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Comment by ahzhou | Hacker News Reader

I used to believe this was true, but I tested it and found that I was performed noticeably worse while high across a variety of tasks. The weed made me feel like a million bucks, but actually put me at ~80% capacity. I don’t know your brain chemistry, but I’d encourage you not to sell yourself short and believe that you’re only capable of performing well in an altered start of mind. You’re probably better than you believe.

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I wonder how much of it comes from the ritual and creating the space for thought. I found just putting time between fact-finding and actual debugging has always helped me debug the wilder bugs, and I noticed GP was doing the same. Not taking away from GPs experience in general though, weed is a human experience like any other so if it works then it works. We can think about drugs too clinically for some discussions I think.

Thank you!

It can be frustrating and downright hurtful to share a true, and in some ways deeply personal story, looking for an intellectual discussion on a fascinating neurocognitive phenomenon, only to be met with some low effort off the cuff remarks suggesting I might be an addict when I actively admit to being an addict! I'm not here to talk about my addiction issues, my comment was not a solicitation for out of context medical advice. I'm guilty of this myself, too, but I try my best not to after I got served my nth harrowing "you think I haven't tried that" tale like mine down below. If you want to talk to someone about their mental health issues, the only way I've found is to expose yourself and share your own experiences. This helps make them(us) feel less alone and isolated.

Thank you once again for understanding my point of view. A glimmer of light in an otherwise depressingly unproductive thread.

Uhm, my post said explicitly it impairs working memory and focus and is limited due to that. It plays a rather small role in just providing an extra push for that aha moment. But the aha moment can't come without doing the leg work of digging into the problem first, and that's hard, thankless work that often amounts to hours, if not days of time spent sober and working. The drugs and the work happen mostly completely in isolation from eachother. I just smoke at home to unwind and then suddenly the thing I'm trying to figure out at work clicks for me and I know what to do, so I just jot down a basic PoC fix and then do it properly the next day, at work, sober, when I can hold something in my head for more than 5 seconds at a time. Not sure how that was unclear from my comment.

I could certainly stand to do less no doubt, but I'm on something of a sabbatical right now(personal projects and recovering from burnout) so the equation is different.

I’ve heard many sorts of rationalizations to excuse substance addictions, and this sounds like one, too. It’s easy to be seduced by the feeling of getting high, making you prone to self-deception.

You can learn how to unwind without getting high. Getting high can act as a short term coping mechanism for stress, anxiety, etc. but it also throws you out of balance, leading to burnout.

Oh fun, you created a new/throwaway account just to throw me some off the top of your head, paternalistic bullshit.

So here's the thing "dude". I am a 30 year old "dude" with an IQ of 130 who never even finished high school due to severe, chronic mental illness, this particular dude tried to kill himself at 19 to where he was in clinically dead for one minute then in a coma then and developed a mild then severe then synthetic weed addiction almost immediately after release from long term mental hospitalisation. I've been through every nook and cranny of the mental health system you can imagine. Closed ward, open ward, inpatient rehab, outpatient rehab, even assisted living with around the clock psych nurse staff present. I've tried almost every class of psych drugs out there except the ones I refuse to try because they're more dangerous than most of the illegal drugs I've tried(phenelzine, neuroleptics). Pretty much the only illegal drug I haven't tried is heroin because I watched that destroy my brother's life.

And yet in spite of all of the above, I was able to pull myself up by the bootstraps, saving up my allowance to buy a copy of k&r, learning C when I was 15, and eventually even being able to work as a coder. The only place I ever felt at home was in front of a keyboard or a chess board. The longest job I held down was 1 year, cofounding a since defunct custom electronics company designing, prototyping and building bespoke automation and at a hefty premium. But then I got worse again and it cratered.

So, you still want to educate me on the "danger of the marijuanaz?" I can almost guarantee I know more about it than you unless you literally have an advanced degree in psychopharmacology.

You're gonna educate me on rationalisation? I was rationalising before you were born.

Why the throwaway though, are you really so cowardly that someone at your precious FAANG job might think you inhaled? It's so ridiculous that you think that might a real problem that I'm half tempted to dox you just to tell your boss.

Paranoia is a very common side-effect from weed. Not saying it's not a throwaway, just saying.

Keep it real.

I'm just tired of being drive by therapised man. And then when I get annoyed enough to genuinely and truthfully pour my whole soul out just to prove how incredibly facile they were being I get downvoted. HN can be as cruel and unwelcoming as it can be illuminating and inspiring.

Don’t pay too much attention to them. Your posts were a big contribution to the discussion and thoughts on here. There’s a stack of evidence even a small amount of alcohol a week has repercussions - I doubt you’d see the same evangelism if you posted how sometimes a few glasses of red wine helps you tackle thorny problems - but it’s not wholly dissimilar if someone wanted to take the same stance.

Thanks for sharing your story!

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