Successful athletes get both personal recognition plus symbolic and monetary rewards for their talents. Successful workers get both personal recognition plus symbolic and monetary rewards for their talents. Some athletes are motivated to be better and better at their sport. Some workers are motivated to be better and better at their job.

Isn't that the same motivations?

The connection between hard work and higher pay is dwindling. More and more profits and revenues just go to the owners of the equity. So yes, if you do not have a lot of equity at stake, past a certain point working harder definitely can make you a sucker in many cases.

Sure, but if all of your coworkers are surpassing you because they are using performance enhancing drugs and you're not, then you're under pressure to do the same just to keep up, otherwise you run the risk of losing your job.

Which is the situation that many athletes find themselves in.

If you're feeling pressured into doing drugs at work, maybe then you should find another job anyways.

Some athletes do. Others just end up with CTE or a liver the consistency of polystyrene (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_M%C3%BCnzer).

The article claims a lot of the users are tech execs.

Makes more sense to work hard if more (or most) of your labour is going to end up in your own pocket.

>you're risking your health

Really? How so? What health risks come with microdosing LSD?

Are they comparable to the health risks of Adderall? Or nicotine? Or even caffeine?

>Of the 20 drugs ranked harm to individual and societal harm by David Nutt, LSD was third to last, approximately 10 times less harmful than alcohol. The most significant adverse effect was impairment of mental functioning while intoxicated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Adv...

The risks seem to be of a different and rather less tolerable form though:

"Review studies suggest that LSD likely plays a role in precipitating the onset of acute psychosis in previously healthy individuals with an increased likelihood in individuals who have a family history of schizophrenia."

Like, being mentally fine, then taking LSD and having that precipitate acute psychosis seems like a rather terrible downside tail risk, even if it's statistically very rare.

Acute psychosis isn't even that bad, though it could damage career irreparably. The more important side effect are sudden personality changes which cam happen after any number of doses.

Microdosing is supposedly safer but data is still extremely scarce.

I find it odd in pointing out health risks and citing David Nutt's study[0] you don't mention the #1 damaging drug - alcohol.

[0] http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus...

I mean, it would be hard to argue that working 60+ hrs a week isn't also a health risk for someone else's profit margin.

But to be fair, I think that the self-assessment of increased productivity is a secondary explanation to why workers like their caffeine, nicotine, the various other popular stimulants, and now the panoply that is the archipelago of nootropics communities (oh yeah, and more research chems than you can shake a stick at).

> With this stuff, you're risking your health for someone else's profit margin.

Presumably you'd be compensated for it, although that presumption rarely works out in the real world.