on this supposed Chinese involvement. This sounds like some early 1900's opium den stereotyping to me.
[1]: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2021PSSG0050-001115
So Heineken, big tobacco, folks behind the opioid crisis, Wells Fargo, etc?
Same with the meat packers, the fruit pickers. Same with the people working in all of the factories and shipping plants and driving the trucks. The invisible labor we are all surrounded by every day that touches literally everything I can see right now, aside from the tree outside my window.
And all of the money I spend inevitably trickles upwards to people who are going to use it to do things I consider evil like destroying our natural world for profit.
But! That is not a problem I am going to solve over-night. I can try and tailor my consumption to products that I vet and are hopefully more ethically sourced than alternatives. Even doing this is of questionable utility.
“No ethical consumption under capitalism” and all that.
Do you have more information on this nefarious China-sponsored drug supply-chain?
Surely they're more effective than cannabis, which typically makes everything feel great, but in a sober frame of mind, and on hindsight, seem trivial and over-hyped when sober.
I've tried various nootropic 'blends' (stacks) over the years and they've all been great. Cannabis has its uses, like experiencing the various vibes and feel of a new city for the first time, or making a snowman when it's snowing, but it's not some panacea that makes you super-productive.
Not saying nootropics are a panacea either. You have to have the base multiplier before using nootropics, and already be in a flow state before getting any leverage from them. They don't automatically make you more productive or creative.
I think the other problem with cannabis as a workday desk-job productivity enhancement substance that you are not mentioning is its interaction with other drugs and the unpredictable and really deep tolerance buildup. Like giving an average someone a curve of how much they need to smoke to get the same "effect" among weeks or months is probably really hard.
still take some of course, yolo
Wow, That seems so high. I don't know anyone in my circle of friends who was drug tested. Although, we are all on the west coast.
Most regular smokers I know just use fake piss to get around it.
Not new.
These days it’s 50/50 for me. Depending on how conservative the corp culture is. But I work in finance and could literally embezzle their money. I’m actually surprised when i don’t get drug tested.