Item — HN Reader

I'll add a data point, though it's almost entirely negative. I've been at Google over 10 years and have yet to come across a person using illegal hard drugs. I can think of three people with serious drinking problems. There's been a drinking culture (many offices have beer on tap), but I see that changing, as people are more conscious of the negative effects. A bunch of people use marijuana, but off-hours.

I haven't seen people seriously discussing stimulants (such as Adderall and modafinil) as performance enhancers; I've come across a number of people using these, but all in the context of diagnosed ADHD. I've also not seen anyone experimenting with microdosing LSD.

There's a surprising amount of openness and support for talking about mental health issues in general. I think this is a really good thing. The stigmatization we see in broader society is not actually helpful.

Obviously this is all my personal observation, but I think I would know; I definitely saw some serious drug use when I was in grad school at Berkeley.

5 comments

Is it that because you don't use drugs, the people who do use them tend not to discuss them with you? I was just joking with a colleague about trying the gas and air when his wife gives birth, and everyone in our bank of desks thought that would be outrageous behaviour.

There's no way I'd admit to these guys that I have a load of N2O canisters stashed at home and will go full-balloonatic during festival season, let alone anything else I may or may not get up to.

> I have a load of N2O canisters stashed at home and will go full-balloonatic during festival season

Hahaha!

> There's no way I'd admit to these guys

This absolutely though.

Just to add... I've never used any drugs for performance enhancement, just occasional recreational use with no less than 2 months in between any single consumption, usually 4 times a year. But I'd never talk about this with anyone at work straight up. But we do talk about music, going out, parties, festivals.

So when a colleague name-drops they're going to an electronic music festival that lasts 10 hours into the night with glow-in-the-dark effects where >60% of the drinks that are sold are pure water, you basically have a 99% chance the other person either takes drugs or goes to parties full of people (with friends) who're on drugs, and is completely comfortable with it. And that's when you say went last year and talk about what candy you were on.

Most of these parties are obscure enough to be completely meaningless to people not in the know. The might as well be classical music concerts. Similarly, pictures on FB of colleagues wearing sunglasses and holding a water bottle at a festival can be pretty meaningless to someone who's never had friends using drugs or did it themselves.

There's definitely these little rituals going on that prevent people from knowing if they're not into it themselves.

I don't think that's true, though I fully admit there's some sample bias (including the fact that I'm senior, as croshan points out). I know a lot of people that do drugs, I had no trouble observing that when I was in grad school, and people talk to me quite a bit about life issues.

To add a counterpoint - there isn't anything on the line in grad school when sharing stories of drug use... completely different ballgame in the professional world. I've only had one coworker where we mutually admitted to smoking weed and that was because we were talking about music and each threw out a couple names that, well, I don't think there are too many sober people listening to it and we both happened to live in Colorado. In my 6 years that's one person I've told about a drug that is legal where we live - god forbit I tell them about my LSD, coke, nitrous, MDMA, etc usage as benign and recreational as it is. I'd open up about pretty much anything else before that - family issues/etc aren't going to get me fired for discussing

To be fair, as someone who's been at Google for ten years, you sound pretty senior. From what I've seen, I think there might be significant sample bias.

It seems that most people who use/abuse drugs are much younger, and often don't talk about it with people outside of a small group of similar users. I've definitely heard, known, or been close to people using at work, at home, with everything from speed, weed, and microdosing LSD, to modafinil and Adderall (in a non-prescription context).

By the time they get older, I imagine they'll either have stopped, or burned out (as I've already seen) and likely wouldn't end up at more structured companies like Google.

Simply said, you are biased as people don't talk openly about it. I know a lot of googlers that have a completely different experience than yours

I personally know engineers at Google who drink very heavily and do drugs including ketamine, coke, shrooms and acid.

My experience is that its more prevalent outside of work hours, but far less prevalent AT work than people talk about during these sorts of conversations.