Techies Rampant on Drugs 520
Several folks noted this story running on the LA Times which talks about techie running rampant on drugs. Compares dot commers to the Wall Street druggies in the eighties. Fairly bleak picture actually. Personally I don't have time for anything more then whiskey (and even that seems to occur less and less as I get older).
yeah, that's what my all my friends in jail said (Score:2)
GWB if he did it, he's ashamed.
BC, proud shit head.
Re:Coke is just a money thing, how bout the ganj? (Score:2)
conditioned learning is a pretty elemtary psycologic phenomenon. I have to admit, it's pretty weird, ain't it?
For instance, I can only screw fat chicks while I'm drunk. (ok, maybe that's unrelated.)
Re:NY Times Story about this (Score:2)
If the allegation is not substantiated (that means proof, if you're curious), there is no valid claim. I'm not ignoring the point. I merely asking that before wild allegations are thrown about, someone actually provide some evidence (that proof thing again, go fig.) that what's being alleged actually has some basis in reality.
In the meantime, you really aren't a convicing argument for that whole 'calm thing'. Just so you know. Have another Krispy Kreme to settle those cravings.
Re:Drugs? who needs drugs? (Score:2)
I'm surprised they just realized this now (Score:2)
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Drugs? who needs drugs? (Score:4)
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Re:What's wrong with "church"? (Score:2)
This is not to belittle your experience, but, personally, I need more info than that to call a church a "cult".
All of the Church members that I have met were really nice people (I supose you don't get new members by being an asshole to everyone).
They are certainly very strict, and they certainly have a strict veiw of the bible. They also preach that only members of their church will be saved (a sign of a cult...but not unheard of outside of cults either)
None of them ever tried to push me away from my friend, none of them ever asked me to join or asked me about my beliefs. (I happen to be an agnostic - but ocasionally I like to take a hard line atheist attitude when arguing. I must try the discordian stance some day - soon).
He did leave the church on more than one ocasion. AFAIK he may not even be with them now. Once, as I remember, he left the church with some girl who he was screwing...then he decided that he didn't want to live a life of sin and refused to have sex with her anymore, and asked her to com eback to the church with him.
He was puzzled as to why this pissed her off and she didn't want to. Who says girls don't like getting laid?
Anyway bottom line - people who leave churches on bad terms tend to say bad things about them. The experiences of one or two may not be common. I will personally be wary of this church, and will warn others - but I don't know if I believe that its a cult.
-Steve
-Steve
Re:I don't know about Silicon Valley.. (Score:2)
Of course on moderation - it should be noted that chronic nitrous abuse can hand down a very nasty neurological syndrome to those unlucky enough to truely go overboard.
Check out a couple of case studies of people who walked into the ER after 4 months of daily heavy Nitrous use (20 whippits/day was one of the studies I read). Walking in, no feeling whatsoever throughout parts of the body - barely able to walk.
Takes a while to recover too. Did talk to a friend who worked in a hemotology lab for a while. He said that most of the syndrome is consistant with chronic B-12 depletion (guess what - it is known that nitrous use depletes B-12! - not a big deal once a week or once a month - use it daily and your asking for trouble)
Of course - who can say if thats the total extent of its effect. Some say it might cause certain types of organic brain damage like other dissasciatives (Ketamine, DXM). Though personally I doubt it...since its mechanism of action is so different. (of course the fac tthat I doubt it means very little - of course AFAIK no data has been released one way or the other yet.
Side notes:
1) IMNSHO best to buy a cream dispenser. You can hit directly from it without freeze burn...and you can make some cool deserts too! (yes they are kind of expensive but they work - and they make a pretty good whipped cream to boot)
2) 2 people won darwin awards for strapping on nitrous masks and, subsequently, dieing. Both of them were medical workers, one of them an EMT, I believe. (ie they should have known better)
Re:a case for drug testing (Score:2)
Whether its toking on a bowl, or fucking some strange man up the ass, its my time, and my buisness.
I see drug testing as no different than sticking a swab up my ass looking doe semen in my fecal matter. Its none of their buisness. Its up to me to manage what I do on my private time.
> Despite your protests, I have no way to know if
> you are going to be brain dead, paranoid or
> psychotic the next time you come to work.
And if your hobby is sky diving? Bungie jumping?
Pretty good possibility that you might end up laid up in the hospital for months, or even dead. Probably not huge, but certainly non-zero.
Should my employer take into acount that I ride a motorcycle everywhere...and thus if I get in an accident, it could be very serious and might mean they have to look for a new employee?
Oh.... maybe I go around having promiscuous sex and not wearing condoms. Some nasty STDs out there. Just think what some of them could do to my productivity long term!
Perhaps they should be looking at my medical history too...make sure I don't have one of those nasty diseases where the body slowly degenerates over many years. Talk about potential productivity loss...not to mention the hassles with someone going on disability!
Bottom line:
My body is mine. My employer is a person who has a rental agreement on my time, not on my body itself. The chemical makeup of my body is my buisness. As long as I am sober and able to work, they have no buisness investigating that makeup, and no right to do so (yes no right whatsoever, and I don't care what your laws say on the subject)
Any employer that cannot respect me as a human being, does not deserve my time, and will not get it.
> Your performance will degrade, it's only a mater
> of time.
Yes it will degrade and improve...happens all the time, has nothing to do with drug use, has alot more to do with stress level and how much sleep I am able to get. Nothing brings productivity back quite like a week or two of vacation where one doesn't need to think about work at all.
You think a person who is stoned is impaired....I find missing a few hours of sleep to be many times more impairing than I normally would get smoking a joint.
-Steve
Re:no drugs... (Score:2)
Thats fair. However should they be able to use the amount of sleep that I get at night as a metric for deciding on whether to hire me?
> They're paying you to do a specific job
> function. If what you do on your free time
> interferes then they are going to be wasting
> their money.
Certainly. IF IT INTERFERES. Do companies test for alcohol and fire or not hire employees that have any alcohol at all in their blood?
Afterall....if they drink alcohol, they might start comming in with hangovers, or even drunk. Drugs are drugs.
The simple fact is that the tests can't tell the difference between a person who smokes pot with friends on friday nights, and someone who is sitting in front of them, stoned out of his gord.
> Testing to see if you have been using drugs at
> all shows that there is a higher likelihood of
> drug use on the job.
Again...a positive for alcohol shows a higher likelyhood of comming to work drunk or with a hangover. A positive for nicotine is almost a garauntee that they will be using drugs on the job! It may not impair them much...but not much gets done while they are getting their fix.
As I have said before...IMNSHO a company that drug tests isn't worth working for (even though I know I could beat the test...thats hardly the point - its about respect). My drug use is an issue between me and my doctor - and its no one elses buisness.
-Steve
Re:a case for drug testing (Score:2)
Exactly.
Your renting my time....not my body. My body is mine. It is my responsibility to keep it capable of performing the job.
