KARA SWISHER: How and Why Silicon Valley Gets High. “Everyone’s hoping a little LSD can lead them to the next billion-dollar idea.”
While the use of mind-altering substances here is nothing new, I spoke to just over a dozen people who all said consumption was increasing once again. Obviously, there are major problems with addiction to opiates and alcohol here, as elsewhere. But people in Silicon Valley tend to view drugs differently from those in places like, say, Hollywood and Wall Street. The point is less to let off steam or lose your inhibitions than to improve your mind.
“No one can afford to lose a step here anymore, so they want to hack the experience to make it work for their time-constrained schedules,” said one techie. “You want to be super lucid now.”
Another tech executive compares it to what Bradley Cooper did in the movie “Limitless,” about a man who uses a mystery drug to become much smarter than anyone else. “It was a terrible movie, but the idea of a having a heightened sense of awareness and also being totally functional appeals to people now,” he said. “Whatever can get you to that place without a lot of downside — like addiction — is preferred.”
That is why everyone he knows microdoses, saving the longer-acting drugs like Ecstasy for the rare occasions when they want to party and relax. As always, Adderall is often used to plow through work.
And marijuana, he told me, had become more like drinking a glass of wine, noting that he sees people openly vaping at tech events. Why? “No one does a stupid tweet on weed like they might on alcohol,” he said. “The most that happens is that you get lazy and eat badly.”
It is all, another tech worker said, about the “intellectualizing of drug use as a stimulant for the brain.”
While I can’t think of any actual, successful tech products or services which were developed while tripping, some of this attitude might stem from Steve Jobs advocating that everyone try hallucinogens like he did as a young man. But mostly I’m reminded of the musicians who thought that heroin was the secret to Charlie Parker’s genius, and ended up following his path to self-destruction.