Neural stimulant? Are you referring to methamphetamines or something along those lines? Where is this evidence (i wonder)? Perhaps you refer to GHB or nitrous oxide?

Plus risking your freedom over getting ahold of drugs to keep an addict happy isn't pretty either.

What addict is one trying to keep happy (i wonder)? Judging from what you quoted, you refer to the addict of psychedelics. Where is this sorry person?

The risk of losing your freedom is definately a serious concern, though.

Have you actually seen what various forms of truely mind altering drugs can do to a person?

I wonder whether you can distinguish between one drug and the next? Do you accept drugs from doctors?

Where is the evidence that GHB causes any sort of damage?

Cocaine is schedule II.

there is also extensive information at both ecstacy.org and erowid.org.

note that these websites may not be work-safe depending on how uptight your employer is.

drugs == bad, eh? But I owe my life to drugs. Penicillin cured my heart infection when I was three years old.

Oooooh, you don't mean drugs, you mean heroin. Well why the heck don't you be a little more specific? Penicillin != heroin. Drugs != heroin. Yeah, heroin's pretty dangerous. Addictive too, so they say. Good for terminal cancer patients, though.

Say, did you know that six hundred thousand American citizens were arrested last year for possesion of marijuana? That's marijuana, not heroin. Just as penicillin != heroin, marijuana != heroin. I can think a few more productive ways to spend ten billion dollars of the taxes we Americans paid last year than on hounding six hundred thousand of my fellow citizens into jail over a nearly perfectly harmless vice.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

there is no convincing medical evidence that moderate use of drugs such as marijuana, alcohol, mdma, and lsd cause brain damage.

the primary risk of drugs results from the ridiculous establishment drug laws.

see the dpf.

information is free.
the only question is:
are you?

marijuana does cause lung damage, but using a water pipe eliminates most carcinogens, and because marijuana contains anti-oxidants, it actually reduces the chances of developing lung cancer (as long as you don't smoke tobacco).
"All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates." -- Woody Allen

P.S. I've never used illegal drugs myself, but I have a lot of friends (some of them geeks) who've really have screwed themselves up with drugs

P.P.S There is some good information on the net about the Boston Church of Christ, but I can't remember the url
-Jasa -- Saya harap Karma saya jadi lebih baik! Dan saya harap Linux menbunuh Jendela!

Oh, nonsense. The people who would get stoopid 7 days a week on legal dope are already getting stoopid 7 days a week on alcohol - or illegal dope, for that matter. If you really believe that most people can't be trusted with easy, legal access to marijuana, why aren't you actively campaigning to reinstate the prohibition on alcohol?

And all that cheap junk food is hazardous if it's all you eat. And it IS all that a lot of burned out stoners eat.

Hmmm. Have I just been trolled?

You are right re the primary risk being the result of stupid anti-drug laws. The risks here are many - because the drugs are illegally produced, there is no adequate assurance of quality and there is not adequate measure of strength. The net result is overdoses when the drug that hits the market is more pure than is expected, or poisoning when the drug is adulterated with a toxin (either from being cut with soemthing bad, or being manufactured incorrectly in the first place.) There are also the risks due to having to interact with a black market that you'd never go near in any other context, and the legal rammifications.

I would have thought that people would have learned from the Prohibition. It did nothing to really put a stop to alcohol consumption. Instead it made those who (rightfully) want to drink a glass of wine, criminals. I allowed for the rise of a black market, the expansion of the coffers of organised crime, and the need to increase policing and enforcement - with all that entails.

(As an aside, does anyone know whether Catholics were allowed to use real wine in their Eucharist during the Prohibition? Or was their freedom to practice their religion as they had done for 1900 years impinged upon by a secular power in a country that values highly the seperation between church and state?)

there is no convincing medical evidence that moderate use of drugs such as marijuana, alcohol, mdma, and lsd cause brain damage.

Actualy, there is evidence that MDMA causes brain damage.

Serious damage, too.

In parts of your brain which you really want.

Try a quick medline search for "mdma AND neurotoxic."

Plenty of evidence there.

Be careful with X, it can do some very nasty things to your brain with moderate exposure.

For example, when I was in Thailand recently the penalties for drug usage are extremely stiff, but the culture is widespread. In the south on the islands there is a lot of dope and amphetamines. In the north opium is prevalent and has been smoked for thousands of years. it's more the fact that there is historical context that means that alot of ppl use drugs.

As to Al Capone, He didn't want the status quo to change because his entire business depended on the prohibition. It was nothing to do with the number of people drinking, which clearly went up after the end of prohibition. This is in direct contracdiction to your assertion that legalisation/decriminalisation of drugs will reduce the number of users.

The way to win the drugs war is to realise that it is not a war. why shouldn't people get high on assorted chemicals if they want to as long as they don't harm others and pay for the harm they cause themselves? Education is what's needed.

Lastly, if drugs were legalised, usage would not go down as you suggest. The main thing that stopped me from smoking more dope in the last few years is the law. Now I don't use cannabis as I have noticed an associated memory loss, though this is annecdotal evidence. I don't use pills any more as I can't legally check what I am getting, so could really fsuck myself up. Usage in holland is high, but the number of addicts and madical casualties of hard drugs is low. Also AIDS spread through dirty needles is very low as needle exchanges are supported. All in all their approach is to treat drug users as patients rather than the enemy.

"Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus" - Aneurin Bevan

1. Does this explain the iMAC
2. So is Bill Gates First Move as CSA going to be constructing the biggest Hydro Facility in the PAC NW
3. Who would sell to Gates, even in his days at Harvard he looked like a damned undercover cop

1991 article from GQ

Drugs are everywhere here, and when you consider the age group that's in the thick of it - the 21-29 yr olds - that's where your also going to find a lot of drug use, too.

That's just the way it is....and I'm not complaining.

As far as the alcohol bit..any IT job is enough to drive you to drink. Doesn't help that a lot of places here in the Valley have Friday booze busts, or when their stock splits, which is just about every Friday anyway...
I'm in a galaxy all my own, where people don't mean anything and there's funk music playing in the background.

And no, we don't -neeeeeed- it, we enjoy it.

Ok, so let me get thi straight: you're saying that a "single sip of the evil" can cause you to loose all of your knowledge regarding computers, including basic musuclar function such as the ability to type?

1) What the hell is "the evil"? I assume you mean alcohol. Are you Mormon, or otherwise fed anti-mindalteringsubstances propaganda on a regular basis?

2) The following statement is TRUTH: There are millions of successful people who have done, and continue to do, various mind altering drugs including LSD, marijuana, alcohol, X, and others. Heroin is bad. LSD is not heroin. Therefore, LSD is not necessarily bad. In fact, LSD is good. Remember that. LSD is good.

3) Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones is still alive and jamming. Explain that, please.

Here is your mantra for the next week: "Drugs have done good things for some people." Think over this statement. Also, ask yourself the following questions: Why are these people, who seem to be fairly intelligent even if some of them use Windows, defending drug use? Why? What is in it for them? Why would they encourage me to take drugs if they aren't selling them to me?

I see no evidence to support this.

none at all.

--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."

hint: see my domain name.

--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."

The Government is a large body; if one department calls Criptography a black art, it doesn't mean that is the position of the whole government. That would be like saying that slashdot is bad because some poster said something studpid in one of the forms.

Not exactly. It would be more like calling slashdot bad because everyone who posts stories for slashdot posts stupid ones. Id wouldn't matter (to the end user) how many others working for slashdot could post good stories if they were not responsable for content. The same applys to government, who cares if the dept. of agriculture understands the encryption, the encryption policy makers are all that matters to encryption, and they made bad policy.

It's fairly common knowledge that one of Microsoft's private newsgroups is called the Microsoft Dance Music Association (MDMA). For those of you who aren't familiar, MDMA is the chemical name for the drug Ecstasy.

Shayne

However, it would not surprise me to learn that the human mind actually ran a hodgepodge of Perl, TECO macros, Lisp, and COBOL (the last being in the R-complex, which pop culture has referred to as the "dinosaur brain".)

I actually found that the article, while it was interesting, was somewhat incoherent... and now, 15 minutes after reading it, I can't remember the author's main point or any insights/cool things that were in the text. Could it be that the author was trying to produce the textual equivalent of a couple of bong hits? :-)

Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.

All his books that I've read have had either drugs in them, or things which are clearly analogous to drugs.

I'm just curious as to how many hackers and crackers use drugs to enhance their cognitive abilities for brief periods of time? The reason I ask this is because I seem to recall some famous page being hacked a little while back, and the perpetrator leaving a note that had, amongst other things, an apology for his spelling because he was "on methadiachromanphetamines" or something. Anybody have an idea as to what effects amphetamines can have on the problem-solving abilities of the human brain?

The Institute of Official Cheer

I'm just curious as to how many hackers and crackers use drugs to enhance their cognitive abilities for brief periods of time?

This is such a great question. For me it involves being a little drunk and playing the guitar. At that particular moment in time my command of the instrument was never better. It was as if I was having an out of body experience and BECAME the guitar (I know that's cliche, but it was true). I've never had so lucid a moment in my life, prior to, or since then.

Drugs certainly can break down barriers.

As an experiment, the next time I record a friend of mine in the studio we are going to fool around with different levels of intoxication and see what our creative results are. It should be fascinating.

----- "Just because no one in their right mind would wear it, doesn't make it hip."

All drugs essentially do is to release various forms of artificial chemicals into the body and cause something that is seen as "good" in the brain. Now this is usually a bad thing. When you start messing with the brain you have problems. Hell even things that are supposedly "good" for you are usually not all that good.

"Substance x induces severe, irreversible structural damage to neurotransmitter sub-system y. Its sequelae include mood-congruent cognitive delusions, treatment-resistant euphoria, and toxic affective psychosis."

...To look any farther, you literally need tens of thousands of people to participate in a controlled, double blinded trial to get statistically significant data...

This is incorrect.

And I am off topic, so I will not go into much detail, but the basic point is that the benifits of increasing sample size are only O(root(N)). It is never necessary to sample "tens of thousands" of subjects to obtain statisticaly significant data.

It is unfortunate that this level of missunderstanding of stastics is so common in the US.

People see numbers, they think they mean something. Bah.

Fluoxetine (brand name Prozac) is not an antipsychotic. It is a selective serotonin uptake inhibitor (SSRI). It is commonly prescribed for three disorders: Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive disorder, and Bulimia Nervosa.

(the following is a quote from the drug monograph at: http://www.mentalhealth.com/drug/p30- p05.html)

The possibility of a suicide attempt is inherent in depression and may persist until significant remission occurs. Therefore, high risk patients should be closely supervised throughout therapy and consideration should be given to the possible need for hospitalization. In order to minimize the opportunity for overdosage, prescriptions for fluoxetine should be written for the smallest quantity of drug consistent with good patient management.

. . .

Suicidal thoughts and acts are far more common among depressed patients than in the general population. It is estimated that suicide is 22 to 36 times more prevalent in depressed persons than in the general population. A comprehensive meta-analysis of pooled data from 17 double blind clinical trials in patients with major depressive disorder compared fluoxetine (n=1765) with a tricyclic antidepressant (n=731) or placebo (n=569), or both. The pooled incidence of emergence of substantial suicidal ideation was 1.2% for fluoxetine, 2.6% for placebo, and 3.6% for tricyclic antidepressants.

> I'm yet to meet anyone who could spell with any competance while high...

You mean "competence," don't you?

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

And some of us are all three! :D

The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.

Like so much dribble back in the 60s, this is just another reach to justify drug use on a massive scale. It killed people then, and it'll kill people now.

1968 Drugs will make the Gratefull Dead sound better.
2000 Drugs will make the internet better.

Sugesting that this particular generation has been inoculated by slamming in the pit at burning man and pulling hits off a huka is just wrong, wrong wrong.

_________________________
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First, I assume you meant drivel.

Second, you're only half right.
The drugs don't meake the Dead better, the Dead make the drugs better.

I suspect that their only shortcoming was not being trained to recognize the print and flat surface of the image on that magazine as a person's face.

This is nonsense - no-one needs training to recognise faces. The brain is so good at picking out faces that it can find a `face' on the moon or in clouds. Of course it may be surprising to see such a realistic reproduction of a face for the first time.

A magazine realistically represents people? Presumably all of your friends are film stars with inane grins and cigarette advertisments on the backs of their heads?

They could recognize the face okay. Their confusion was over the absence of the back of it.

Arguably a 3-dimensional representation of a head (a sculpture) is more realistic than a 2-dimensional one, in that you could look at it from the side or back and still be able to tell what it was supposed to be. This implies two things:

• If one thing can be more judged more realistic than another then 'reality' is relative.
• What you see depends upon your point of view.

You are quite able to construct a 3-dimensional interpretation of a perspective painting or drawing, because your mind is trained to do that.

Perspective is an optical con-job, which in fact didn't even exist until relatively recently. Have you ever seen medieval art? Weird (to modern eyes)senses of scale, big archers crammed into tiny turrets, the Bayeux tapestry? This was the representational convention of their day.

These images seemed as normal and 'realistic' to them as motion pictures (the camera lies 24 frames per second), Magic Eye-style autosterograms and phosphorent patterns on CRT screens seem to us now.

