[Etheryte]

Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.

[xk_id]

Methodology makes all the difference in those cases. Artistic output is an extremely complex psychological process and we haven’t comprehensively identified its components. It’s possible that some aspects of the creative process can show a limited benefit from cannabis, as long as they can be isolated from the negative effects.

[cynicalsecurity]

It was some study about usage of cocaine.

That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.

[__MatrixMan__]

Different drugs are different. Lumping them all together is dangerous:

- Kids who discover that one wasn't a big deal will then be motivated to try others and see what else they were lied to about (I did, got around to most of my checklist too).

- Taboo about drugs in general prevents harm-mitigating conversations from happening that might protect someone from one specific drug or another (I turned out ok because of conversations like that).

[hyperadvanced]

I really really really don’t like the “ideas are harmful” bent of your comment. Saying “drugs are bad” doesn’t harm anyone, even if you disagree, or think that it’s reductive or off base (because it is). Kids who grow up in homes where “harm mitigation” include sanctioned marijuana and alcohol use have worse outcomes than those who don’t.

[__MatrixMan__]

Harm mitigation isn't about sanctioning anything, it's just about recognizing that sometimes prohibition doesn't work and not making things worse in those cases.

It's about not wrecking somebody's teeth by confiscating their pacifier while they're rolling. It's about not causing overdoses by limiting access to milligram scales (because trying to use a kitchen scale to measure a dose is dangerous). It's about creating an environment where people won't lie to you if you express concern about their habits.

Most drug problems are poor dopamine hygiene or mental health issues of some other kind. Let's focus on that instead of celebrating that somebody is "off the hard stuff" while the root cause remains and wrecks their life through a video game addiction.

If you're not seeing the harms caused by overbroad vilification of drugs in general it's because the people around you who are struggling with a substance problem are hiding it from you due to your attitude about such things. And if they're hiding from you, you can't help them.

[hyperadvanced]

I think you’re projecting a lot of things that onto me based on the one or two sentences I posted above. To clarify - I do drugs regularly (though I’m avoiding anything powdered until this fentanyl thing blows over), I have lost friends to drug overdoses, I have had friends choose to hide or open up about their problems to me (for whatever reason, people like to keep things a secret when it’s not going well, drugs or not), I live in a place where drugs have been decriminalized and recriminalized and I’m still nominally for decriminalizing them (mostly because I’m an accerationist). People die from taking drugs, they don’t die from video games or from not being handled with enough psychological care when it comes to harms reduction messaging. I was simply commenting that I don’t like the “dangerous ideas” thing and think that it’s very disingenuous to call verbal inclinations dangerous in comparison to methamphetamine or LSD (both of those are fun and dangerous). Different sports leagues, not ballparks.

Hard drugs are dangerous and I’ve seen a lot of people get burnt thinking they can abuse them freely. From time to time I burn myself as well, but have a penchant for stove touching, probably related to the accelerationism thing.

[__MatrixMan__]

You're right, I apologize for being needlessly aggressive about it. I'm just watching my family make my cousin into a pariah over drug use that isn't even happening (not yet at least). They just need to have an enemy at all times... and maybe I pointed some of that frustration at you.

[fragmede]

billions of coffee drinkers would disagree with you there. If one chemical, framed differently, is able to enhance capabilities, why would all other chemicals automatically be an illusion? that seems illogical on the face of it.

[cynicalsecurity]

Coffee is not really a drug, it's a stimulant at most. Coffee doesn't make you high.

[dylan604]

> It was some study about usage of cocaine

I’m seeing the flaw with the study. Use a better drug. Cocaine gave us the 80s. In a re-appropriating of a phrase, just say no. Much rather had two 70s and skipped right to the 90s

[tayo42]

The illusion can be good for initial inspiration and ideas and then it can be refined when sober. One of my favorite paintings I've done was after i got the idea from a mushroom trip.

[Jarmsy]

So all the banned drugs for competitive events are just to prevent competitors giving themselves the illusion they're winning?

[satellite2]

It depends on the drugs. Amphetamines generally display improved cognitive performances in RCTs.

[devmor]

I would be interested to see the studies on this and whether or not they controlled for non previously diagnosed ADHD when selecting participants.

I take Amphetamines for ADHD and narcolepsy so they obviously improve my performance- but I’ve also worked with people that abused them and felt like they were performing much better than normal but in reality were just delivering (anecdotally) sloppier pull requests at a faster rate.

[konfusinomicon]

reality is reality is reality. those illusions of enhanced capabilities can ultimately influence sober behaviors in a positive way too ya know. sometimes opening eyes to the true reality of the world and inspiring ideas. those ideas may have come to a sober subject as well but who's to say probability works that way. After all, (most?) every lifeform on the world is experiencing a perpetual trip called life from the constant inhalation of oxygen. getting off that wonderful and intoxicating inhalent would definitely lead to the end of an illusion, we all understand that. and so the cycle repeats. the illusion of life effects the next reality in some way, positive or negative, and so existence goes.

[Etheryte]

Multiple different drugs that are illegal to consume recreationally are being used with great results in therapy for depression, PTSD, etc. I don't think it's even remotely as clear cut as you try and make it out to be.

[treetalker]

Relevant Family Guy:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h_0P6yXcjX4

[oskarkk]

In my experience, being high enhances my musical (and I think generally creative) abilities. Music appreciation and analysis is especially better (maybe because it's the lowest effort thing). Many times when I was high I was listening to a song that I knew very well, but when high I was noticing more sounds in that song, like paying greater attention to guitars or bass in the background, that I wasn't paying attention to while sober. And since that "revelation", my appreciation of that song while sober was better, more detailed - I payed more attention to things that I first noticed while high. I'm also writing my own songs and often while high, the lyrics or melodies just spontaneously come to my mind, like when I'm not even trying to think about creating anything. Improvising music while high is great. But I can also say that there were cases when I created something that sounded bad when sober (but I think is rather an exception). But I'm rather not a neurotypical person so YMMV.

There are many examples of musicians that were making great music while high, such like of course the Beatles, and from the 60's I especially like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, but he's also an example of a guy that went "crazy" because of too much drugs (rather combined with preexisting mental issues). Large part of his best music is not well known because he became a victim of his perfectionism (couldn't finish what he was doing) and generally his ambitious work wasn't selling well - the Beach Boys were at the start a very non-ambitious pop/rock band, just like the Beatles, so going in more ambitious direction meant losing sales, and the rest of the band didn't like it. I think weed enhances curiosity, so it's helping in doing something that's not typical, experimenting with things and seeking new sounds - and that was something that Brian Wilson excelled at in the time when he was high all the time, the "Pet Sounds" album is a highly regarded classic that shows what I'm talking about. And unlike the Beatles, he was the producer of his own music (Beatles' ideas were "filtered" and realized by amazing George Martin who was well-educated and wasn't high, I think).

Coding while high on weed is not very good for me, it's hard to concentrate, thoughts flow in too many directions. So I think that in art weed can be a positive, but in other things that need precision and strictly logical thinking, it's negative.

Overall weed makes me more lazy. I think that most of the time when high, I'm just browsing internet (that's still not exactly negative because I usually learn many interesting things, but that's not what I would want to spend many hours of my time on). Recently I had a period of smoking too much, and then I was actually doing less music - after that, when I was sober in my free time, I started practicing guitar more, because I was more focused on my goals and more organized in what I was doing. But I'm generally a very chaotic person with a very chaotic life, so I think my experiences can't prove anything, even for me.