If I am unable to do that, and my performance suffers, then fire me.
I ask to be judged on the quality of my work rather than the content of my urine. Any company that can't understand that, will not be allowed to rent my time.
You know, I have, in fact been pulled aside and talked to about my performance, at my previous job. Was it because I was smoking too much pot? Hell no. At the time I wasn't even smoking pot. It was because I wasn't sleeping at night and was falling asleep at work. (chronic sleep deprivation blows)
I have used more drugs since I started this new job than I did my entire life previous (never when oncall, and never at work, only pot after work on week nights). They are considering me for raises and giving me glowing performance reviews.
Why? Cuz now I get my fill of Unix use and programming at work, and have no craving to stay up online all night long...(tonight being the exception to the rule). Drug use has had nothing to do with it.
Well thats not true - one of the greatest performance enhancements I have had was quitting one drug - caffeine. (whihc I have relapsed on - I need to quit again) Not only did it helped me sleep better at night (reducing my need for caffeine) but just generally improved my mood, making me more happy, less jittery and on edge, and on the whole, more productive.
Speaking of sleep...bed time now. I am going to have to go to bed real early tomorow night, or else I am really going to be heading for some impairment.
-Steve
Re:What are you talking about? (Score:2)
now who is talking crap? are you counting alcohol/tobacco use? i've never seen an article describing that. i know us folk in ireland aren't up on the latest continental news but i'd think that would make the papers.
again, i think the war on drugs shit is crap. but i also think that people taking drugs are for the most part setting themselves up for a lot of pain and suffering. i've had friends who were "in control" and were not "losers" go out of control and become losers.
life is not safe. it throws all sorts of curves. the war on drugs people seem to think they can make it safe - they're wrong. drug advocates seem to think life *is* safe and it won't hurt them. they are also wrong.
Re:Working in banking means you pee into a cup. (Score:2)
On the other hand, since you appear to have hallucinated the word "diasporing", and created a phony French LaPhroig out of the perfectly Scots Laphroaig, these urine tests might be fignments of your imagination.
I've never needed drugs, 'cept caffeine, Guinness (Score:2)
Actually, I think that very often when I look at my own code. I don't smoke in the traditional sense, though. The most that happens is that smoke starts curling out of my ears after a few Venti coffees from the local Starbucks.
The kind of coding I do [ti.com], though, is prone to these sorts of questions. :-)
And yes, it's supposed to look like that.
--Joe--
"Natural Selection" (Score:2)
A heard of buffalo can only move as fast as the
slowest buffalo, and when the herd is hunted; it
is the slowest and the weakest ones at the back
that are killed first.
This natural selection is good for the heard as
a whole, because the general speed and health
of the whole group keeps improving by the regular
attrition of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can
only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells.
Excessive intake of alcohol, we all know, kills
brain cells, but naturally, it attacks the slowest and
weakest brain cells first.
In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates
the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster
and more efficient machine.............
THAT'S WHY YOU ALWAYS FEEL SMARTER
AFTER A FEW BEERS!!!!
Re:Coke is just a money thing, how bout the ganj? (Score:3)
Re:Whiskey? (Score:2)
I like Dalwhinnie and Oban as well as Balvine Single Barrel 15 year old.
I'm a big fan of Balvine Singel Barrel because often you will get a 17-20 year old scotch for the price of a 15.
Re:What a load of crap (Score:2)
that is what I thought. I have taken a break from drugs temporarily but in the past I felt that just b/c I was rolling only on the weekends it was ok, I wasn't understanding that dropping two/three pills every night every weekend was a problem. That was in addition to the fact that I smoked about an 1/8th of marijuana a day. I would wake up w/it, I would use it all day, and I would goto bed w/it. I thought b/c I was doing fine all day I wasn't hurting myself. Whether or not the reporter seems to be blowing this a bit out of proportion isn't my point...
Everywhere I go I see people getting baked (nothing wrong w/pot IMHO) but my point is that drugs are being used quite frequently, and I am SURE that this report is accurate to a degree. 55% of them are addicted to coke, 45% more are addicted to alcohol. 55% of a work force being addicted to a substance and most people turning the head away saying, "that is just the way it goes when the money flows" is fucking horseshit. These people want them to be hopped up on drugs to do their work. Let's face it. Programming is demanding and crazy. People need to do their jobs, and their bosses like the money. They think that it will wear off, but it doesn't. It is a vicious cycle that will never stop b/c of people that don't care to stop it when it needs to be stopped. Coming to work fucked up means you have a serious problem.
Just my worthless
- Bill
A lot older than the `80s or even the `60s (Score:2)
The "typical engineer" in slightly nerdish popular literature of the last 70 years shows them as heavy smokers and coffee drinkers, with a tendency to hit the booze at the weekend parties. Readings of memoirs and whatnot of technical creative people for the last 200 years shows a similar tendency. Once there were alternative, cocaine in the later 1800s and amphetamines later on, they were used as well. An old retired ex-areonatical engineer once told me about the stimulant use by the design teams during WW2.
Caffeine was the target of a great deal of hostile writings when it was coming into popular use in Europe. Try http://www.quite.com/misc/tea1.htm as an example. There were drives to make one or another of the caffeine drinks illegal at various times in the previous century.
Downers were not that uncommon as well. A number of successful, famous people of the last 2 centuries used opium products and alcohol excessively. There's a tendency to cover up such usage, and with a loyal staff to help you through the bad days few people would know about it.
Then as now, exposés would trumpet the horrific state of people doing fill in career choice . The truly productive, creative people in that line avoided anything that would interfere with the fun of doing what they did, those who were more into pretending to be one of that group of folks tended to get lost in the socializing drug use.
Re:no drugs... (Score:2)
The old "drink lots of water" trick hasn't worked for a long time. Even 10 years ago, when I worked in an addiction treatment center, the latest generation of tests were incredibly sensitive to all sorts of drugs. Most people couldn't drink enough water to mask them out. Even if you *do* drink that much water, how stupid do you think these people are? There are several ways to mask drugs in urine, but all of them are obvious to even the most casual observer, no matter how mean their intelligence. If you mask, you'll be asked to retest. If you mask the second time, you may be asked to come in and spend the day with them while they observe your fluid intake.
If you don't want to get caught with a piss test, then you pretty much have to arrange it so you don't *take* a piss test.
Of course you could always just stop it with the drugs.
Re:Bah! Regional nonsense... (Score:3)
Eric
Re:no drugs... (Score:5)
Drug testing doesn't show current impairment. What I did last friday night, on my free time, when my pager was off, is MY TIME. It is not my employers time. They have NO RIGHT to criticize how I spend that time.
My drug use is between me and my doctor (who BTW has never raised any objections to pot smoking - and yes, he knows). If my employer can't respect my right to live the lifestyle which I choose to live, whatever it may be, then that means that they do not respect me as an adult member of society.