In the future, people will look back at the crude representations we have now, and laugh at their strangely mannered appearence compared those generated by their nanotechnological sensorial implants (or whatever... you get the idea though).

Consensus reality is neither. Fnord.

Now, that said, given that the piece was about Everything, it'd have been nice if it had more than about two paragraphs' worth about it without having lots of fluff rambling on and on around it. It seems like a JonKatz article, but even less relevant. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?" "'Quined' quined" quines "quined."

If there is anything in science fiction to say drugs are good, it's in Dune. Melange allows for

What about all the sperm cells forced to die, needlessly shriveling from dehydration on your bedroom carpet? These things are identical genetic copies of yourself, carelessly spurted all over yourself in the name of "pleasure".

Each time, you destroy over a quarter billion copies of yourself! Instead you should concentrate on lining up as many fertile females as you can and building your own demi-clones for world domination!
[Continue]

"The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few. Or the one."

Hackers tend to be more political than anything getting more involved with left-wing political ideals that mind altering substances.

And as someone else pointed out, do we really need drugs when very soon we'll be able to alter our states of mind with VR?

That's basically thr direction Timothy Leary was heading with computers. He was looking for a ming altering experience with computers, as great as his experiences with drugs. He was an Amiga developer and interested in ultimately wiring it directly to the brain. Interesting and also probably very likely, one day.

Now on the other side of the coin, as an audio engineer I tend to be around a lot of musicians, and I can definitely say there is a larger link to drug use with them (bug surprise) than computer users. (of course the most addicted pot smoker I have ever seen was a fellow audio engineer, and some of you probably have CD's in your collection that he worked on, but that's another story entirely).

I must confess that the idea of altering my mind with drugs in intriguing, but I have yet to raise the courage to try an halucinagenic. And the thought of smoking appalls me to no end (though I did eat a pot-brownie once and it seemed to have little effect).

For me the, my mind altering comes from occasionally drinking alchohol, good conversation, and listening to a lot of very cool music.

----- "Just because no one in their right mind would wear it, doesn't make it hip."

I can't see the dichotomy between left-wing politics and chemical recreation. Everything in its own measure, I say.

                        And as someone else pointed out, do we really need drugs when very soon we'll be able to alter our states of mind with VR?

There are many ways of altering the state of one's mind - music, dancing, sex, sleeping, study etc. These sorts of things have been around for a _long_ time. If one were to extrapolate from your argument, VR would replace all of these, or in fact any of these could replace either drugs or VR. I can't see it myself...

Obviously you've never taken a hallucinogen. :) That would be easy to tell if you *hadnt* mentioned it later in the post.

They don't just alter your senses, they alter your train of thought..how your mind gets from point a to point b. Or maybe you'll be trying to get from point a to point b and end up somehow at point c and forget about point a and point b altogether.

Or given a few facts while sober you might make a simple logical conclusion. While in a psychedelic frame of mind, it's amazing the paths of thought you'll bounce around.

I don't think you can gain any real insight on the universe from drugs, but I think you can learn things about yourself.

But you don't have to have any great goals when taking a psychedelic. Drugs are simply masturbation for your mind. And you've already got hair growing on that. :)

I was very tempted to post this anonymously because saying something that implies I may have used drugs once isn't something this society looks highly upon. Interestingly enough, I usually think less of people who routinely go out and get plastered at bars than my friends who take a psychedelic once in a while.

Anyway, I'm rambling here.

Geek Merchandise

If I had more time I could write a shorter post.

If I had more time I could write a shorter post.

If I had more time I could write a shorter post.

If I had more time I could write a shorter post.

> I think that when people start saying things like "I respect
> sensible laws" we are headed for trouble.

You are sure as Hell in a lot more trouble when people start saying things like "I respect all laws, sensible or nonsensical." Think Auschwitz, sister.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Crush

• Syd Barrett was a founding member of Pink Floyd, not Joy Division
• He is still alive, and living in Cambridgeshire, England

When I read this, it was moderated as "Insightful". Excuse me while I go vomit; something has just made me very ill.

***Support Java 2 SDK on FreeBSD!!

Yes, in fact he dedicates the book to his friends who died from drug abuse:

This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed - run over, maimed, destroyed - but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was such a terribly brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life style. In this particular life style the motto is Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence.

I don't want you to use drugs, if you think, they're chemicals damaging your brain. Try to get into altered state of consciousness another way. There are lots of ways to do so without drugs!!! Study Zen, Buddhism, etc. You can be even Christian and get to the altered state of consciousness by praying (if Christianism != church for you). It certainly will help you. I can't say, that you are damaging your brain with safe-drugs. LSD and cannabis are safer than alcohol. (I don't use alcohol). Tim Leary, one of the greaters users of LSD, psilocybin and cannabis lived longer than most of us will. You need motivation of life, to be good and good to people. The way of doing it is mandatory. Everyone has his own way. But don't tell anyone something, you know nearly nothing about.

I see, that anti-drug propaganda overseas is very strong :). Plain old nice europe :).

The point here is, that you should know, what you are doing (and reading how to stop bad trip, when it's coming. There are fairly good books about this). I mean, when you take LSD 5 times a year, you'll have no problem, if you know, what you're doing. When you take it twice a week, you're going to hospital immediately.

This crap is just so much psycho babble from people with limited imaginations! Reject drug use? You bet! Self control is good. I'm sick to death of people trying to construct reasonable arguments to reject reason and promote self destruction.

True visions don't come from a pill, they come from life's experiences interpreted by an active and well functioning brain. Drugs can't do anything more than confuse, scramble, and destroy. Psychosis is not creativity. A psychotic dimwit is just a dimwit. A psychotic genius is a tragedy. Sure, it's good to oppose seemingly unrelated concepts and ideas. Creative people do this naturally, and intelligent creative people can recognize what they see when it happens.

Drug use is a wreckless and stupid thing. How many of you geniuses are neuro chemistry experts? Right. How many illegal drugs come with an assay from a reputable and well known firm? So, in general, you don't know what your using and you would not know what it is really doing to you even if you did know. All you do know is that you might have a nice time with your malfuntioning head. Great. This is not a casual recreation!

Society seeks to protect itself from intoxicated individuals. People who are out of their heads have a tendency to do vile things to themselves and others. It's generally against the law to intoxicated, and some substances are so intoxicating that they have been outlawed. People who break the law are criminals. Make a nuisance of yourself, and you will find yourself in the drunk tank. No one minds people who behave. Let's have a look at Plant thoughts:

For Plant, "the scrambling of perceptions" is itself the revelation -- the discovery that reality is "just a deeply contingent effect of the interaction between your environment and one of many possible neurochemical brain-states," that the bandwith and processing-speed of your cranial computer can be drastically expanded.

