How and Why Silicon Valley Gets High | Hacker News Reader

How and Why Silicon Valley Gets High

nytimes.com

45 pointsallenleee57 comments

No one does a stupid tweet on weed like they might on alcohol,” he said. “The most that happens is that you get lazy and eat badly.”

Is just one sentence illustrating the general lack of depth in this article. Already starting with the reporter, seemingly never having tried any of the mentioned drugs, rejecting the possible effects they could have on beforehand and without first-hand experience. Erm, is this reporting?

Also, just cherry-picking here as other commenters are already pointing out other mistakes, but with respect to weed: saying the most that happens is 'get lazy and eat badly' is so extremely misguided I can hardly believe anyone says that. The most that happens to me is close to a full trip on mushrooms for instance, thoughts going everywhere, creativity all over the place, extremely detailed self-reflection, sometimes profound dissociation, including visual and auditory hallucinations. Granted that depends on dosage, circumstances, tolerance, way of administration, but it does show that the 'just weed' sentiment needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

I believe the tech executive quoted meant it in the sense "the worst that happens."

Ah, that's certainly possible. But then one could still argue there's definitely worse experiences than just being lazy on weed though, depending on the definition of 'bad' in this case.

I agree that the piece is pretty vapid, but it's clearly labelled as an opinion piece so it's explicitly not reporting.

Fair point, but in the first sentence the writer uses the word reporter when referring to herself so I kinda missed the opinion thing.

Just taking issue with the 'Erm, is this reporting' line. Most news things are reported through observation, not participation.

I'm aware, but in my opinion there could have been some more detailed observation/research leading to deeper insight than just Ecstasy will make me a nicer person (doubt it).

This is a totally ridiculous article.

> That is why everyone he knows microdoses, saving the longer-acting drugs like Ecstasy for the rare occasions when they want to party and relax.

I presume that "microdoses" means LSD, but who knows. MDMA is not per se longer-acting than LSD or Psilocybe spp.

Doesn't LSD last like 2x as long as MDMA?

They're so different that's it's very hard to say. The LSD peak lasts 2-6 hours, depending on the dose. Effects trail off gradually after that. Marijuana intensifies them dramatically, however, and produces something like a secondary peak. And short-term memory gets totally nuked, which can be very frightening. So I don't recommend that, unless you have an experienced friend around.

Anyway, I've never stayed awake long enough (without redosing or taking some other drug) to tell when LSD effects become imperceptible. Effects are pretty much gone after 6-8 hours sleep. But the next day, or even the next week or two, you can clearly feel some effect. There's also transient tolerance.

I don't have much experience with MDMA. I was never very impressed with the visuals. I liked the body vibes, albeit too much like amphetamines. It's great for dancing and intimate sex, as everyone knows. And yes, the effects don't last for more than several hours, unless you take a lot and/or redose.

the peak of MDMA is more like 1.5 hrs. A good lsd dose will have you peaking for 6 hours.

As a coder, the only real drug I’ve ever really needed has been caffeine. This didn’t start until recently so I’m not sure if I can attribute it to age (early 30’s). My real dependence on caffeine is mainly due to staying up too late the night before (like right now, about 0200 here) and needing to get up and function with 5hrs of sleep and maintain my mental acuity for the workload I have.

To give you an idea of my caffeine intake...about 2 venti black coffees and an 8oz Red Bull.

You can replace the Red Bull with another black coffee and a glass of orange juice, the effective contents are the same.

I also absolutely do recommend to drink an acidic juice in the morning before any coffee, it brightens up the day significantly.

> I also absolutely do recommend to drink an acidic juice in the morning before any coffee, it brightens up the day significantly.

Could you elaborate on that?

I find that acidic juices such as Orange or Ananas juice cleans out most of the gunk that builds up overnight and gives you a short boost through the sugar in them. The sugar can usually cover until the coffee after begins to work so you don't get that period of slouch after drinking coffee before it works (drinking something warm tends to make drowsy too so you possibly get more tired after drinking coffee). Skipping/preventing this short moment of weakness improves on the day a lot.

would adding sugar to the coffee have the same effect?

Not to my knowledge, the acidity of the juice helps a lot to get more awake very quickly, pure sugar itself doesn't help that much to get the continous effect.

..but coffee is also acidic? what am I missing here?

Coffee is mostly bitter in taste, Orange juice or Ananas juice is fairly sweet and acidic in taste in comparison.

So you are supposing the taste has something to do with it? because on the ph scale oj and coffee are pretty close. Sounds extremely subjective.

Likely yes.

I do find that a glass of oj gets me "moving" rather quickly in the morning

If I'm working from home all I need is caffeine. But regularly working out of a large open-office floor plan I need help keeping focused and keeping my anxiety down, neither of which caffeine is particularly good for.