I refuse to work for an employer that can't respect that my time is MY TIME.
The places that I, and people I know, work (which, for me, includes a hospital) have the following policy (in my words):
"We will drug test, if we believe that a person has been using drugs ON THE JOB"
Other than that they don't test. When it comes to suspecting current impairment, during working hours, I am all for making sure people arn't high. But again - testing doesn't show current impairment. It shows evidence of use within the past 3-30 days (depending on the drug).
Re:I'm surprised they just realized this now (Score:2)
Suicidal Tendencies and MxPx get me up in the morning, NOFX and Vision keep me working fast and hard, and Rancid helps me relax and fall asleep.
Drugs in my workplace (Score:2)
What drugs does the IT Olymics concider performance enhancing anyhow?
"Rampant"?? (Score:2)
Alright, all you history geeks can come out of the closet now. Who all had a sudden mental image of a nerd in profile, poised on one foot, other leg lifted and arms raised as if he were climbing an invisible ladder?
Techies turn to Uncle Espresso for Relief (Score:5)
dotcomtelecom.com! world headquarters (AP): Every morning, Bart Flanders rolls out of bed, throws on some clothes, and goes to work. Sixteen hours later, he is still there, finishing a major project for his company, dotcomtelecom.com!. He has worked for six days straight on this schedule and, nearly consumed by exhaustion and stress, now has a choice.
"I've been drug free for all of my life," Bart says, pacing outside his office building. A green sign across the street catches his eye. "The product has to ship tomorrow. Our investors will be there for the rollout. If I can just pull one more all-nighter, we can do this. Everyone else on my team is doing it." He pauses, and a weary smile crosses his face. "Wow, I never thought I'd actually say that. It's so, like, just like an after school special. I guess this is how junkies get started."
For all too many programmers, Bart's dillema is a familiar one. Known on the street as 'joe', 'code juice' and 'venti', use of coffee is increasingly prevalent among the programming digiterati. And experts are alarmed by its rapid gains among the road crews of our nation's cyber-highway.
"Cocaine and binge drinking have always been pretty standard among the CEOs. And LSD and marijuana are pretty much job requirements in marketting. We in Vice are used to cruising through a startup on tuesdays and thursdays, busting half the company or more," Lt. Chuck Wagner reports. He leads the 'Internet Startup Division' of the Los Gatos police department. "What's got us worried are these techie guys. I mean, I can understand a CEO needing a few lines to unwind with two of his girlfriends after a hard day. I mean these guys have stressful lives, what with being proactive and all that. But why would a mere techie be doing joe? We're watching them-- we know they're not partying. So what are they doing with their time? That's the big mystery."
Techies, as they are fondly known by their pals in marketting, are the socially dysfunctional experts who provide internet startups with valuable mockups and beta copies to show to investors. These computer geniuses are valued employees, and are carefully shielded from such terrible messes as senior staff meetings, strategy sessions and promotions.
"I don't understand it at all," confides Laura Graham, VP of operations for dotcomtelecom.com!. "I mean, we don't let these guys make any decisions whatsoever. They don't have to go to conferences, parties, etc. And I don't let them anywhere near the wild, hallucenigenic orgies which I am rumored to host. All we ask in return is that they ship a product with wildly varying requirements within hours of the unrealistic deadline we promised to the venture capital firm which is just trying to test the waters before investing in our competitor. I mean, how hard is that? It isn't like they are adaptivating, or strategizing, or playing golf. We let them play on the magic glass boxes, and we talk about the magical wonderland which is javaembeddedinternetconnectedfutureVR-TML 5.0."
"Laura just doesn't get it," Bart says with a shrug. "We're trying to create a more secure ecommerce model, and she's telling us to do it in Virtual Reality. She hasn't even been to work in two weeks." Bart is still tempted by the green sign across the street. It should be easier in his cubicle, where there are no distracting windows, but there, the smell of espresso is strong.
"It boils down to this: I have a job to do, and x hours to do it in. Without some joe, I won't be able to finish. You tell me what I need to do. I know the risks. I've lost good friends to coffee. I've seen the desperation, the shakes, the demented ravings of people crashing after a two day high. I know people who have two hundred dollar a week habits, and that's not counting cream and sugar. I've heard the cries of pain and anguish from the men's restroom. But I have to do this. Just this once."
Bart returns to his desk a few minutes later, with a paper cup and a sharp, edgy expression. On his desk is a bag with enough pure, uncut joe to last nearly a week. Its street value is at least $50.
"I know what this looks like. But I'm not a junkie. Once we've shipped our product, I'm throwing this out. It's only this once." Bart's expression turns plaintive; he fortifies himself with another sip. "You don't think I'm going to be an addict now, do you? I don't want to die."
The Dissociated Press Contributed to this report.
It's really about addictive personalities. (Score:2)
Bullshit. Or haven't you ever heard of Prohibition? Different name, same game.
And every prosperous era in history has had a similar class of people who don't know any way to live or work except to overdo it.
The real point is that all too many geeks have addictive/obsessive personalities. If it isn't drugs, then it's coding, or endorphins (often generated thru some form of self-abuse), or cruising the net, or whatever. Running on overload ALL the time, one way or another.
It's a helluva dangerous way to live. Sooner or later it'll burn you up. If you don't think so, it's only because you're still young and immortal.
Reading thru this set of posts is downright scary.
Re:What a load of crap (Score:3)
Actually, "regular" in this context means someone who performs an action on a fixed basis. Your confusion seems to lie in the fact that you think I'm saying regular == normal.
Oh really? Out of the three chemicals that you mention, nicotene is the most addictive, and even then a single hit won't get you addicted. Mild use without addiction can be acheived for all of these drugs. The myth of instant addiction is just that, a myth. Some drugs are more addictive than others sure, but there is no "take it once, you're doomed to be an addict" truth as you say.
And hence my point. Can you point me to the paragraph in the article that has the myth about "take once, you're doomed to be an addict"? If they want to use it enough, eventually they will have to. Don't assume that everyone is taking drugs as "responsible" as you are.
Re:What are you talking about? (Score:2)
i don't like the "war on drugs," in the states and like most liberals (before they got pressured into the "tough on crime" stance from the "law and order except in opponents hotel rooms") i protested against it at the time. however people in the states keep voting conservative so i suppose they get what they deserve.
however for the most part "recreational" drug use does far more to fuck up people's lives then it does to make them better. i'd be inclined to say the same about religion in many countries as well.
Re:I'm surprised they just realized this now (Score:2)
>found the ability to track logic effectively
>makes it far more frustrating than sober, and
>certainly not a fun thing.
Confucious say, program creatively when pissed and debug when sober.
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Re:What a load of crap (Score:3)
Another "regular drug user" who tries to speak for the "underground drug use" masses. A pretty good sign is usually opinions such as "Most of the people I know" or "I can confidently state" that are tried to be spun as facts.
