Just registered this account to discuss. This is something I worry about, I am a 31 year old dev, only learned to code 5 years ago. I smoke around 28 grams of strong cannabis (kush and haze) a week. Between the ages of 17-25 every weekend consisted either cocaine, ecstasy, mdma, ketamine or whatever really. I currently feel as although I'm playing with as much tech as ever I can't hold as much state in my head when developing and resort to the debugger a lot more. My cannabis intake has gone up in the past year probably. You think its the bud?

Cannabis and programming only seem to mix for me when I'm using lightly ( less than a few times a week )

When I moved to Colorado my intake skyrocketed. Was up to around 7 grams a week (16-25%thc) with 90% concentrates mixed in for fun. I was able to work with 0 problems for a few months but started noticing subtle fogginess over the course of my days and like you, holding state was difficult ( along with general debugging slowness )

Naturally I figured it would be wise to slow down consumption and went on a tolerance break. Within a few days I was back to 100% and now only smoke a few times a week. Currently I notice no negative day to day issues and all mental fogginess is gone! I like to sit down after work, toke, and then code.. so happy to report my anecdotal data as positive!

This goes for other drugs too, even "normal" ones like caffeine. I had a nasty habit of drinking a ridiculous amount of coffee and noticed very similar issues as above with cannabis. And like above, cutting the caffeine down was the fix for me.

Take a break for a few weeks ( or at least cut back significantly ) and see how you feel. Smoking that much weekly is only necessary with an extreme tolerance anyway.

Good luck and hope you feel better!

I'm also 31 and have been smoking almost as long as I've been coding - since I was 15. An oz per week is pretty heavy smoking - if you can cut that down to at most a 1/4 per week and exercise every day, I think you would see a drastic improvement in your cognitive ability when programming. I've found that intense interval type exercise helps with negative side effects of smoking, especially if you do it in the morning and save the smoking for after work.

Plus, smoking after programming all day helps you shift perspective and think differently about any roadblocks you're stuck on. Best of luck.

What class of drugs? If you don't mind.