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Comment by Ccecil | Hacker News Reader

It is entirely possible that this is a misunderstanding of their true feelings or intents. To quote Kat Williams "Weed has a chemical in it called F*k it..."

Maybe when they use they are not having the same anxious feeling that the general public feels and they do not react to others who otherwise might be perceived as "more important" than them. This would appear to the person who typically views themselves as "more important" as arrogance or self importance...when in reality they are just mildly happy and don't care at that moment about the typical societal norms and ranking.

More than likely they are just going about their own business and not paying attention to how you are reacting to it. Every life has value...every person is equal.

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Daily toker and edible eater; I’m high now. Hit the bong and a cartridge multiple times.

I’ve also successfully upgraded large chunks of my employers infra code; tests green, deploys green.

It’s no different than coffee to me at this point; I figured out working with those jitters and anxiety. I even saw shimmering with caffeine I’ve never seen on THC.

I’m pretty sure a whole lot of the behavior is just subculture stereotypes that become something like a truism; correct at any speed of light; which become hard to shake for most people (even smart ones).

Personal experience is the science of human existence. The anxiety of non-smokers isn’t an anxiety I have to take on myself.

Sort of sounds like me a decade ago.

If you find yourself still doing the same job in a decade, I think you'll know why. Tech jobs are very compatible with weed. The sort of tactical, short term thinking you need to apply current knowledge to problems works well. It's great for crafting clever, short-term solutions and hacking your way through things. If that's all you ever want to be, smoke weed everyday man, why not?

If you want to achieve more, that, for me and the people I've seen, is where the problems start. You might not even recognize that this is where you want to be in life until it's too late because you're so comfortable with your 'smoke weed everyday' job. It really sucks when mid-life comes and you realize your skills won't carry you another 20 years, or that there's a whole generation of kids coming to either push you up the corporate ladder or push you out on the streets.

I was literally high all day for 16 years. Grew it. Made hash. Supplied edibles to dispensaries. I get it. It feels great. Do yourself a favor and stop for 6 months. See how you feel about your life and the overall direction. You might find you don't want to go back. That's assuming you can quit. I tried over and over again and couldn't go more than 3 days without it. Anyway, good luck.

I am not a grower and have moved up consistently in my career over the last decade from IT helpdesk to devops lead, with a company that’s profitable, and currently many rounds of demos deep with two very big businesses I can’t even tell you what industry we’re in that’s how new and weird this tech is.

Sounds like you made being high your identity.

To me it’s like coffee (which I drink sparingly as caffeine messes me up worse; biochemistry shrug). I just consume it and go.

I’ve also never had an issue setting aside when I need to. If I want to interview, I can hop off cold turkey, give it 3-4 weeks to burn it out of my fat.

My career went nowhere before I started smoking, tbh. I was a Linux admin for nothing companies that don’t exist anymore; think mom and pop offices 20 years ago.

In the last decade I’ve worked for big tech, startups doing actually cool shit, and now for a really neat security company.

But that could just be the subjective experience side of reality leading to different outcomes for different people and have nothing to do with weed for either of us.

Anecdotal, but caffeine is the drug that has messed my life up the worst.

In what way?

Causes bipolar episodes for me.

> Sounds like you made being high your identity.

Nope. I always despised the 'smoke it 420' subculture. I just go full bore into my interests and weed was one of them. It was a coping mechanism for my bipolar disorder, attentional issues, and a bad marriage. It also felt really fucking great. The good feelings helped blind me to the things it was affecting negatively. I went for years missing out on simple things like having vivid dreams. Hell, after I quit, I started getting morning wood again. I'm all for legalization and letting people choose, but I feel like the 'marketing' on weed is a little too positive these days so I like to share my perspective.

Good for you for keeping it under control. For a lot of the people I knew, that wasn't generally the case.

There's a line from the show "Suits" that really highlights your point I think. Essentially the show is about this wunderkind who conned his way into becoming a lawyer at a top firm. He smokes weed, and the partner at the firm wants him to quit. The partner explains "It's okay if you want to smoke weed. But that's what weed smokers do. They smoke. If you want to do other things, like work at this firm, you've gotta quit weed, because you can't do both." I think that's very true.

this is a meaningless tautology

"tautology"

Added to HN Bingo

I don't think so. I think it's a recognition of the habit forming qualities of the drug, the reality that some tasks require 100% effort, and sometimes weed gets in the way of that.

Listen, I love weed. I'm going to buy some tomorrow for the weekend. But there's no denying it's habit-forming and a large number of people fall into a pattern where they devote their day to smoking weed from dawn till dusk. There are a large number of people here talking about how productive it can make them and I get that. I wrote my dissertation high. But there's a whole spectrum of behavior associated with habitual use and it can lead people to get in a rut where all they do is smoke. Visit /r/leaves sometime and read the stories there.

This comment comes across as quite condescending.

I mean, yeah I used to smoke a lot and produce a bit. I stopped after a while.

And yeah, I generally recommend that other folks try not smoking...

but it's not like you're getting "more" career than other folks have. It's just different.

Like good on you if that's what you want to do, but from where I sit I could say the same thing about career minded folks who substitute their work for an identity.