Almost all people fall into the category of users - they might take a hell of a lot, but it's because they want to, not because they have to.
And you might want to know that addictive substances such as nicotine, heroin, and cocaine leads users to become abusers, because they eventually have to use it.
The parent post is no different than posts which whine about Linux's lack of unified GUI overhyped because everyone he knows (and himself, as a "regular Linux user") only uses the command-line. The dot-com world these days demand high hours, and with their pretty high disposable income, why isn't it suprising that drug use is on the rise? No one is saying that drug use isn't prevalent across other industries. They're simply pointing out that drug use is increasing in the tech sector.
As you can probably tell I'm sick of these scare stories taking a complete non-event and trying to turn them into news.
Yo yoyoyo G, thanks for the insight from the underground. Wanna go light a K bud?
Re:I'm surprised they just realized this now (Score:3)
between 1996 and 1997 I went from putting a half inch of grounds into the bottom of my 1L Bodum french press, to putting in about 1.5 inches (couldn't get the damn plunger down!) and doing a pound of Kona espresso a week. I worked 16 to 18 hour days, ate taco bell 7 layer burritos (because I could eat them fast while working) slept fitfully and dried out by sleeping in (fitfully) until noon on Saturdays. I accumulated enough unused vacation to vanish for over 2 months, but couldn't find the time to take it, with the workload.
In early '97 I finally took a few days off, flew out west and dried out. As the caffeine left my system and I realized what I had been doing and allowed done to me I knew it was time to find a new job and leave the chemical dependency behind.
I'm back on espresso these days, but in very small doses. If I feel like I've got electric current running through me, then I drink a lot of water and use less grounds the next day.
Having tried to code after a few beers I've found the ability to track logic effectively makes it far more frustrating than sober, and certainly not a fun thing. More fun to play video games drunk. IMHO coding procedes much faster and with fewer errors when done in 8 hours (with a few breaks) and when well rested.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
What are you talking about? (Score:3)
there's no such thing as a 'user' of cocaine or any of the other hard-core drugs mentioned in the article, with the exception of prescription drugs. if you've progressed to the point that your conception of acceptable use includes these drugs, then chances are, you already have a problem.
Hello? Have you ever tried coke? Sure, it's damn nice and you do get the urge for some more, but it's no more than the urge you get to drink more when you've had a few. I've done coke quite a few times, and I've never felt some mad craving to rush out and get some more. I treat coke as a "party drug" for special occasions only. Hell, I haven't had any since Christmas, and it's not because I couldn't get/afford it.
You seem to have fallen under the propaganda spread by people like Barry McCaffrey (America's anti-drug main man) that drugs like cocaine, crack and heroin are instantly addictive and that casual use is impossible. This is nonsense in the same vein that "Reefer madness" was. Sure, they are addictive, but not to the point where a single hit makes you an abuser.
But the sinister allure of these drugs is that you are in control of them. Make no mistake--you aren't. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but with continued use, one day--these drugs will assert themselves over you and you'll have to acknowledge who's the boss.
The reason I got started with the problem was that I started doing it every day. This was because I had a lot of work at the time, and the speed helped me get it done. But I still take the stuff now, just sensibly when I'm going out or something. I'm not going to make the same mistake, there's no hidden catch that will turn me back into a speed freak six months down the line.
What about the father? (Score:2)
Early in the article, he's quoted as saying, "I knew he was drinking a lot and taking uppers to stay awake. I didn't think it was much of a problem. I didn't see it"
So he knows his son is abusing drugs (alcohol is a drug, albeit legal). Then later in the article, he is quoted as saying, "He was always so clean, I never worried about him getting into serious drugs," said David Bunnell. "His mother's a drug and alcohol counselor. We never saw this coming."
Now, IANAF (I am not a father), but if I see my kid heavily using alcohol and uppers, I'm going to think that something is up. What the father really should have said is, "We never wanted to believe he would get into serious drugs. We didn't take the obvious warning signs seriously enough."
But, instead of admitting that he might be even a tiny bit responsible or negligent (remember his sone was also an employee) the father says, "I believe my son was a victim of the dot-com boom." YEAH, WORKING FOR YOUR DOT-COM, DAD.
My cynical side says this is natural selection at work.
Real Ale. (Score:2)
Durham anything, Oakham White Dwarf, Ash Vine Black Bess, and so on.
And a local brewery (Daleside) has started brewing a beer called Duff, legally. Bottled only AFAIK, and difficult to find. Mmmmm - Duff Beer!
Re:Working in banking means you pee into a cup. (Score:2)
Second data point: Yep...it's true. As someone who uses banks, I was glad to see that they did check me for drug use before allowing me on a contract for check processing systems. After the banking contract, I moved on to a sensitive government contract and was stunned that they didn't include drug tests along with the FBI background check. I told the interviewer this, and from the look on his face he hadn't even considerd it before.
Not possible (Score:2)
--
Re:What a load of crap (Score:4)
I agree with your assessment of the article. I disagree with your assessment of the situation. Your assessment largely sounds like a web of rationalization and self-justification. It has about as much hard data behind it as the news report does.
They aren't trying to portray it as a den of burnt out addicts. They're trying to portray it as a place where extreme pressure drives people to drug use in an attempt to cope. Big difference. One isn't credible, one is.
I've seen the kind of stress people go through in those companies. I have friends who work in a few of them. Horrible, I would never move there to work. It doesn't surprise me that people turn to meth to try to give themselves the ability to put in the hours and concentration needed.
But doing that is like having an incredibly high burn rate for your VC money. Someday, your body is going to give out.
I think news of someone dying because they chose a stupid coping mechanism and abused it is news that should be heard. Perhaps not without all the references to the word 'fast' and the subtle implication that stricter drug laws and mandatory testing were somehow a good idea. But it serves as a good warning that some people like you might actually heed.
Good thing there is a war on drugs... (Score:2)
Re:Real Ale. (Score:2)
Re:What a load of crap (Score:2)
Bollocks. Like most press articles about drugs, they're failing to make the distinction between users and abusers.
It's simply a matter of experiances. It's easy to figure out who the abusers are because they stand out in a crowd (absenteeism, acting stranger than usual, going to rehab) while the users go un-noticed. They are able to hide it well because they're perfectly functional. So, a doctor is going to be sure that 100% of users come to a bad end since he will only see the fraction that do have a problem.
No matter what it is (including water) there's going to be someone who manages to consume it to excess and come to a bad end (yes, it HAS happened with water).
Re:What a load of crap (Score:4)
Notice his use of words like 'leads' and 'eventually'.
You are right. I've never heard of anyone being 'instantly addicted' after a single use of any substance. But that didn't sound like what he was saying.
>Mild use without addiction can be acheived for all of these drugs.
