So any benefit you think you gain from caffeine is just you rationalizing your addiction? Does the fact that weed and LSD are not considered to be addicting drugs mean your willing to accept their may be some validity in user's anecdotes? Besides, most people who are claiming the drugs help are talking about the creative process, coming up with ideas and designs for code, not the actual coding itself. You can come up with a real creative design while tripping, look it over once your sober to find any flaws, and then implement it sober as well (or under the influence of caffeine if you prefer).

The arguments against the idea of drugs being helpful that I see used by those who have never done illegal drugs basically amounts to "I've always been told drugs are bad, so they can't be beneficial." I am comfortable enough with the understood process of "cognitive dissonance" that the opinions of people (in regard to this topic) who's only knowledge of drugs is what they were told by "authority figures" can be thrown out.

I understand all of your points, but I think you missed mine. Do you think the farmers that grow your food are more concerned with feeding your family, or earning money? Just because someone has their own selfish motives doesn't mean their actions can't be beneficial.

Regardless of motive, my point remains that those who enable the violation of unjust laws are one of the strongest forces in raising awareness and opposition to those laws.

Psychedelics and cannabis can help with the conceptual part of designing software, but they make it more difficult to write actual code and can make it more buggy. I find that a small amount of weed can help me focus for a couple of hours before it makes me groggy. Also, microdosing LSD - taking just enough to get the stimulating, creative, awareness-expanding, uplifting effects but not enough for the reality distortion and motor impairment - shows promising signs as a nootropic. I would recommend looking into LSD microdosing if you're really curious about how recreational drugs could be used beneficially for intellectual purposes. I've never used LSD explicitly for problem solving, but all kinds of unique ideas come to me spontaneously, and there have been many times while tripping that I've viewed the world in an objected-oriented way for example thinking about each person as a separate implementation of an abstract Person class along with implementing interfaces for each role they perform in society as a way of conceptualizing the way unique people can all fit into predefined roles in society. Most of the realizations on psychedelics are hard to describe to others, but that's mostly because of how complex and nuanced (and many times, personal) the realizations are. It would be like trying to explain how some 100,000 line system you wrote works to someone; You understand it conceptually in your head, but putting it into words so a lay person can understand the inner workings is all but impossible.

It's not that recreational drugs help the actual act of writing code, but they can be greatly beneficial to the conceptual design process.

Then there's stimulants like adderall and (obviously) caffeine. And the fact that smoking weed after work can be an effective means of preventing burn out.

In the end, I think it mostly varies from person to person. What drugs they're used to, how their mind naturally works, what kind of work they do, what kind of effects the want, etc.

Alcohol is neurotoxic, cannabinoids are not.

Caffeine and Adderall are mind-altering drugs with obvious benefits for productivity. Besides, you can use a drug like weed or LSD for creativity and designing, and then review and implement that design while sober. Also, there is unofficial research going on regarding using extremely small doses of LSD as a nootropic for it's creative, uplifting, and energizing effects, but at a dose lower than required for hallucinations and motor impairment.

If it weren't for people like Dotcom and the Pirate Bay guys, would there even be a movement for the EFF and EDRI to fight for? That's what I see as the problem with saying we should all wait for the law to be changed before engaging in activities we believe should be legal - If no one is performing the activity then who cares enough about legitimizing it to fight for it? Why spend all the effort to legalize an activity that no one seems too concerned with? Do you think prohibition would have ever ended if everyone would have stopped drinking alcohol until it was repealed?

What if the chemist who originally created Adderall intended for it to be used to just get super tweaked and strung out for days on end? What does the "intended purpose" have anything to do with responsible or ethical use?

What if you'd rather go for a hike after work, not get stuck in traffic, don't like having to avoid bums literally asking for beer money, don't want to worry about getting violently robbed at night, and would like to sleep with the window open without hearing traffic? Besides, if I want quality service at a business, I know I need to go to the suburbs. But maybe it's just because Milwaukee is a shit-hole.

Why do Americans constantly feel the need to push themselves to burnout? How would you like if your boss assigned you hours of work that had to be completed on your free time after already working 8 hours a day? Do people really believe that school is less effort and stress than work? Must be those rose-colored glasses.

Besides, I think a more effective change to the school year would be to take the three months of summer break, and distribute them through out the year, one month at a time. So kids would go to school for a couple months, then get a month break after every quarter, trimester, what-have-you. Then there is the crazy long 3 month break that TFA references where kids forget everything. And kids get to have more significant breaks more often so they can unwind and relax a bit more between quarters and start the next one refreshed and ready to go.

How does recreational use imply abuse? I abused adderall my last year of college and first year of full-time work for entirely non-recreational purposes and it pretty much ruined 2 years of my life. My recreational usage of psychedelics on the other hand has been entirely positive. I don't think that recreational drug use is inherently either good or bad. Drugs are tools. And like all tools, it's all depends what you do with them.

And why do people think that drug use is the result of some problem in people's lives or a vain attempt to be "cool"? Maybe people do drugs for the same reason they do anything else with their free time: simply because it's enjoyable.

"Drugs" are a hard thing to generalize. Remember, everything from caffeine and weed up to alcohol and heroin are labeled "drugs". Some are much more inherently dangerous than others, but to generalize "drugs are bad" is as naive as generalizing "food is bad" after walking through the candy aisle. And as far weed is concerned, it's far more benign than America's socially acceptable intoxicant, alcohol.

As a 24 year old software engineer who has smoked weed daily for the past 5 years and, as an individual, earns more than the average household income, I disagree with your statement. I know many other people who smoke as often as I do and are also arguably successful people for their age.

Yes, most stoners I know work near-minimum-wage jobs, but from what I've seen, this is because underachievers and unmotivated people are drawn to weed, not because weed necessarily makes you an underachiever or unmotivated. It does make you relax and more at peace with the world, which can lead to lower motivation (why exert yourself when you're already content with things?) and just wanting to chill, but it doesn't take much effort to keep yourself motivated and on track while maintaining a weed habit. In fact, smoking some weed after work is a great way to unwind, release stress, and prevent burnout.

Smoking weed doesn't make you stupid any more than drinking alcohol will make you abusive or drinking caffeine will make you a tweaker. Which is to say, it can if you let it, but it's pretty easy to avoid it with a little effort.

That said, I can certainly believe that smoking weed isn't a good thing for kids since they (in general) don't have the maturity to use responsibly nor the established lifestyle habits to prevent complacency in the face of weed's tranquility.

You spoiled the ending! I was half way through that book! Oh well, I found the character development of Sam I Am fairly lacking anyway...

That's the whole point most people have been making against the gateway theory to begin with: Of course most people who shoot heroin used marijuana first, marijuana is much easier to get than heroin (and more acceptable). This study just takes it one step further and says "before most people started using even weed, they started with alcohol." I bet if they studied further, they would find that caffeine is the real "gateway drug".