And to your point, yes life is not just about success, it's about so much more like friends and family.

That's why I hate weed. It turned my friends who were creative, thoughtful and caring, into people who just wanted to smoke and do nothing when they had time off.

I’m not saying people should smoke or vape. But I do want to say that with care and self control it can be a habit that doesn’t cause serious problems. Though ultimately I feel much better having quit.

In fact some of the biggest names in tech and other industries are definately using drugs, its very possible to be a high achiever and be on drugs. in fact, it seems to be, that we really don't even call it addiction until it ruins your live, otherwise its just called "recreational". strange to me.

most people cannot do cocaine every day without trouble. Coffee? every day is fine

different drugs have different danger

/r/nootropics, common thread is as follows:

OP: "Help, I have bad anxiety every day, what should I take for it?"

re: "Do you drink coffee?"

OP: "Yes, about 4 cups a day."

re: "Stop drinking coffee and come back in a week and tell us how you are doing."

1 week later.

OP: "My anxiety is gone!!"

Caffeine has negative side effects. For some people those side effects are really bad.

Also caffeine messes up sleep cycles. After seeing sleep study results, I won't touch the stuff after 10am or so, if even that late.

Alcohol is even worse in this regard, it will just ruin your sleep cycles at night.

Edit: Let me emphasis this for anyone reading:

YOU WILL NOT GET DEEP SLEEP IF YOU HAVE A NIGHTCAP.

Yes, you will get drowsy, drink enough and you will pass out. The restorative quality of the sleep you get that night will NOT be good. I've seen first hand the sleep study results from this. The effect is so obvious that even the questionable sleep quality results that wrist based wearables give you can easily and consistently show this effect.

It's an important distinction to make in this discussion, which largely boils down to "off label use", whether we're talking about drinking simply too much coffee or people with developing brains getting too much thc.

Caffeine has negative side effects. It is an addictive psychoactive drug. Its effects are mild, but, to repeat, it is an addictive psychoactive drug.

Even moderate use can cause sever anxiety in some people. L-theanine is a great counter to this. Green tea naturally has L-theanine in it and that is likely why people who drink green tea do not report anxiety (at least in significant numbers) while coffee drinkers do.

FWIW Matcha has even more L-theanine that green tea.

From personal experience, it caused my medications to stop working.

Now that I did not know. Given that l-theanine is a natural constituent of green tea (though I don't know offhand in what amount) I figure there would be more mention of this! A casual search doesn't reveal much, and even examine.com (https://examine.com/supplements/theanine/research/#pharmacol...) doesn't have anything listed. Ugh.

Then again almost no one mentions that 5-HTP can cause horrible things to happen to your heart. :/

I just quit cold turkey three days ago and suffered through two days of horrible headaches. I don't want to ever get hooked again.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep

I think the most universal things everyone should be doing are: get more exercise, and get more sleep.

I wonder how people will look back on coffee hundreds of years from now. "Almost everyone used to constantly drink an addictive stimulant. Shops on every block sold it. People stated that they couldn't function (or even talk) in the morning until they had consumed the stimulant. At work, people needed to take constant stimulant breaks. If someone went a day without it, they often suffered debilitating headaches." It sounds like dystopian science fiction.

(To be clear, I'm not opposed to coffee. It's just one of those things that seems strange if you think about it from a distant perspective.)

https://livesandlegaciesblog.org/2017/05/24/coffee-a-revolut... https://blog.publicgoods.com/a-brief-history-of-coffee-in-am...

Check on the section on WW2, "An average of 20 pounds of coffee were consumed a year per adult. ... This amount was cut in half to 10 pounds a year, as one pound of coffee was allotted to each person over 15 years old every five weeks."

I hate what caffeine does to me, but I like the taste of black coffee.

I meant most people can do cocaine once, or at an infrequent irregular frequency without getting addicted to it and becoming dependent.

FWIW most means > 50%

Of course they're using quids, if they were injectors of pure cocaine the situation would be less rosy. But you didn't specify the route and concentration.

This isn't a gotcha, it's a habit of daily use by millions, all of whom are basically fine.

For cocaine and most "hard drugs" probably neither is true. For coffee it seems both are true. For alcohol 1 is true and 2 is tricky.

Follow-on question: have you had similar success in your relationships and personal life in the last 4 years?

I was a great student stoned, and a decent heads-down coworker. I became a detached boyfriend and family member and even more detached friend. I made my world smaller, so I could "focus" on work. My time on creative/non-passive hobbies fell to zero. I didn't lose friends but I didn't keep up with them.

I genuinely hope your experience has not been so asymmetrical.

My creative passions exploded. Personal design projects (3D printing, circuit board design, robotics, programming) all were off the charts high, as I reduced the number of hours I worked at my regular job to under 30 hours a week. It was the most productive hobby time of my life.

I think it makes a huge difference that I smoked relatively small amounts of pure sativa, and nothing else.

Biggest issue I think was how it affected my sleep. I would stay up late getting stoned and designing robots, going to sleep around 4 or 5am. I’d wake up at 12 or 1. Made it hard to visit my Dad for lunch since he lives a ways away. Now without weed I go to bed at midnight and wake up at 8. I like that! Much easier to make plans with my Dad and my new partner (who is GREAT).

Maybe the next four years are going to be the most successful four years of your career. Good luck!