How would define 'mild use'? Once a week, month? My experiences with addictive substances were that I started out with casual use and eventually, as my use became more frequent, found myself hooked. Hard.
What he said was true for me. Casual, recreational use of some of these drugs lead to abuse and addiction. It happened gradually, but I did reach a point where I _had_ to keep dosing myself because I had become addicted. Quitting was the hardest thing I ever did.
I'm sure that different people have different propensity to addiction. I knew a lot of guys that went to the same parties and didn't seem to reach the same level of abuse that I and some of my close friends did. I don't know what made us different.
One guy in particular really screwed up and landed in prison as a result of his spiraling down into addiction and crime. Maybe he had other problems, I don't know, but it was enough to make me stop and see my own condition. This is probably what motivated me to change my behavior.
Now I am not condemning anyone who uses drugs or saying that using something is going to get you hooked and ruin your life. But there is a real danger of physical addiction to a lot of people and discounting addiction as a 'myth' is kind of denying reality.
Re:Smokedot (Score:2)
SmokeDot [smokedot.org]
The Stuff [excitestores.com]
Hey! I resent that! (Score:2)
Re:I don't know about Silicon Valley.. (Score:5)
> who smoke marijuana, but that's the extent of
> it. Those same friends are scared of the hard
> stuff, because they know what it'll do to you.
Ya know...assuming its clean drug (ie it wasn't produced in someones bathtub and contains lots of impurities - or wasn't cut with some nasty stuff) - and even somtimes when it isn't. Drugs themselves arn't that harmful.
Its abuse that causes harm. Or rather overuse. You can use heroin, and not become addicted. Same for caffeine, alcohol, coke, anything.
Drugs don't "make people stupid", they don't make you smart either. Even the VERY FEW drugs like alcohol, MDMA, PCP, etc which are known to "kill brain cells" well the brain is redundant as hell. Only the most biased and conflicted of interest studies have ever shown measurable cognitive deficit.
The real trap is when you start using drugs all the time to the exclusion of other activities. Stop going to school. Stop having fun in other ways, start to feel you need the drug.
There are people who can maintain themselves and monitor their usage (much the way a scuba diver monitors the air in his tank, or a sky diver watches the altimeter), there are many who can't.
There are some people (I have known some) who will quit drugs, and then become just as addicted and allow their lives to be just as controlled by other things, like a church, or a woman.
As someone I know said "The high incidence of drug users who are losers is not because drugs make them loser, but rather, if your already a loser, you might as well be a high loser".
As for Heroin, valium and alcohol being a bad mix. Thats what harm reduction is all about. Teaching people enough information to use their drugs safely. Afterall, even among the more intelligent users, MOSt will never research their drugs first, unless the info is handed to them.
Well SOMEONE is smoking crack... (Score:3)
META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="UpsideToday, Upside magazine, Internet business, ebusiness, b2b, b-to-b, stock quotes, ipo, stock market, technology, high tech, venture capital, vc, e-commerce, funding, investing, ceo, Bill Gates"
Anytime I read something like that I know there's drug use involved. Let's also look at this sentence from the LA times article:
Two women slinked off to the bathroom and found a quiet corner, away from the harsh fluorescent light. As one woman pulled out a compact and checked her lipstick, the other withdrew from her purse a bullet-shaped vial. Sliding the top to one side, she tapped out a small mound of white powder onto her fingertip, lifted it to her nose and inhaled quickly.
Again, someone is on the crack rock, and it ain't the programmers.
What I learned from this article: Yes, journalists still smoke the crack rock. Yes, the e-business craze was driven by MBA's who smoked the crack rock.
Programmers are sticking to mountain dew and routing around failure of all kinds.
Now maybe if we could hide Katz's stash from him for a couple weeks, we could see him WIG OUT!
Re:Drugs? who needs drugs? (Score:2)
diasporing... (Score:2)
Or maybe it's a transpsoiton of the wrod disappearing.
That's what ticks me off (Score:2)
Re:BAD REPORTING: No Wise County, NC (Score:3)
I just went to this site [state.nc.us]. Notice the "Select by County" option. There's a Wilkes County, and a Wilson County, but no "Wise County".
Company Drug Use Permission Form. (Score:2)
Drug use in the computer industry... (Score:5)
How many times have you been looking at old code and thought "What were they smoking when they wrote this?"
dot-com != geek (Score:3)
Drug use isn't endemic to our geeks. It is endemic to 26-year olds, especially rich ones, and (alas) we often work at the same place.
Re:BAD REPORTING: No Wise County, NC (Score:2)
Now to check out what the local police department says.
"The Big Fucking Q" (Score:2)
News Flash: Drug Users Attracted to Get Rich Quick (Score:2)
My dad's a cardiologist and he's seen the results of regular use. It's a heart that's mostly scar tissue before you are 30. This is also known as death and is generally a non event after you've spent all your money on drugs and driven off all of your friends.
If it's not legal, you don't have any idea of what it is till you use it. Get Real, if you feel the urge to buy something like that you have a problem.
Stop using while you have your health.
please...... (Score:2)
a) There is NO Wise County in NC, to say nothing of it being the "hub" of Research Triangle Park.
b) I haven't heard ANYTHING about rampant drug use or any kind of busts among tech companies, and all of a sudden it's an epidemic??
A very sensational article... full of flash...... I wouldn't believe it...
How long does it take to get sued by the MPAA?
I don't know about Silicon Valley.. (Score:2)
As for "hard" drugs, I have a few tech friends who smoke marijuana, but that's the extent of it. Those same friends are scared of the hard stuff, because they know what it'll do to you.
I, personally, don't drink or do drugs, but I used to (and fall back to) smoking.
As for the article itself, it seems like a lot of hype to me. Again, I'm in the "stale, conservative" Midwest, but I've always found it hard to pity someone who is smart enough to make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, but can't recognize that heroin, valium, and alcohol don't make a good mix.
If you're here to party, great. For Christ's sake, have a little common sense.
Drugs are everywhere (Score:2)
Drugs are everywhere. Its the type of person, not their hobbies. I'm a computer guy, yet I only drink a beer sometimes while I play games. Nothin serious.
There are some pro football players that are upstanding citizens with perfect records, yet there are some that take crack regularly and beat their wives...
I don't think drugs have anything to do with your occupation or hobbies, but more of your upbringing...
-- "Microsoft can never die! They make the best damn joysticks around!"
Re:That's what ticks me off (Score:3)
Blatant falsehood!! Studies have shown that smoking 15 thousand joints or more in an hour will result in recieving a FATAL dose! So please, everyone limit your Marijuanna consumption to LESS THAN 15 thousand joints per hour!!!
Kintanon
Re:no drugs... (Score:2)
Just carring the pager doesn't mean that I am oncall. Unless I am specifically oncall, I can feel free to ignore any pages that come in.
Of course, other places do things differently. I feel sorry for people who are oncall all the time and have no real free tme of their own.