The Blue Screen of Death is just one of many possible states your Microsoft Operating System may have. In this state, your computer deeply thinks that it's flying. Sure it is. They world exists and most things can be proved with the help of reason. Get over it!

Free? That's a nice word, Hobbex. My mind is open but so are my eyes. There's plenty of wasted tallent out there, dancing with garbage bags on the side of the road. Heroin has directly killed several people I know. Other drugs have indirectlly killed a few more frinds, and left others chasing cars in the rain like dogs. They all thought they were so smart and most were. In the end, they'll take anything. They did not become Carl Segans, or even Bill Blithes. They became wastes. One friend of mine managed to get out of it. I'm proud of him and the people who encouraged him and never gave up. The rest, I miss. It all starts with bull shit notions of freedom and reality, and a little "harmless" this or that.

Get out while you still can. Go do something!

• Try some psychedelic drug (can start with cannabis).
• Okay, if you don't want to use a drug, try to get into altered state of cosciousness with yoga or holotropic breathwork. Tibetans do this for years!
• Recommended reading:
  1. Jack Herrer:Emperror wears no clothes
  2. Timmothy Leary:Chaos and Cyberculture, Flashbacks
  3. Aldous Huxley:Doors of perception
  4. Tibetan Book of Dead
  5. Everything from Terrence McKenna

When you called it psychosis, I started to think I even shouldn't reply. Psychosis is uncontrolable! Safe-drug use is controllable by mental technics.

Maybe you don't need drugs. So let me ask you a question: ,,Are you completely happy?''. If the answer is yes, then and only then, you don't have to think about this. And by happy I don't mean you're smiling or that you have family or good income. By happy I mean no bad thoughts in your mind, being nice to people and the primary goal to help. If you can say that, hands off from drugs! I think, that there are not many people, who can say that.

,,There are all sorts of non-drug activities that obviously change that neurochemical balance -- sex, exercise, food''

Actually, all of these things are drug activities. While having sex, your body releases lots of endorphines and also adrenaline (that's why there's a saying in our country, that sex helps to heal the flu). It's similiar with exercise and food, but not to that amount.

Plant has more in common with the demystified approach of today's post-rave generation, who increasingly explore drugs purely for the intrinsic interest of their precise perceptual distortions and sensory enhancements, without making the kind of investment in ideas of the visionary or shamanic that characterized the generation of psychonauts that included Aldous Huxley, R. Gordon Wasson, and Tim Leary.

I think this is what is going to kill us. I use drugs ocassionaly. I do some other ways of altering my consciousness (holotrophic breatwork, yoga, ...). But whenever you start using it this way, you end in forever-altered-state, which is not expanded, but rather reducted state. Never seen or read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

,,Intoxicants are all, at root, toxins; drug experiences, says Plant, are little infusions of death into life. Which is why the shamanic traditions of using plant hallucinogens tend to imagine the trip as a journey across the border between life and death.''

Ah, no. Altered state of consciousness was described before the first millenium by Tibetans in a book called Tibetan book of dead. As many of you know, this is the ,,west-name'' of this book. The original name is ,,Freeing from Bardo by listening''. Bardo is interstate -- state between two normal states. One of these Bardo's is death (actually, death consist of three bardos), second is f.e. sleep&dreaming and there's also a meditation/altered state (like by drugs) state. All these Bardos have something common, but you can't say, that you're injecting death with drugs (if not meaning it ironically with drugs=dangerous drugs like heroin, pervitin, etc.). That's why I think, Tibetans are best in psychology and describing of altered states. Be sure to read Tibetan book of Dead before using any psychedelic drugs.

Conclusion? I think this article is interesting, because ms. Plant really writes atractively. But that's the start and the end. I can see no ,,visionary'' here. (I'm feminist too, not writing this because I don't like women or crap like that!)

As far as you know? You clearly don't use drugs, so you clearly don't know at all. You're in absolutely no position to say what drugs do to you. This is complete hogwash.

A disproportionately low number PhDs and Nobel laureates use drugs.

my premise: phds and nobel laureates have reputations. they want to protect their reputations. drug use is considered a negative trait by society. therefore, they underreport their drug use in surveys, usually created by prohibitionist organisations such as NIDA, HHN (swedish group), etc.

A disproportionately high number of high school dropouts and criminals do use drugs.

my premise: these people obviously began using drugs at a very young age. currently, our society treats such people very poorly, ie, throwing them in jail, piss tests, basically treating them like human failures. it is this ostracism which causes them to become on the fring of society, aka dropouts and criminals.

Q.E.D

canadaman

I'm curious about how you got this empirical evidence concerning all of these Ph.Ds and Nobel laureates. Have you read/heard them state publically that they don't use drugs? Have they told you personally that they don't use drugs? Or are you merely assuming that they don't use drugs? Since you didn't provide any sources I have to assume the latter. Not particularly empirical. Here's some evidence for you: I attend an affluent private university and personally know several Ph.Ds and Ph.D candidates who smoke weed. Don't know any Nobel laureates that I know of, but Carl Sagan is a pretty affluent marijuana user.

A disproportionaltely high number of high school dropouts and criminals do use drugs. Well, everyone who uses drugs is a criminal by definition, so that part of your argument is entirely redundant. High school dropouts? Again, I'd like to see your sources which say that dropouts do more drugs than non-dropouts. You provide none, but in this case I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

On to your conclusions. Number one, I'll accept. It's not particularly controversial; stupid people generally like the same things smart people do. However, this conclusion does not rationally argue that drug usage is stupid; a rather extreme example would be that stupid people also enjoy music, but obviously this does not support inordinate suspicion that music enthusiasts are stupid.

Second conclusion: not particularly supported. Fact: since I started smoking weed 5+ times a week, my grades have gone from B/B+es to A/A-es. The high school dropouts, in the light of the other presented evidence, are more likely explained by the first conclusion.

Respond. If you want.

Anyway, I can see that I was rambling for a while there. My point was that the more intelligent folk tend to do psychedelics and mind-expanders, the less intelligent folk tend to do stimulants and downers, and everyone does weed. At least, that's been my experience.
--
Wow. I have LiViD and css-auth here.

Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0400' Expected statement /homepage.asp, line 512

Nice!

Seriously, I mean they got just about everything else in there:

• feminism
• anarchism
• the military
• the orient
• raves
• capitalism
• computers
• culture

It's true. Consult www.trepan.com if you want to know why they do it.

Personally, I consider this to be ridiculous. They're basing their whole idea around one ancient paper by a Dutch medical student. Speaking as a medical student, I wouldn't trust any paper authored solely by anyone in my class, including myself. However, people are certainly free to put holes in their heads if they want.