You may know this, but you're kidding yourself if you think your mental acuity is anything near optimal on 5 hrs of sleep. I don't care what you're drinking.

It takes about an hour before I can start churning clean code and start any code reviews, so I think I’m ok. Really, it’s the 3 in the afternoon feeling that is the drain for me. Alertness fades and I can’t even listen to music without an occasional syntax error.

You're kidding yourself if you think every human has the same sleep needs. For me 5 to 7 hours is optimal, 8 hours or more leaves me sluggish for the day.

Everyone isn't microdosing. You're not missing out. This article doesn't belong in the NYTimes.

Or, you weren't sure who the NYT were.

Of course people microdosing are a minority. But that doesnt mean you are not missing out. LSD should be used as a last resort for people with treatment resistant adhd/depression, but it can be a total miracle drug. I wonder why you are so quick to bash a drug that is increasingly being shown to be effective.

I use to take adderall until I discovered its a false prophet and hurts way more than it helps. Marijuana would help calm my brain after a busy day of coding, but as I get older I'm looking for more ways to do better without the drugs.

Gwern did a blind experiment with microdosing and didn't find any effects.

https://www.gwern.net/LSD-microdosing

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01965761

Roland Fischer did an experiment in the 70s and found that students on lsd were able to identify parallel lines more accurately.

Iirc in gwerns experiment he dosed every day, and lsd tolerance builds pretty fast.

Must be make sh*t up day.

This is a rather flat article that doesn't go into the whole thing properly. And it has a rather anti drugs hint to it, if anyone wants to know some more about drugs from users/expert, who have a normal constructive conversation, i'd recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM8WDZIhs3M

Agreed, I was hoping for something a bit more substantive. The following podcast episode with Cole Marta is what turned me on to learning more about research into Ketamine and MDMA.

http://www.duncantrussell.com/episodes/2016/9/14/dr-cole-mar...

Thanks for sharing, I'll look into this one as well. And researching these drugs is rather interesting, there has only been very limited papers due to bans on active substances.

Also channels like: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvRQKXtIGcK1yEnQ4Te8hWQ are interesting to see people take these substances, but still everyone can have different effects from the same thing.

I've never done drugs or even tobacco, but Steve Jobs claimed dropping acid changes your perspective on reality and was a big factor in his success. That gives me pause.

It can also trigger undiagnosed mental conditions like schizophrenia.

I would think it's self-evident that chemically (forcibly) modifying your perspective and the timbre of your subjective/emotional experience, a change that without chemical assistance would be slow, difficult to achieve, and often impossible, would not be entirely safe. But, safety isn't everything.

And speaking from personal experience, so can stressful activities like child birth. The human mind is complex, the best we can hope for is better educating people about mental health.

Sounds like a diagnosis to me.

Acid felt like a circle jerk with myself to be quite honest.

Coincidentally, that sounds exactly like the drug Steve Jobs would enjoy!

It's extremely powerful experience, you simply can't get anything similar in any other way. Your whole concept of reality will be blown away, even physical aspects of your existence disappear (like your body and most senses we take for granted). hard to describe with mere words.

Will you realize some hidden truth about the nature of the universe? Most probably not. Will it teach you something about yourself and your mind? Most definitely yes.

Can this change you forever? Of course it can, and many it will. Can this trigger any dormant mental disease? Absolutely. Any profoundly shocking experience can, even binge drinking - met one person who ended up on lifelong schizophrenia treatment because of alcohol.

>Can this trigger any dormant mental disease?

This always seems like such a strange rhetoric to me. If a drug "triggers" a "dormant disease" that you wouldn't have gotten if you hadn't taken the drug, why not just say the drug caused the disease?

because it would only cause the disease in people who have a predisposition (usually genetic) towards that disease. Paracetamol can trigger Stevens Johnson Syndrome but it does not cause it in people who aren't predisposed to it.

With possibly great reward comes relatively great risk. Anybody currently mentally unstable or with family history of these things shouldn't touch psychedelics, or any other drug including higher doses of alcohol, probably ever. There are not that many people in the western world who never ever got drunk.

During one of few mushroom experiences I encountered, i was lying in the bed, alone, eyes closed. I gradually lost all the sensory inputs from whole body, perceiving via some sort of 'inner vision'. I got dissolved into white mist of atoms and just swirled around in an endless dance to the tune of some relaxing music playing in real world.

When coming down, I literally slowly assembled myself back to original me, atom by atom, first the mind, then rediscovery of body, eyes, taste and so on. I felt very strongly that if something was broken in me, this assembly back wouldn't work very well, or at least it would reveal some dark spots in my personality. Maybe not trigger them, who knows.

I could break the experience anytime if I wanted, but there was no need, it was beautiful all the way through.

Not that many people take drugs in Silicon Valley...at least not most devs I know.

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