I don't mind provding 24/7 now and again (say every few weeks). I DO mind providing 24/365 support.
Re:Get out! (Score:2)
Yes and no (Score:2)
Coke is just a money thing, how bout the ganj? (Score:3)
Coke has been following money around for years. As someone put it, "Coke is God's way of telling you that you have too much money." Anywhere that you see millionaires pop up quickly, you can bet that they are doing coke. Granted, coke is generally a dumb thing to do (I still won't try it), but it isnt quite as dumb as the US government plays it out to be. You get the same stimulant (dopamine) high from coke without the depressent effects (GABA) of alcohol. I can understand how the big-ego party culture can easily make the switch from alcohol to coke, spiking the stimulant effect and getting rid of hangovers and the like (excluding withdrawal issues).
I think a more interesting and underground issue is the relationship (if existing) between techies and dope. I have seen tons of very intelligent people spend a few days coding and then getting stoned, only to wake up the next morning and code some more. Anyone see the same effect?
Is caffeine a drug? (Score:2)
P.S.: Try Eating a bag of M&M's (one of those big ones) with a 2 liter of Mountain Dew. Legal speed. Great for those all night coding sessions!!!
Working in banking means you pee into a cup. (Score:2)
The drugs of choice in this town are coffee in the morning (and Starbucks does that for a few of us at this office,) and Bass ale (or DosEquis amber, or LaPhroig, or...) in the evenings when we get together and bitch about the day before diasporing home.
We're kept pretty clean living in the financial services industry...
UNIX and Drugs (Score:2)
I read a Bill Bryson book [amazon.com] the other day that reminded me of this whole incident. Mr. Bryson writes of a man who had discovered the secrets of life while high on laughing gas. Unfortunately, as soon as the gas wore off, he would forget everything that he'd discovered. Frustrated by this, he decided to have a pen and paper at his side during the next laughing gas adventure, so that he might record what it is that he discovered. Well, when he came down from his "flight", his peice of paper had but six words on it:
A SMELL OF ETHER PERVADES THROUGHOUT.
cause and effect (Score:2)
therefore don't drink milk as a child or you will become a drug addict.
well, it makes as much sense as the blanket statements such as "drugs will always ruin your life".
perhaps those that are fighting the war are already on drugs to be thinking so poorly like this. in which case, they should just lock themselves up in jail and leave the rest of us alone.
--
Re:Drugs? who needs drugs? (Score:2)
How about that crack pipe Taco? (Score:2)
smoke up there.
Re:no drugs... (Score:2)
Fine. If I'm not doing my job, FIRE ME! But fire me because I'm not doing my job, not because I'm doing something completely unrelated to work on MY FREE TIME.
And you should be able to tell if I'm doing my job well without chemically analyzing my piss.
This is why I don't work for places that do random tests. Anyplace that assumes I'm a criminal with no justification, and violates my privacy in this manner, doesn't deserve my skills.
Poor Research and Conclusions (Score:2)
Several dead friends later (Score:2)
You have a problem if you trust someone like that. You have a problem if you have a recuring need for drugs. On a lark, once in a while, once a month, once a week, once a day, when I feel like it asshole. That's the way it goes. Thinking otherwise is delusional.
I've got three dead friends who thought they were special. None of them had a problem either. My dad has seen scores of people like this. Don't advocate drugs around me, I've heard it all before.
Stupidity (Score:2)
Yeah, I guess that's easier than believing your son was stupid and made a decision that had lethal consequences. Shifting blame is an old trick, but still a good one.
---
Re:NY Times Story about this (Score:2)
You won't see any citations. The Pro-Drug culture never supplies scientific data to back up their claims.
Oh yeah -- and the Drug-War propaganda is any better?
I can't believe that you'd say this. In the United States, the federal government requires permits for research of any substance labelled a Schedule 1 illegal drug (yes, including cannabis). They are only granted if the permit granting agency can be assured that the study will never show the substance in a positive light. Its hard to come up with this stuff...at the same time, the government doesn't have any real data either.
For example: In their anti-cannabis campaign, they've consistently talked about how today's cannabis is x amount stronger than 60's cannabis...which is completely unsubstantiated as there was no standard testing of the THC content of cannabis in the 60's. The plant matter that they're comparing is indoor grown, organic, hydroponic, high-grade, hand manucured sinsemellia (no seeds) to old ditch-weed.
You tell me which orange (or insert your favorite plant) would be better -- the one carefully grown, or the one in the ditch. Its flawed data from the start.
Whether or not the data is properly scientific -- this example of "scientific data" is irrelevant. It only serves to scare people and curry public favor for the "war on drugs". It doesn't matter how much THC is in cannabis.
That's like saying that beer is dangerous -- but Vodka is deadly and therefore, since this Vodka exists, we need to intensify our enforcement efforts. If I drank 10 beers -- I'd be just as drunk as if I had 10 shots of vodka. If I smoked a great-big Bob Marley of low-grade pot -- I'd be just as high from smoking little joint with some high-grade Vermont organic. So what? So this is the same propaganda that we were fed to support alochol prohibition in the 30's. That didn't work...drug prohibition doesn't either.
It doesn't mean that we need to step-up our enforcement...which we already have, about 8 times...but it doesn't help, it just wanes away at personal liberties -- slowly turning our great country into a police state...which accounts for about 1/25th pf the world's population, but 1/4 of the world's incarcerated population.
On a related note: Under the Clinton administration, more pot smokers have been arrested than any other executive administration (see this link [norml.org] ) since Nixon and his controlled-substances act.
By the way, do you have ANY scientific data to suggest why cannabis should be illegal?
Its always sounded to me like a circular argument:
Why is it bad?
Because its illegal.
Why is it illegal?
Because its bad.
In any case, the anti-cannabis stuff really reduces the overall credibility of you anti-drug people who just can't admit when they're just plain wrong (even a little).
But how many people will end up in jail for exploring their own minds? How many people will be victims of violent crimes due to drug law (not drugs)? How much orginized crime will stem from our high demand for drugs, and lack of legal provisions?
Just some stuff to think about.
RobotWisdom has a nice Drug Use Survey up today (Score:2)
Summary of 1st 190 votes: caffeine (157 use occasionally or daily), pot (56), ecstasy (10), valium (9), powder cocaine (7), lsd (6), speed (3), ghb (1), crack (1), heroin (0)
Re:What are you talking about? (Score:2)
Congrats, you are probably in the majority of people who can use stimulants and/or mood altering chemicals and not become addicted.
Sadly, not everyone is exactly like you and it is kind of irrelevant cite your experience as evidence that these drugs aren't addictive. They are. Not to everyone who tries them, for sure, but for a large number of people it is a real problem.
Recreational use at parties is not really what the article deals with. When you start using coke as a work-enhancing stimulant, you are talking about a different situation.