Getting back to the topic of drugs and expanded reality: if they do nothing else, many "consciousness-expanding" drugs do temporarily alter your frame of reference. This may be a good thing, since it shocks people out of complacency, which will in turn lead to more active thinking. On the other hand, if you can't tell what's real and what's chemical, you're not very functional, so I doubt we're going to see a society where people do much hacking while intoxicated. I've seen code that I wrote while in an altered mental state, and it's utterly awful.

Alik

This may be a good thing, since it shocks people out of complacency, which will in turn lead to more active thinking.

I can also code some damn good Perl stoned, too :-)

You just think its good. Although an altered state may reduce some barriers and allow you to think about something in a way that you otherwise wouldn't, it is not conducive to logical thinking.

But hey, if you otherwise wouldn't be coding, then fine -- do it. Just go back and clean it up over a cup of coffee in the morning, because I promise you that the code you write tonight that looks so cool while you are stoned is not very good. Or maybe it is OK, but you didn't write very much of it.

Stoned can be fun. It is not productive.

Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking to filter what the eyes see and what the ears hear
--BuSab private files, Frank Herbert

(From most addictive to the least:)
Cigarettes (Still doing these :[ )
Pot (Not that I can't stop, I just love mary jane!)
Crystal Meth (dropped this stuff with a quickness, devils drug)
Cocaine (beware the powders, I did)
Demerol (broke my arms a few times, no not for the demerol!)
LSD (7 hits and your legally mental, count lost at 200, not done in 2yrs)
Alcohol (Its addictive, I just don't like its effect.)
Shrooms (Fun, but it makes you sick)
Peyote (Quite fun.)
Robotussin

I gotta give the story for Robo. It was given to me between second and third period at high school. I was told to drink half of this family sized bottle. After seeing how easily I could swill the vile liquid down (due to experiences with 40 ounce beers) he told me to keep going. It took a while to effect me. However third period bio's discussion on cilla with a teacher who loves to make hand gestures cause a sudden stir within. It was a lot like acid. I asked to see the nurse. I split for a few periods. The moral of the story, kids, don't do drugs at school. Wait till after school when you should be doing your homework.

Oh well, no point in steering now.

Oh well, no point in steering now.

The last few years, I have smoked some weed, but I haven't really tried coding after having smoked it. Somehow, I don't think it would work very well.

// bea

Drugs like LSD and weed allow us to explore ourselves and our world in new ways. Whereas harder drugs (like heroin) are mostly associated with trying to 'escape' the real world, not learn about.

Does this ring true with anyone else?

This does not ring true at all with me. This sounds more like typical drug bigotry. "my drug is better than your drug, people who use your drug are all losers."

Most people who use psychedelics are not really trying to explore themselves and the world in new ways. They're (we're) just looking for a good time, to relax and escape. Clarity of thought is usually just an illusion, I'd consider it a particular (highly desirable) type of euphoria. Any valuable insights are either forgotten or not seen as so valuable after the experience is over.

Psychedelics provide much more of an escape than the "hard" drugs (opiates and stimulants - they barely provide any escape at all). There's nothing wrong with wanting to escape the real world. Perhaps programmers want to escape more than other people because we work hard, and we have to concentrate non-stop all day. I can put a lot more effort into my work, and deal with a lot more stress, knowing that there's some weed waiting for me when I get home, or that there's some acid waiting for me on Friday.

I think that I work hard enough that I'm entitled to an escape. I don't need to spend every waking hour working - and after a short time I'd end up less productive if I did.

Forgive me for baiting the ignorant, but what harm have psychedelics (including marijuana) ever done? Their lone purpose is to make people feel good.

What harm have psychedelics (including marijuana) ever done?

Amtra-Conrail train collision in the early-80's. The switch operator was on weed, which impaired his judgement sufficiently such that he put the two trins on the same track. Several hundred people died. What harm my ass.

In order for this one incident to prove that marijuana impairs one's judgment, you would either have to assert that no person not under the influence of marijuana has ever made a similar fatal mistake, which is absurd - unintoxicated people crash airplanes, wreck buses, blow up nuclear power plants, etc., on a pretty regular schedule, as you read in the daily news - or else you would have to demonstrate that the statistical likelihood of wrecking a train is significantly higher if one is full of marijuana fumes - and that may be an arguable proposition, but you can't do that on the basis of one sample.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

That was my post, and I think I proved a point. Weak minded people who do what their teachers and police officers tell them to do are the worst candidates for LSD use. You will question authority, and in an altered state of reality, you can actually look at yourself from an objective POV. I see that as a Good Thing©.

If you can't handle the notion that you were enculturated with beliefs that are wrong, don't use acid -- A closed mind cannot expand.

(LocalYokel has left Slashdot)

Sorry, but this is total bunk.

As an undergrad, I had to do a rather extensive research paper in my neuropsychology class. For my topic I chose the exact subject you are speaking of: supposed "permanent trippers" who take one hit of acid and are foreverafter tripping. My prof had heard the same stories, and after discussing with him I delved into the medical records.

To make a long story short, there were no documented cases of permanent trippers. There was plenty of anecdotal evidence, but as far as ER room admissions, documented psychiatric cases, or other hard-sources, there was no evidence at all. None. Zero.

In fact, no study has ever been able to find differences between LSD users (current or former) and the general non-LSD using population.

LSD is safer than baby aspirin.

I'm willing to agree that powerful psychedelics can "break" some people. However, I'm also willing to agree that going to the grocery store HAS "broken" some people. It happened to the mother of a friend of mine. She just freaked out one nice summer day, and has never been sane since. Does that mean that we should ban grocery stores?

In the absence of serious statistical analysis, anecdotal evidence of risk is not just meaningless, but actually danerous. It just encourages speculation and pointless screaming.

For example, I myself have done LSD several hundred times. I've even managed to do some DMT, which makes LSD look like distilled water . . .

I am (surprise!) completely stable, well-paid, chock full of assets, and generally an upstanding member of society. However, this is ALSO just an anecdote, and therefore suspect.

I guess my only point is this:

We ought to trust adults to make their own judgements, and accept their own risks. Thus far, drug use hasn't done anything negative to me. I may, however, be over-confident, and perhaps the next occasion will shatter my psyche. Maybe, maybe not. I'm willing to accept the risk, and more importantly I'm willing to accept the consequences. So, why not let me? The State lets people jump out of perfectly good airplanes, why won't it let me use drugs on occasion if I want?

Some people will freak out. Oh well; that's life.

I have no .sig, and I must scream.

