Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector
One thing I think is important is that people have such a wide array of backgrounds, I think it&#x27;s a mistake to simply categorize them as white-collar, without examing how they got to where they were.<p>I&#x27;ve been in IT for years, but before that I was in the military, saw combat, and developed PTSD. IT is just one of the things I&#x27;m good at that pays the bills, but that alone wouldn&#x27;t tell you my story of drugs.<p>I got out and immediately used my GI bill to go to uni. I was drinking <i>a lot</i> at the time though. I got up to about a fifth every two days. This was for a lot of reasons. The transition from infantry to civilian life so quickly was rough. I was the oldest person in most of my classes of smartass 18 year old rich kids who mommy and daddy paid their way to college and bought them vehicles etc. I became bitter about the war and started researching it further and fell further into disgust because I realized how much of it was a lie. I made some ROTC cadets cry because I snapped when I saw them doing a &quot;patrol&quot; on campus with poor dispersion and yelled at them. I failed out of a math class... things were generally not headed in a good direction.<p>Then the tables turned, and it was all thanks to cannabis. See, I was always brought up anti-drug, so I was one of the few outliers who literally never did drugs in high-school of any sort other than alcohol and caffeine. As part of my military goals of getting and maintain clearance I also was very strict with myself about drugs, always feeling contempt and disgust for those who particpated in them. (not realizing the hypocricy and double-standard when it came to tobacco and alcohol).<p>So it wasn&#x27;t until after two semesters of this downward spiral that a friend pulled me into his room, and said he wanted to talk to me about cannabis. He said he knew my position, but that being scientific minded I should read up on the scientific facts known about it and then read some first hand experience articles from a place called erowid. After a few weeks of reading every scientific paper I could get my hands on, and reading a few erowid posts from other PTSD military types, I finally decided I was a civilian now, I could give it a shot.<p>Cannabis literally saved me from becoming (or staying) an alcoholic. It was an almost instant turn around. I found being drunk disgusting. I stopped smoking tobacco completely. (Smoked a pack of cigs a day in-country, quit cold turkey when I left Iraq for the last time, but continued to smoke cigars&#x2F;pipe tobacco every once in a while.) I found myself able to process things better. I was getting sleep I had before had to be drunk to get (hypervigilance is a bitch). I was being nicer to other students and not as standoffish, and started making friends.<p>I eventually quit college to do a startup that I left a few years later but that is still going strong. I stayed in the industry and have been in IT since. This sounds like a success story right? That&#x27;s not all.<p>What I didn&#x27;t tell you was I lived in the bible belt, in a state where it was&#x2F;is illegal. I started having issues with the demographic... that is to say the people. I started having issues despite fairly regularly smoking cannabis, and started drinking again at the same time (cross-fading). I eventually got so fed up with the area I was in I jumped ship and moved to the east coast, where I had a support structure, to try to finally get help from the VA.<p>The VA was horrible. They put me on shit that made me feel like a zombie (trazodone in particular, but all of it did it.) Finally I realized the VA was not helping, (the most help I got was from learning how CBT and CBET worked from an independent org), stopped all their bullshit drugs which I think are a <i>major</i> health problem, stopped drinking, and came back to my state. I didn&#x27;t mean to stay. I just wanted to catch up with family and friends, and was intending to go to Seattle because cannabis had just been legalized, and then I met a that woman I fell in love with.<p>I ended up staying in my state, but my SO had a druggie brother and an alcohol dad, and many concerns about the illegality of it, so my usage of cannabis, no matter when or in what amounts, became a fighting issue. So I tried to quit (because love is more important than anything right?). What ended up happening though is that I fell into this vicious cycle where I would have a particularly rough time for a while and would give in, toke up furiously for a week or two, cause a fight, and then quit only to find myself drinking instead (even once started dipping for a few months as my <i>vice</i> to replace the others, and let me tell you dipping is nasty as hell). Then I&#x27;d be &quot;good&quot; for a while until I had another hard time (like a week of super bad hypervigilance at night causing very little sleep), and the cycle would repeat. Obviously this eventually ended the relationship.<p>I tried very hard to keep this all in my personal life though, and protect my professional life from those troubles. This whole time I was performing fairly well in my job(s). I could have been doing so much better, but I was surviving given the double life I was leading. Eventually the stress leaked though, and I ended up quitting my job with very little notice because of an unrelated unhappiness there (being underpayed).<p>So now I am now using the rest of my GI bill to go to an online school and finish my degree while I job search in legalized states so I don&#x27;t have to deal with the paranoia surrounding it&#x27;s legality. I determined it was my medicine and I deserve to have my medicine without feeling guilt or ashamed or being scared of being arrested.<p>That said, I wanted to test myself to see how bad things are as a baseline, so I am now two months drug free (minus caffeine) and despite the ol PTSD rearing it&#x27;s head a bit, it&#x27;s better than it ever has been and I intend to stay drug free until I make it to a legal state.<p>Right now my main internal discussion is if I am willing to be on a list of patients in a medical only state or if I find anonymity important enough to only go to a recreationally legal state.<p>That&#x27;s my story. I hope it&#x27;s useful to you in some way or interesting to others.