It is easy enough to become dependent on even caffeine to get through your day under normal circumstances. Here we are talking about a situation where there is enormous pressure to produce, where people are working 14+ hours a day, 6-7 days a week. These conditions certainly strain the limits of human endurance, and so some are turning to coke, meth, etc to help them cope.
Man, it's one thing to get high to have a good time. It's something else when the only way to get through your long, stressful day is to load up on narcotic stimulants. Add to that the almost total lack of free time and you have a pretty bleak situation. How then do you spend that rare free time? Get _really_ stoned and convince yourself that you are really having fun and this is the reason you are working so hard.
Been there, done that. Nearly killed me.
Re:I don't know about Silicon Valley.. (Score:2)
Re:That's what ticks me off (Score:2)
Oh crap! I've got to cut down!
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Hmmm, nice post (Score:2)
Braggers, self deluders, and other lusers.
People wondering where all this fucked up drug talk is coming from.
People telling us cautionary tales. Dead friends, failures, and all the other stuff that come with drug use.
This is the first post I've seen today that addresses something other than "People Like Me", indolently typing away on their fancy machines deep inside their high tech cocoons.
That's admirable, but I'm going to dispute your simplistic analysis. The discrepency as well as mobility between the classes is not as great as you might think it is. There are also practical reasons for society to behave the way it does.
Equivalent crimes meet equvalent enforcement. At least in the great state of LA, you are going to jail if you get caught by law enforcement. Fancy lawyers and family ties can help, but there's a limit. Push your luck and you'll pay the price.
Wealtheir people are more likely to be caught, but not by law enforcement. You can expect piss tests etc, unless you are a Kenedy or something. Being caught by a company that has invested time in training you and would rather fix you, is always going to be a different experience than a drug raid. Is this fair? Well, it might be.
Proffesionals constitute less of a threat than those at the bottom of the ladder. Until your habits ruin you, you are less likely to steal things at gunpoint. Sure, you are dangerous behind the wheel of a vehicle, but the last time I looked the police enjoyed pulling over that fance sports car more than they enjoyed pulling over the late 80s model crack mobile. Everyone that uses illegal drugs has the potential to harm their neighbors, but wealthier people are generally weaker and more removed.
Society also has more to loose when one of it's highly trained members fails. Think about it. It's not just that society has lavished resources on them to aquire that training, but they have proved both willing and capable of it. This is one of the reasons companies drug test their employees. A company that cares will test and attempt to rehabilitate members that would be cheaper to replace.
Still, the average proffesional is easy to ruin. Most have debts from their education. If they are lucky, they are married and have kids and a house to support. Even high paid proffesionals show an astounding inability to live within their means. A few months without a paycheck is all it takes to wipe out most. Commit a felony, and you will wash dishes or have to start your own business. No one wants to do business with a felon.
Is all of this fair? No, but it's not as bad as you make it out.
dirtbags belong in jail (Score:2)
Attitudes like this:
David Bunnell, the 53-year-old chief executive of Upside Media, which publishes print and online technology industry magazines. "I knew he was drinking a lot and taking uppers to stay awake. I didn't think it was much of a problem. I didn't see it."
are delusional. The propaganda, which was never embraced by the Media whores, ended when George Bush left office and a shameless user entered. This is unforgivable encouragement:
Indeed, weeks after David Bunnell learned that his son had died, the chief executive declined to implement a pre-employment drug-testing policy. "What people do in their own time, in the privacy of their own homes, is not our business," Bunnell said. "We have a policy that we don't want people to be stoned at work, but there is a lot to do here. There's no time to slow down."
How can you get help to someone if you don't know they have a problem? How can you even recognize the problem if you are tollerent?
Econ 101: Lots of money, little leisure time (Score:4)
A nasty little side effect is drug use.
Yeah, that's right. The 80s Streeters were highly paid, but didn't have a lot of time to relax or have a good time. They gave up their leisure time for more and more money.
Drug use can enhance the quality of leisure time at the expense, of course, of quality of other time. But the leisure windows were so short that the down-time from drug use normally overlapped with stressful labor hours. And drug side effects, at least in the beginning, could be passed off as stress related uckfups. ("Uckfups," of course, is a highly-technical economic term.)
In short, this is a utilitarian trade-off. The marginal utility of a dollar is low. The marginal utility of leisure time is high. Using the former to enhance the latter is good, but only for a few months at best. After that, you turn into a quivering glob of uckfup.
Re:Yes and no (Score:2)
Combine this with the fact that the recovery programs are only remarking upon the last two years as ones with big drug problems, and you come to one obvious conclusion:
It's poseurs who are doing the drugs, the dot-com workers who are there only for the money, not because they enjoy the work.
(And since they don't enjoy the work, they need speed to keep up with those who do...)
Overall, I found this article shrill and alarmist. It's like an article describing the disturbing increase in use of shaving cream among teenage males ages 14-20. Puh-leeze.
Let the sanctimony begin... (Score:2)
Here we go again.
This is what I imagine happening: based upon this report, the media will give this issue increased focus, especially in light of recent "backlash" against the Internet. Primetime Live and/or 20/20 will do a "story" on the drug culture and how bad it is, focusing on the minority who are stupid enough to stick needles in their arms, etc. The talking heads will go in to full sanctimonious mode, bemoaning the decline of modern culture and the need for tougher law enforcement. "Experts" will be interviewing talking about trends in drug use, socioeconomic status, and so on.
Absolutely no attention will be paid to the civil liberty aspect of drug use, nor the inability of the Cult of Prohibition [everything2.com] to fix the so-called problem. Focus on geeks will subtly shift from their hacking activities to their personal drug use. A new characteristic will be added to the stereotype of "hacker": that of an acid or pot head, dirty and even more criminal.
Fuck all of 'em. I make $78k/yr and smoke pot. I have a family, and a house, and I'm a clean freak. The idiotic and sheeplike masses might buy into you're anti-drug propaganda, but I am an evolved being. I *know* it's all lies.
- Rev.Wow... (Score:2)
If drugs are part of the "new economy" then I'm seriously missing out. In fact, everyone I know is missing out as well...
Take one heroin addict, and stereotype an entire industry, and this is what you get.
Yeah, It's pretty accurate. (Score:2)
However, I have found that it's not for me. I've been clean for over 3 years, and I'm proud of it. Hell, I don't even smoke.
Just my $0.02
------------
CitizenC
What a load of crap (Score:2)
Not only do we have fantasy worlds like "Wake County" (see above posts), but we have sensationalist jouralism. Sure, the authorities are seizing more drugs, and more folks are coming in from the dot-com world, but what does that mean? Greater population = more drugs, and booming e-conomy = more people in the dot-com world. Since there is going to be a given number of people in any sampling of society that use drugs (in general), it makes sense that as the number of people in any particular group increases, the number of drug users is going to increase. The article doesn't say anything at all about the actual percentage of Research Triangle workers are drug users. It might be 50%, it might be 0.01%.