Mabey you are one of the victims, the way you have reacted so strongly to this post tells me that you are not emotionally sturdy. You react almost as if I am "out to get you"..a well known symptom of people with acid induced psychosis.

Smart people don't quote their IQ's because they know that standard intelligence tests carry little meaning but this is offtopic.

To the other poster who replied stating that Feyman advocated drug use. Feynman said that he never had or would take a psychedelic drug because he valued his ability to think too much to mess with it. Pot and alcohol were acceptable to him

"There's a fine line between stupid and clever" Nigel from Spinal Tap

>>Man, I don't know about you, but I could sure use a nice frothy glass of horse cum!

>especially with some plump juicy RAISINS!

Mmmm, raisins and horse cum are yummy! I find that it's much easier to smear the raisins on your chest after you've gargled them with some horse cum. It's so hard not to swallow the horse cum and raisins, though, because the combination is just so yummy! Think, frothy horse cum, sliding down your throat like a white oil slick of love! With raisins!

I always found Whiskey helped me with those long night programming sessions coding assembler. I think it was the sugar. Sweet coffee seemed to help too. But after 48 - 72 hours of this, the sugar, caffine and sleep deprevation was quite similar to the "extacy" experience.

I knew some guys that had a bad coke habit, and that led to some problems. Seems they designed a chip that went into the fuel injection computer on some late model cars. Well, they forgot one simple step in the design process - things change with heat.

After a while, these chips would heat up and the substrate would crack. All of a sudden, people would be driving down the road, and their car would just stop dead. Note: This is a bad thing at highway speed.

Kids, remember, there are soft and hard drugs. I've tried most everything out there. Some are scary, like heroin and coke. Stick with the natural stuff. Vitamin M.

Better yet, 72 hours of assembly language and booze. It doesn't cost as much, and if it develops into a habit, you'll be rich not poor!

Well, gotta go, crack don't smoke itself ya know!

bash: (e_non-seqitor) Program not derived from: printf("hello world!\n");

As someone else pointed out, the article in question covers quite a bit of ground, but makes no real attempt to clarify or make substantial claims about the interrelationship between hacking and drug use. It seems much more about the visions and ideas of a single person, which while valid, certainly don't have anything to do with a community that I can't really think anyone would count her as a member.

That said, I do see some correlation between drug use (and patterns of drug use) and the hacker community. What follows is my personal experience (both in use, and observing others), and generalizations I make are unique to me, though I think they are a bit more valid the Ms. Plant's.

• A little background: I'm 29, grew up in rural Western PA, and went to college in Boston. That's my frame of reference. Now on to the meat...
• Drug use amongst "hackers" doesn't deviate from society at large. Generally, all the hackers I know don't use drugs in any greater or lesser amounts than my non-hacker friends. What does differ (often dramatically) are the drugs of choice
• Hackers tend to use two categories of drugs: stimulants and what I call relaxers. Stimulants are obvious: caffeine, crystal meth, dexadrine, etc. Fairly obvious why - their use tends be be tied usually to their favorite activity (hacking). The relaxers - alcohol, pot, maybe some low-level psycho-tromatics like 'shrooms - tend to be used exactly for that reason: as a break/vacation from hacking, or as a social thing to do with friends over for the evening.
• I don't see to many hackers with the "damn-the-man, I'm doing drugs" thing going on, though I might be a bit old for that now (≶sigh>). Drug use tends to be a rather personal choice. Honestly, I don't remember getting any pressure from any of my hacker friends to "do" a particular drug. It was "here, use it if you want, if you don't, well, OK" from them. All my drug pressure came from non-hackers (look at the pressure to use alcohol).
• I don't remember any of my hacker friends using drugs for the "mind-expanding" stuff that some of the intelligensia (and the bourgoise pretend to) seem to be so into.
• Also, I don't think a person's drug use can be neatly categorized, just like a person's life doesn't fall into neat categories. Yeah, most of us here are hackers. But we're also a wide variety of stuff, and I venture to guess that most hackers over 20 have at least 3 sets of different friends that they do things with. For instance, me (heehee): I like to club, I play soccer and swim, and I go to church (gasp!). The rings of friends I have from each of those activities overlap somewhat, but I'm certainly going to behave differently in each group. So trying to categorize my overall drug use as relates to a single one of my activities is silly.

I've seen some claims from people above, but I honestly can't say I know anyone who can hack on anything but stimulants. Interesting ideas you might get on pot/LSD/whatever, but the coding process is very rational and process-oriented, which I can't see anyone doing well under anything but stimulants. Speaking of which, everyone notice that performance curve from crystal due to sleep deprevation? I've friends who were up for 72 hours on crystal, and though they functioned fine up until the very end, couldn't code after about 30 hours or so...

Anyway, my $0.02.

-Erik

Hackers tend to use two categories of drugs: stimulants and what I call relaxers. Stimulants are obvious: caffeine, crystal meth, dexadrine, etc. Fairly obvious why - their use tends be be tied usually to their favorite activity (hacking).

The relaxers - alcohol, pot, maybe some low-level psycho-tromatics like 'shrooms - tend to be used exactly for that reason: as a break/vacation from hacking, or as a social thing to do with friends over for the evening.

Wow you'd think these Slashdot posters would be more careful. Anyhoo, many of you should expect your admissions of drug use to be forwarded to the upper management and shareholders of your employer. As for those who posted anonymously, that's nothing a search warrant can't rectify.

Regards

I think anyone between the ages of 15 and 60 can be suspected of having used drugs.

Speaking of drugs, feeling a bit paranoid, are we??
I'm in a galaxy all my own, where people don't mean anything and there's funk music playing in the background.

I work in the lab of a highly respected behavioral biologist doing narcotic research, and I can tell you that there are almost NO long term effects for any illegal drugs. The are two well documented ones, though: 1) a first trip on acid can cause such a psychologically disasterous experience, that the person must be institutionalized for years afterward. 2) X kills seretonin producing neurons (one of the primary effects is as an excitotoxin, essentially overstimulating the cells until they 'fry' themselves). The being said, two things:

1) the overexcitation of seretonin is much the same effect as antidepressants (both produce elevated sensitivity to seretonin, and increase the amount in the synaptic cleft). So, is the experience of connectivity, and as the article proports, technology-mind synthesis a higher cognitive sense of overall well being, or at the threshold of outright mania?

2) The article talks about X being the drug of this time period because of the internet and other connecting technologies. At the same time, it is the only drug (illegal, in popular circulation), that kills brain cells. Are we about to enter a race between enhanced versions of X and the ability to change the substance of the brain (neurons) into a non-biological form that can either simulate X's effects on demand, or be completely immune to it?

Just a couple points to meditate on....

