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Comment by flatiron | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> highly productive mathematicians like Paul Erdos

I think Paul Erdos' stimulant usage has been blown out of proportion. According to his biography, he took "10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrine or Ritalin" ( https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/ho... ) which is, believe it or not, lower than a lot of people's commonly prescribed ADHD doses today. Erdos also published a lot of his best works before taking up non-caffeine stimulants, so it wasn't exactly the driving force behind his productivity.

Anyone using Erdos to justify an excessive or non-prescribed/non-medical stimulant habit has misunderstood the history.

> Steve Jobs swore that it changed him.

Steve Jobs was also famously terrible to everyone around him and died prematurely because he firmly believed he could cure pancreatic cancer with an all-fruit diet. Which of his properties are we to ascribe to the mind-altering drugs and which are we to overlook?

Again, using Steve Jobs to justify drug consumption (or anything, really) is missing the point that he was a unique person.

“ Colleagues worried that Erdős might have become addicted. In 1979, he accepted a $500 bet from his friend Ronald Graham. Graham challenged Erdős to abstain from speed for 30 days. Erdős met the challenge, but his output sank dramatically. Erdős felt the progress of mathematics had been held up by a stupid wager. In an article by Paul Hoffman published in November 1987, Atlantic Monthly profiled Erdős and discussed his Benzedrine habit. Erdős liked the article, “…except for one thing…You shouldn’t have mentioned the stuff about Benzedrine. It’s not that you got it wrong. It’s just that I don’t want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics to think that they have to take drugs to succeed.”

The truth is far more nuanced. Like I said no one will openly admit to this as it sets a risky example for others.

I'm sure any addicted person would perform very poorly when undergoing 30 days of withdrawal. I know when I withdraw from caffeine, the next few days are hopelessly unproductive.

Sure but what if I decided to ban you from using caffeine and throw you in jail because it’s addictive ?

Jobs also took acid because he was in the generation where it was commonplace. Gates also did it, too.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-once-coyly-defende...

And that generation was a powerhouse of business, innovation and culture. Counter culture laid the foundation for what we now call Silicon Valley.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they were high when they were working.

Well actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said

Yeah, but they were when thinking about what to work on.

That may be the case but we should also be careful to not assume that people under the influence are able to accurately evaluate its impact on their performance. Nor should we extrapolate on the general impact based on the experiences of some. Not everyone smoking that jazz cabbage is a Steve Jobs. And there’s no guarantee that the change it has is good for that person (eg triggering some latent susceptibility to schizophrenia as we know LSD can do from the MK Ultra experiments)

I do like the sound of "jazz cabbage", but I think you're using it derisively and possibly with a tinge of racism. And that makes me sad.

I got it from Fake Doctors, Real Friends. I think the perception of derision/racism is solely on your end.

Paul Erdos took uppers, specifically Ritalin and caffeine, IIRC. Carlin was pretty vocal about the majorly negative impacts of drug abuse on his life and even went to rehab.

Prior discussion on Erdos, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2497420

Carlin made a very clear exception for marijuana for his creative work.

https://youtu.be/nCGGWeD_EJk?t=6m50s

I understand the comment thread you are responding to is lumping many psychoactive substances together, but the authors of the posted study were careful to distinguish this.

Yes exactly.

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

I'm not surprised, I think it's just extremely subjective. I mean, I find it extremely hard to focus on a programming task if there's music playing, but I know people who listen to music all day while they work.

I can't even begin to program under the influence of alcohol. Almost brain dead in that regard.

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.

This is interesting, I wish it were that easy for me. Do you do any prep work, i.e. "story planning" (presumably in a less formal way than you would at work)? I find that, for my side projects, I can do a lot of damage while high IFF I have a very clear idea of exactly how the feature should work; but if sober me hasn't worked out clear acceptance criteria for the thing I'm doing, either I daydream and don't actually get anything done, or I wind up doing something totally unrelated, like an opportunistic refactor of something irrelevant to what I sat down to work on.

It's hard to describe my design and planning approach. I have tried to enforce a structure like we do at work...epics...stories etc. Ends up slowing me down and wasting a bunch of time.

I know the domain very well, so it's like the SME or product owner who is also an experienced developer just cranking shit out. I work with a visual designer for the UI which lets me play around with different concepts very quickly. I just iterate very quickly in code and in the UI, expressing myself...it's more art than science.

I may plan to do something, and then sit down and get interested in a totally different feature...it is very important to do the thing that thrills me in the moment. It increases quality and ideation momentum.

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.

You could also be... Tired.

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.)

That was the obvious explanation to me as well. A task was hard in the evening, before sleep, and easy in the morning, after sleep...

Must be the drugs.

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.

On a similar note, I see a clear difference in Baba Is You[0] where sober me can follow longer chains of reasoning, but high me can think of more unexpected approaches.

0: Very good logic game on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/

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.

For me I find that pot reduces background noise in my mind that would otherwise prevent me from becoming extremely focused.

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.

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.

It was my first time trying to build furniture while high. Not currently high.

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