The author is taking a hot topic (booming tech), and trying to use it to push his own (stupid-ass anti-drug) views.
I agree that drugs can be dangerous, but there is a difference between a user and an abuser. A well-informed individual can use drugs to his/her benefit (whether it be having a good time, getting more work done, or gaining spiritual insight [deoxy.org]).
Stop the drug war [efficacy-online.org]!
BAD REPORTING: No Wise County, NC (Score:5)
There is no Wise County, NC. There are no such records in the local news in the Research Triangle Area of NC.
What editor let this piece of poorly researched crap see ink?
Re:Bah! Regional nonsense... (Score:2)
The E and the club drugs are likely consumed by the college kids. There are a total of about 65K college kids in the Triangle area, mostly at NC State, Duke, and UNC.
The LA times article was poorly researched and poorly written. Note that most of the statistics are unattributed to any individuals. They jump from NC, to the Coast Guard, to the University of Michigan, fer cryin' out loud.
What a load of crap (Score:2)
Ugh. Another over-hyped "expose" of an "underground" "culture" laced with scare stories. And notice the quotes in the preceeding sentance, because my view is that this article is nothing more than a load of bollocks designed to attract attention. Not that that's unqiue in the modern media.
As someone who regularly uses various chemicals (although not nearly as much as I used to) I can confidently state so what? I very much doubt that drug use is any higher amongst technically orientated people than any other sector where people are earning a decent wage. If drug use is booming then it's because wages are rising, not because of any other reasons. Most of the people I know who do take aren't in the computing industry, no particular field is any more likely to have users amongst it, it's an extremely widespread thing nowadays.
It's too early for formal studies that quantify the problem, but there are ominous signs of its growing proportions.
"Virtually 100% [of stimulant users] begin to use downers--alcohol, Valium or heroin--to sleep," said Dr. Stalcup of the Concord treatment center. He declined to comment specifically about the Bunnell case.
Bollocks. Like most press articles about drugs, they're failing to make the distinction between users and abusers. Almost all people fall into the category of users - they might take a hell of a lot, but it's because they want to, not because they have to. There is a real difference there. I had a big amphetamine problem for a year or so - up four days in a row, sleep for a few hours, repeat. In that year I managed to fuck myself up big time. That was abuse.
Now I use as and when I feel like it, and that's not a problem. I'd imagine it's the same in Silicon Valley, not the den of burnt out addicts that they're trying to portray. Sure there are people that are going to fuck up big time, and it's a tragic loss, but these cases are the minority compared to the huge numbers of people who use regularly without a problem.
As you can probably tell I'm sick of these scare stories taking a complete non-event and trying to turn them into news.
What Drug Use? (Score:2)
Employers shouldn't use talk of drug use in the tech sector as an excuse to drug test the hell out of everybody. I know that I had to piss in a cup to get this job, and I was not too happy about it. Urine, hair, saliva, and blood tests are all invasions of privacy. It's none of my company's business if I go home and smoke crack all day. I don't see a problem with axing me for poor performance. If I come into work everyday, shaking and vomiting, I've become a hazard to others and a company wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't cut me out of the picture.
The only person that's accountable for your drug use is you.
Do Something About It. (Score:2)
(A) Vote for someone *OTHER* than Bush or Gore. Those two tired old aristocratic farts won't change the system. They're too afraid.
(B) Call your local federal representative. Give him hell. Let him know you're against the war against drugs.
(C) Encourage others to do the same.
The USA is rapidly losing all sorts of freedoms because people like you don't get off their sorry duffs and shout out their protest!
--
"Successful? Must Be Because They're Druggies" (Score:2)
Heaven forbid that they actually have skills others didn't bother to develop, and are succeeding on their merit!
About 95% of the people posting here say their only drug use is caffeine. How much of the general population can say that?
At my last two dot-coms, the only druggie was the PHB at the first - but the article doesn't differentiate between "tech enterpreneurs" and "tech workers."
Re:no drugs... (Score:2)
So? Lots of things I do on my own time affect my efficiency during my work time. The amount of sleep is probably the most important one. Does this mean that the employer can mandate (and check) the minimum number of hours I should sleep at night? Working our and eating a healthy diet (whatever it might be) is also likely to increase my effectiveness on the job -- so what? Does this mean that the employer can force me to work out and chew on lettuce?
And don't forget about sexual sublimation -- NOT being laid produces surplus energy that often finds its outlet in work. It has been suggested that this is exactly the reason why Victorian England and Silicon Valley were so successful at making technological stuff. And this means -- no sex for you if you want to do your job effectively and drive a nice sports car. Yeah, how could you think about getting laid when getting laid on YOUR TIME will impair your function on THEIR TIME??
Kaa
Drugs powered the computer world in the beginning. (Score:2)
And then, of course, there's those companies (Digital:Convergence, AOL, Sony, just to name a few) which spawn those insanely stupid products that make you blurt out, "What in the hell were they smoking?!?!"
Doh... (Score:4)
Yupp, 55% of all coders are addicted to coke...
The other 45% prefer Mountain Dew...
Re:BAD REPORTING: No Wise County, NC (Score:3)
wise county, texas may be a different story (and according to my texas journalist brother-in-law) might well match the stats
btw i teach journalism at the university of north carolina just beside the research triangle park
Yes, but... (Score:3)
Being Smart (Score:4)
The majority of people seem to think that there is no inbetween when it comes to drugs, either you're a straight-edged proper member of society or else you're a no-good junkie. I'm not suggesting that everyone go out and do drugs, but what's the big deal?
It seems that no-one really wants to talk about drugs from a neutral point of view. Most people either side with the government "Reefer Madness and War on Drugs" point of view or else they are uninformed pro-drugs zealots using only the facts they like to hear.
Don't bring the same old song and dance to the table, we know the creed of the war on drugs so well now that most people who would consider using drugs realize that it is only a propanganda assault and that it doesn't really explain WHY people shouldn't use drugs.
No one ever says they want to be a junkie when they grow up - and I don't think anyone ever says they want to be a theoretical physicist either.
Re:NY Times Story about this (Score:5)
Then there was the drug culture of the 50s, of course that was legal; Cary Grant was very public about the fact that he used LSD over 100.
Then of course there was thr 40s and the 30s...and who can forget the roaring 20s.
Drug use has gone on since the dawn of time. Humans (and yes, even some other animals) have been using drugs forever. Hell... bars are just another form of a "Drug den".
A recent study showed that students who graduate from the DARE program are more liklely to use drugs than kids who don't. We just need, as a culture, to face the fact that drugs are interesting, and no amount of "drugs are bad m'kay" is going to change that.
In every community there will always be drug use. Its not a problem, its a reality. It is part of human nature. It is something that just must be accepted. To fight it is to make it worst, its like struggling against quicksand.