There's all sorts of lore about constructive drug use in Silicon Valley start up culture but it's not as prevalent as people say it is
I've never seen anyone microdose LSD or take Ketamine for Depression, hell, most of my coworkers don't even smoke marijuana recreationally or otherwise.
It's just that weird drug use makes headlines and headlines makes money
> I've never seen anyone microdose LSD or take Ketamine for Depression, hell, most of my coworkers don't even smoke marijuana recreationally or otherwise.
Or maybe he just doesn't have much exposure to the drug-using classes in this world, because anecdotally over 30 years of involvement in the computer world, I've met far, far more people who think they are enhancing their performance through drug use than those who don't.
Its extremely common in the hackrrspace scene to encounter developers who are using 'smart drugs' to stay up for 3 or 4 days at a time, or who think that a bump of speed at the right moment can make all the difference in the world to the codebase. Of course, I'm yet to see a case where this so-called boost in productivity is actively achieved, but it seems this isn't as important a fact to the guys in the lab coats ..
A friend in collage used say a little alcohol would help him calm down and code. A few decades later he accepted that he was just an alcoholic. Another friend refers to nicotine as his work drug...
20 years ago I met a guy who said he was using LSD to avoid wasting time sleeping and to boost his creativity. IMO, it's the same deal where people self justify whatever drug they want to use.
FWIW Silicon Valley != San Francisco. When I worked in SF I'd say about half of my coworkers (the ones just out of college) all smoked weed frequently, took pyschedelics infrequently, and used stimulants on occasion.
How can you speak so authoritatively about the private habits of your coworkers? Unless they are subjected to random unannounced drug tests (uncommon outside of the military and safety critical industries) or come into work obviously high you wouldn't have any idea what they do in their private time. You might as well be commenting on their sex lives too.
For what it's worth, my experience is that almost all ketamine use I know of personally erased that person's depression for a week or so. I think it's less uncommon more and more.
While I'm certainly not implying you are referring to yourself, this reminded me of "swim", a delightful euphemism used by drug users online, for obvious reasons.
I would strongly suggest that anyone reading this with depression disregard personal anecdotes like these. The placebo effect is powerful, and it's dangerous to self-medicate when suicide is a possible side effect or consequence.
“In a nutshell, I feel confident telling patients who have had little help from previous treatments that ketamine provides meaningful relief from some of their worst symptoms for at least a few days or even weeks,’’ said Dr. Gerard Sanacora, professor of psychiatry and director of the Yale Depression Research Program and primary author of the JAMA report. “But I can’t tell them with any degree of certainty how long the benefit can be sustained or how safe it is to repeatedly administer the medication over periods of months or years.”
The method of action of ketamine is thought to be via hydroxynorketamine, not placebo which I don't really see as being pertinent - maybe confirmation bias, but not placebo. I also contend that suicidality is not long-term stable- supposing a typical antidepressants regimen is ineffective and only frustrates a patient, then to not pursue a treatment with a pretty strong effect strength would lead to more suicides as the outcome, imo.
Considering it's once weekly, tolerance would decrease significantly back towards baseline - ketamine is 99% eliminated in 21 hours (7 half-lives). iirc the mechanism is BDNF expression and reverting neuron energy metabolism conditions - one could potentially speak of the antidepressant effect of exercise also increasing in tolerance via that mechanism, but what I know about what we know so far makes it seem like it is worth the decrease in anhedonic/depressive symptoms.
The other options are pretty much worse, although more common:
- a daily SSRI (thus increases tolerance much faster), and has a larger range of significant side effects, such as anorgasmia, increased depression or emergence of suicidal tendencies, weight gain, "electric zaps"/spontaneous muscle spasm/discontinuation syndrome for months after cessation, dulled affect, increased proclivity towards serotonin syndrome
I've never seen anyone microdose LSD or take Ketamine for Depression, hell, most of my coworkers don't even smoke marijuana recreationally or otherwise.
It's just that weird drug use makes headlines and headlines makes money