I get being terrified you're gonna get pushed out on the streets and all, but yeesh.

I don't wanna get up the corporate ladder. The people who arrange the work I do are nice and all, but it's not like the sales staff and the mild sociopathy they develop are living some sort of elevated life or something just because they make more money and have nicer cars.

Good on you for recognizing that you want something different and pursuing it, but not everyone agrees that "more career" is the same as more life.

Sounds like you fell into the "subculture stereotypes that become something like a truism" trap that the parent comment mentioned. I've worked my way up into six figures being high on THC most of the time. I've only recently cut back, but only to drop a few pounds. Weed doesn't make people lazy or complacent, but it can make lazy and complacent people lazier and more complacent sometimes.

> It really sucks when mid-life comes and you realize your skills won't carry you another 20 years, or that there's a whole generation of kids coming to either push you up the corporate ladder or push you out on the streets.

Surely we all see that happen to most people, including non-users?

I think you are creating a narrative about pot use, and you are ignoring correlation.

Sure, I just think the issue is more likely to happen if you're breezing through middle age while high.

meh .. my friend and i started what is now a multi million dollar company over the past 15 years and we smoke weed everyday .. we smoke at work , just only after 5 .. no one is pushing me out into a street cause i smoke pot , quite the opposite actually.

Awesome man. I'm not trying to say you can't be successful on weed. I was, and I know many others who are. What I'm saying is it's easy to get complacent. A lot of the smokers I know obtain some level of success and then just rest in it. I'm saying you need to keep your drive and keep pushing. It doesn't even have to be success in the business world. It's success in your relationships, your mental health, and your contributions to the world. And again, I'm not saying you can't maximize those things stoned, it's just that most people I've seen don't. Is that the weed, or is the weed just a symptom? I can't say, but I can say I'm a hell of a lot better off from having quit.

Don't you feel it makes you a bit more stupid? For me, as soon as it becomes a daily habit for more then 2 weeks, the negative sides start to outweigh the benefits. It really does mess with short term memory, they say an average person can remember 9 things at once, and I'm pretty sure weed drastically reduces that. To the point where people in conversations will actually notice you can't remember well what you just talked about 5 minutes ago and might think you're a bit stupid. For coding it makes monotonous tasks more bearable, but I often lose context when tackling more complicated problems.

I mean I still love weed, but everyday / all day just isn't that great. All good things in moderation.

Daily != all day

Honestly, I only care about long term memory.

Short term was mutilated by todo apps and calendars already.

I want to reserve my memory for interesting ideas and moments. Not groceries and vacuuming.

This thread is making me think my way of prioritizing and doing is, not novel, but different than the replies is all.

I play guitar and piano, I don’t own a TV, I do use a tablet for movies but once or twice a week. I play Tetris on my kids Switch rarely, otherwise got bored with video games years ago, I don’t use social media. I exercise daily but don’t watch sports.

I have a lot less cultural “noise” in my face than many, yet I live in a big metro area.

Maybe that affords me the mental bandwidth to work with weed?

I have a co-worker who I would described as mildly happy at all times and doesn't care about societal norms/ranking, but I never interpreted them to consider themselves superior to me. This doesn't jive with my understanding of mildly happy people.

That makes sense. But it also makes sense that someone else might look at that same person you know and think to themselves "look at them, doing their own thing, they must think they are special, how arrogant!"

Guessing what's going on in someone elses head can be pretty subjective. Sometimes it's the person looking who jumps to conclusions.

> Every life has value...every person is equal.

What was the point of that remark? Persons may be said to be of equal dignity, but no two people are ever equal, in value or otherwise. But what does that have to do with anything in this context? Are you reading things in? The OP was not making any point about rank, only haughty behavior which has no place no matter who you are.

It was a statement of my personal views. It is OK with me if you don't feel the same way.

I do feel everyone is equal in value. Possibly equally worthless depending on how you view humanity's place in the overall universal timescale.

Whenever you look at someone else and think they are being arrogant or self important...likely it is time to take a step back and think about why it is OK to think that they should not feel that way. Maybe they have good reason that day to feel self important :) Take it as a good opportunity to take a good look inside and realize...overall...it doesn't matter how other people view themselves.

That statement needs tuning then. It's doubtful you have a 529 for your neighbor's college fund or you are bankrupting yourself to pay someone else's medical bills. Did you buy a $2 coffee today ? $2 is what the average Venezuelan earns in a month.

That quote is often associated with Bill Gates in the context of running a charity. In that case it has merit. But on a personal level it makes no sense, at least literally.

The discussion was about self worth.

The fact that the response to that is discussing money should be a red flag to you.

You can be good to your neighbors without giving anything but a smile and a kind word.

Well, since I'm spending $2 on a Colombian coffee today, instead of supporting a Venezuelan, I suppose I should just double-down on my disregard for human life, and lobby for the creation of gulags, the return of slavery, and a general expansion of the right of the strong to dominate the weak.

That would be as silly as that criticism of equality. I'm still unsure how we go from 'All people are equal' to 'Are they? I don't see you sacrificing <arbitrary amount of money> to help your fellow man.'

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