Coding really IS naturally boring and mind numbing. That's neither your imagination nor subjective experience. No one ever steps through a series of break-points in a debugger, or skims through 1,000 lines of log output, and thinks: "YEAH, MAN! THIS IS REALLY LIVING!" It pretty much requires an altered state to enjoy this stuff.
I think the truth is that modern society measures "success" in radically different and totally unnatural ways now.
Look back at history, and there's a famous correlation between the introduction of coffee, tea and chocolate to Europe, and the age of enlightenment. (https://encrypted.google.com/#q=caffeine+enlightenment+histo...)
The reason pills are used on kids is because they won't reliably drink coffee on their own. Meanwhile, many parents won't subject their kids to substances other than normal, healthy food, unless they're comforted by rational, selfless purpose. Without an appeal to authority, in the form of a soliciting a qualified doctor's auspicious opinion, parents would just let their kids be kids.
The industrialized world is obsessed with abstract achievements, and rigid behavioral norms. Most people have a hard time resisting the trend, and sometimes do so at their own risk. All of it is artificially tied to quality of life (more than survival) by social pressures, so it's not so much survival instinct, so much as it is envy or maybe a desire for inclusion that drives the behavior.
It's not the drug that's demonized, but the fact that it has become a prerequisite for staying competitive and Keeping Up With The Joneses, so to speak.