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it seems these are common attitudes: > [heroin's] effects are fundamentally incompatible with the "head space" geeks need to be in 24x7 to be even remotely capable of doing the work they do. > It's difficult for me to imagine downers or opiates being at all compatible with technical work > Meth, crack and heroin are hugely frowned upon, it's a failure to be a user of these it depends. as a heroin addict, I need the heroin (well, methadone now, as well) to be physically and mentally well enough to work. without them, i'd be a wreck. now, if i took a large shot of heroin, i'd nod out and couldn't work, but i have had a morning injection every day for years to get going. of course, i do feel like heroin has made me slightly less intelligent, i guess the equivalent of ~10+ iq points lost, maybe. but i can certainly produce good quality technical work, and have been recognised for this by peers, so it's possible, just not advisable ;) and of course, i'm selling myself short, since i'm probably capable of much more or better, at least i hope i will be once i am properly clean - maybe this year will be the one? interestingly, i've not met any other heroin using it professionals in real life, but probably for the obvious reason they don't want to make it known. i could probably tell if i checked, e.g. pinned, tiny pupils, that sort of thing, but i'm just not looking for it in the work environment. a consequence of trying to blend in is that it imposes a high cognitive load that takes away from other thinking i might be doing - i generally have to lie about non-work activities or be vague and non-committal, and so on. |
And you're absolutely right to point out that all of this is skewed by the fact that different categories of (current- or former) drug user will tend to be more covert about it than others, for a wide variety of reasons.