Some are not really women.

if they do nothing else, many "consciousness-expanding" drugs do temporarily alter your frame of reference

Hackers tend to be anti-authority. Therefore, hackers gravitate toward drugs because the religious authorities say that drugs are immoral and the government says drugs are illegal. In order to justify drug use, they invent benefits (like enhanced "insight" or "intelligence").

On the other hand, there is also the science/psychology "authorities" that say drugs are simply bad for you. (Of course, people dismiss this as tools of the authoritative state).

For example, the author claims that drugs enhance "insight". Certainly, if you talk to your average heavy LSD user, he/she will claim that the drugs provides all sorts of philosophical insights into the world. Unfortunately, they can't communicate exactly what those insights actually are, and such insights don't prove useful in their daily lives. Psychologists have studied this to a large extent and found that LSD does gives only the "illusion" of insight: the users are just fooling themselves.

Similarly, scientists have studied Extasy and found it has massive detrimental longterm effects to your IQ.

If you are looking for insight, read widely. In particular, read stuff that challenges your beliefs. The most interesting people I know are those who are widely read; the most boring people I've ever known have been heavy drug users. Similarly, I've noticed that the "insights" drugs give people does not change their beliefs. On the other hand, I've notice significant alteration in people's views on life when they start to read widely.

In the end, while wannabe hackers partake in anything counterculture, but all the interesting/talented ones I know are not into heavy drug use.

PS: I don't think drugs are immoral or that they should be illegal; just something that virtually never leads to anything useful.

I agree with you about hackers tending toward drug use because of anti-authoritarian attitudes, but I think you're way off on the business about drug users lacking insight and/or intelligence in general. There are good reasons to believe that mind altering substances do, in fact, lead to greater creativity and insight in many individuals due to the nature of the substances and the situations in which they are used. Mind altering drugs, by definition, alter the users' perceptions of themselves and the world around them. It is this alteration that allows them to view problems in new and radical ways and to ask questions that they would not normally ask. Sometimes this will lead to new innovations and sometimes it will not. I suspect that people who tend to be creative in the first place have a far greater enhancement to their creativity than those who are not naturally creative. The drug use doesn't cause creativity, it only helps it.

There is also a great deal of factual evidence that supports the link between creativity and drug use. One good example of this is the last 200 years of art and music. Nearly all of the Romantic poets were opium users (Samuel Coleridge wrote 'Kubla Khan' under the influence of laudanum, which also contributed to 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'). Jazz would probably not exist without the influence of drugs and alcohol (there's a reason that so many of the original jazz musicians died young), and Louie Armstrong was known to get his band stoned before some performances. The influence of drugs in the cubist and surrealist movements should be obvious. Rock music, again, has an obvious drug influence and most of the songs that become 'classics' are not only influenced by drugs, but are about drugs. Since many hackers tend to identify more with artists than scientists or engineers, it is not surprising that there would be a tradition of drug use in some segments of the programming community.

What about the influence of drugs on non-artists? The March 1990 issue of Scientific American reported that working marijuanna users: 1)cost less in health insurance benefits; 2) had a higher than average rate of promotion; 3) exhibited less absenteeism; and 4) were fired for cause less often than workers who did not test positive. The same article noted that there is no correlation between illegal drug use and household income (this particular statistic came from a drug policy official in the Bush administration).

As for drugs being 'bad' for you, yes, it is true that some drugs do have negative effects on your body. Heroine, nicotine, and alcohol (in excess) are the worst offenders. Caffine isn't all that great, either, and marijuanna certainly isn't good for you, but has only mild short term effects. There may be a weak correlation with lung cancer if it is smoked, but this has only been established in the last couple of years and with only a few studies. Saturated fat (a non-drug) has had a far more devestating effect on health in the general population than any drug, resulting in over 500,000 deaths a year (in the US) from heart disease and stroke. I don't see any rush to stigmatize people who like to eat bacon burgers as unintelligent and harmful to society.

While it is true that there are an awful lot of losers out there who do nothing but get high all day, those are also the people who are the most likely to be bragging about their drug use. Intelligent drug users rarely announce their recreational activities to co-workers and friends who may be shocked or annoyed by such behavior.

Hrm...How much you wanna bet that you can remove the drugs from this equation and get the same result? I would be willing to bet big money.


Shop Smart, Shot S-mart!

Frankly, I think you have to be a pretty darn boring person if drugs are going to enhance your creativity. Some pretty creative stuff has been written by people when they weren't high, and some of it is actually readable.

If you're going to use drugs recreationally, that's you're perogative, but please don't go around telling people it makes you more creative or smarter. First of all, it's a crutch. If you need drugs to perform, then that's a sign of mental addiction.

Second of all, the drug of choice among many "innovative thinkers" is marijuana. It's not too hard to spot somebody who used pot heavily during their adolescence, because they usually lag about 5 seconds behind any conversation. Certainly there are enough successful pot users (e.g. Carl Sagan) to show that not all marijuana users will suffer "amotivational syndrome". However, I think Sagan would have been an extrodinary person no matter what. But what about joe average stoner? How many of them just sit around all day eating potato chips and watching Cheech and Chong movies?

Then there's LDS. Nevermind the people who don't have a sober friend guide them while they trip and end up killing themself in some dumb way or another, screwing with your brain chemistry has nasty effects like flashbacks later in life. Whee!

The article talked alot about how this author likes esctasy. That is some dangerous #$@*. Watch Go if you don't believe me. Whoo, apparently ecstacy can cause Parkinson's disease-type symptoms. You can be just like Dr. Hawking! yay!

Actually, the only reason I'm ranting is because I'm sick of my drug culture friends always talking about how they miss doing LSD and such. Yesterday one of them was trying to convince me that Cyberia was a great book. Apparently it deals on this whole drug culture/computer culture thing.

Um, really, I forgot...

======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
======

[Psychedelic] Drugs allow you to hack your brain.

Think about it: you've been given a courtesy copy of the world's most powerful computer. You play with it for 20 years or so and then a friend shows you these five or six TCP ports you had never noticed were open.

And the government will put you in jail for telnetting to them. Even though it's your own computer.

Remind anybody of the DeCSS shrinkwrap license fiasco?

I've yet to jump out a window thinking I can fly, I've yet to stab my friends because I thought they were blue smurfs trying to steal my vcr. You know what? I've never puked up blood from the evil rat poison that's supposedly in blotters.

You know why drugs kill? Drugs kill because of two reasons. A) Because they're illegal, there's no damned quality control. You get shit, you get fucked up. And, the more common reason, B) Morons who can't handle themselves take it, and become dependant on it, then manage to overdose.

Actually, it's probably good that drugs are illegal. This way, assholes can't sue for dying when they know the risks. Freaking morons against the tobacco industry.

I have a lot to say in a brief time.

First, I want to point out that the white bread world has no clue about drugs. Second, I want to make the connection between Free Thinkers (and by extension, a number of coders), and drug use, in particular, pyschadelics.

That the world is split in its understanding of drugs is obvious. Talk to anyone who is not accustomed to talking about drugs is like trying to talk with a Victorian about sex. There's a tensing up, concerns, "uhhh"s and "errrr"s. I remember talking with a coworker that I've known for some time, and he totally froze up. He had no concept that I could be talking with him about the subject. I was astonished to hear some of the things he'd heard. "Isn't LSD the drug that you are considered clinically insane if you take it 3 times?" Ho boy; time for a little education training.

A bit later we were watching TV (he liked his cartoons in the morning- Starship Troopers, CG), and in an ad break, there was a "Public Message": The usual don't do drugs rap. A boy was talking about his brother for show and tell. (I think he brought in his brother.) "My brother used to be a fun guy to be with." Dramatic pause. "But then he smoked pot." SHAME. [S] [H] [A] [M] [E].

Lets look at the informational content of this commercial for a moment.

Whoah. That was quick!

I think a good way to look at drugs is the following: 3 categories- Hard, Psychadelic, and Soft. Actually, one more: Socially condoned. Socially condoned drugs are like Caffein, Alchohol [by far far far worse than say, Pot- read the facts, sort it out. Black lungs, or abused kids?] Pot folks tend to be open, spacey people. After a good night of toking it up (for reference, I've never smoked pot), they tend to be a bit dim the day after, and recover after a week. Repeated use may turn the time to a month for recovering. But daaaaaam... That's a bit of sssshhhmokin. Potheads tend to be caring, open, friendly, and musicians. I like them a lot. I'm sure there are theives [laid back] out there who are also pot heads.

Then there are hard drugs. Crack. Cocain. Heroin. These are the folks that are going to bash your head in to get their next fix.

And then my favorite, the psychadelics. LSD and shrooms, and to a tougher extent Peyote [never had it.] Of these, I have personal experience with LSD and shrooms. Absolutely wonderful fun experience. Non-addicting; I've done LSD 2 times in my life, and shrooms 1ce. [I'm not too experienced myself; but have plenty of friends to talk with.] These are negative when your friends decides to run off to become a shaman [or some other ego trip], but can be quite a FASCINATING experience, and can really help to see things more clearly. I am honestly speaking here. Do not condemn what you haven't experienced, or say that it must be false.

Okay, 10 minutes left.

Oops... No minutes left...

Heh, sorry. You'll have to figure it out yourself.

Take care! {:)}=

Unfortunately, what happened to me is what happens to some people- it stopped working for me. It stopped buffering me from the increasingly horrible reality, but I kept getting more and more compulsive about it, and then I'd still be able to step back and look at myself and wonder, what the hell? I'd always put drugs into me like they were fuel, but I began questioning whether a life like that (in worse and worse surroundings) was even worth living.

Roughly around the point where I didn't give a damn anymore and would settle for anything as long as it was different, I quit using, also drinking alcohol. That hasn't changed though I'm somewhat older now. One funny thing- I ended up drinking coffee so intensely that I shook and couldn't think straight! So I ended up giving up coffee 'cos I couldn't use it like a normal person :) still consume caffeinated beverages, but only ones like Coke and black tea.

Last of all I gave up smoking (tobacco), again only when I was good and ready. Good and ready constituted having the flu, smoking anyway (of course ;) ) and being rendered literally unable to breathe at times, in acute pain. I threw away big freezer bags full of tobacco (being a good hoarder I keep bulk amounts of such things). Never did manage the 'use the last bits up then quit' maneuver, for me it's always had to be dumping the whole habit at a random moment of "Augh! ENOUGH!".

I'm not terribly surprised so much of Slashdot is on drugs. Hell, most of the world is. It is jarring that you can have a Slashdot discussion on copyright and musicians and so many people will leap in arguing in defense of THE LAW and yet, drugs? Those don't seem to count, you don't see the same arguments, the same ferocity. I am for decriminalization, though, mostly so you can get a tax base on drugs, and so we can start dealing with the unpleasant realities of the situation out in the open rather than having them still there but always kept secret. Criminalization doesn't do shit to diminish drug use, frankly.

If anybody needed to see someone saying 'I stopped using drugs, you can stop', I'm quite happy to say it. If that sounds real trivial then you wouldn't understand :) now, I know loads of people will flame me as usual and eat my karma for daring to suggest that a person might be happier without drugs. Well, that's too bad, because that's what I found. These days I'm not a balky machine running on drugs and keeping a constant quiet inventory of my 'fuels'- I'm just me (albiet with plenty of coca-colas :) )

It seems to me that this is a good thing to be- anybody else wanting to try it, ask yourself- do you want to be free?

Is this Good or Bad(tm)? I don't know, since I haven't the opportunity to partake of any substance to comment on the effects of drugs on coding etc. All I know is that the mainstream in my society is where most drug users come from, and since geeks are normally quite deviant from what is percieved as cool by the Average Young Joe(tm) here, the drug culture doesn't exactly mesh with the Geek Value Code here....in fact, I can't even see any longhair friends around me(bummer)!! :)

To you Slashdot readers who regularly use drugs: grow up! It appears from the comments here that a lot of geeks/hackers use "pschadelics" such as acid/lsd to get an altered state of consciousness. True, this can give a source of creativity/ inspriration, but it is only temporary and causes long-term problems. Is it really worth risking your whole life just for some quick creativity?

If you are really interested in mind travel, such as astral projection, subconscious "hacking," and lucidity, learn to do it the natural way without drugs. Sure, it may take a long time to learn it but you'll get more rewards with no side effects. If you're interested in mind travel I would suggest the following page:

http://www.xsite.ltd.uk/wren/.

Frankly this really sounds like one of those meaningless deconstructionist philosophy rants. The ideas presented appear to be self-consistent but have no bearing on the real world, unless your sense of self is so far gone that the real world is too difficult for you to comprehend and you must make up a fantasy-world that works according to your own rules.

This actually reminds of the stir that Alan Sokal created a few years ago by submitting a phony paper to Social Text, and blew the lid off some of the really idiotic (and totally irrelavent) ideas coming out of a certain school of philosophy. The editors and they're supposedly intelligent insights had become so disconnected from reality that when someone (Sokal) came along and suggested that the real world doesn't really exist, they fell for it, hook, line, and sinker...


Shop Smart, Shot S-mart!

Flamebait or Troll maybe, but not Offtopic. In fact it was explicitly on topic.

A different AC