Had similarly unorthodox path to tech, albeit without the drug addiction or prison.
90s early internet/BBS punk rocker/computer nerd. Hated school angry.
Dropped out to work as a bike messenger for 5 years before packing a bag and moving west randomly. Couldn't sit still. Rode freight trains around the country for a few months.
Washed dishes and landscaped to cover my cheap rent till that fell thru. Discovered shop lifting. Covered food and beer stealing from local progressive grocery store chain. Stole goods to sell on CL to cover my rent. That scam went tits up and narrowly escaped serious charges after the head of loss prevention from a regional retailer caught up to me
Was sleeping in the park--this was pre super meth/fentanyl crisis so street living was a bit more stable and low key. Didn't want to wash dishes or dig holes any more so looked around on CL. Found a small company trying to bootstrap a regional office for an established linux-related open source company. Worked for free / interned using a stolen laptop for a year or so while sleeping outside or couch surfing local punk houses.
Eventually got hired on for s but stayed for a couple years and made many FOSS connections. Eventually left to join a well known FOSS-centered company that was fully remote.
Told myself when I was young that I would never work in an office. ~15 years later and I never have ,but now work in bit tech, get paid too much, own a home and have a great family with kids who play at the same parks I used to crash at. We shop (and pay) at the same stores I used to crib from.
I'm respected and tenured at my gig but Imposter syndrome still holds me back. Nobody I work with knows where I came from and thankfully have nothing incriminating that would block a background check
34yo Patrice has a stable job, a fiancé and broadly speaking has his life in order.
Nobody in his circle knows he dropped out of high school, got in the wrong crowd and, inevitably, did time.
This archetype is a mix of several people I've met and I usually mention it when a younger person says this and that thing (e.g. dropping out of college) is the end of the world for them. In your 20s it commonly isn't and you can start from scratch - after a decade or so nobody will have any idea about this unless you tell them.
used to work with a dude -- who is probably on / posts here -- who copped serious felony charges for growing and distributing mary jane. some time in the slammer, but nothing crazy.
couple decades later lives in the burbs, wife, kids, regular coding job, etc.
Growing some weed, what a horrible person. Do it now and its respected entrepreneur. Same person, 10 years difference.
Maybe folks should not just take passively morals from society or media but think for themselves? Society has been wrong uncountable amount of time, way more than it has been right.
i’ve been through all of this, and it turned out fine. seriously people don’t hold a drug bust against you, if you can do the job. i’ve lived on the road, camped in Golden Gate Park, attended several Rainbow Gatherings, etc. after spending years in India as a monk, i couldn’t find a place in american society. i bootstrapped a new identity that let me live as a teacher and developer; but i had to move to Śrī Laṅkā to do it.
> seriously people don’t hold a drug bust against you, if you can do the job.
Seriously, they seriously do. There's always someone as qualified as you applying for whatever job. Why would anyone choose someone with a record over someone without, all else being equal? It's a liability that can turn into a headache, so most employers will choose the person without the record.
My war story from dot-com times is being asked by a (v well known and then horribly imploded) Bay Area start-up what about its hiring form would need to change for the UK (if I was to run the UK office)... So under the "bad things you've done" section I said to change the exclusion from "minor drug stuff" to "fixed-penalty motoring offences"...
drug use will definitely be a problem, esp. if it was within the last couple of years.
you're ~35 and admit to smoking a buncha weed and maybe some other stuff in your college frat 10+ years ago? not much of a discussion topic, esp. if you've had a steady job, house, family, etc. since then. doesn't have to be short, you could have been called Mikey Pipes for all 4 years of school... just that it was a phase, and it's been long gone.
smoke weed and pop some lsd 1.5 year ago? that could be a problem, esp. if you're still living the same life essentially as then.
> smoke weed and pop some lsd 1.5 year ago? that could be a problem, esp. if you're still living the same life essentially as then.
Given the huge numbers of bay area tech people at Burningman, its clearly a bit more nuanced than that. Partying with Zuck or Sergey and Larry would be a very positive career move I suspect.
Looking In retrospect, if you were a policy maker today how would you try to prevent the new generation for having to go through this (today your path likely would not be viable due to fentanyl).
Almost everything is a choice. The difference is that sometimes you're making a rational one and sometimes you only think you're making a rational one and to outsiders and in retrospect it obviously wasn't the best choice, or event a good choice.
There are two aspects to the type of question that was asked. How do you prevent people from ha I g to make choices which are rational and good for their options but still really bad overall, and how do you convinve/educate people about available options they weren't aware of so they don't make outright bad choices when better ones are available that they are unaware of.
There are many possible answers to "why did you take off to the west and ride trains and sleep in parks and steak to feed yourself", but most of them aren't "well I just felt like leaving my entirely stable, loving and supportive friends and family." What to an outsider seems like a poor choice to a specific person imight seem like the decision that saved their life, even in retrospect.
This question jumps past the more fundamental question of whether policymakers, and the government in general, should prevent people from making their own choices.
Education is a very different story which ends with letting people make their own decisions after (hopefully) having more information about realistic outcomes.
I don't personally want a government preventing me from making my own choices. That line is blurry for sure, like if my decision directly negatively impacts someone else for example. But if packing up and riding the rails or sleeping in parks primarily impacts only me, the government shouldn't be able to stop me because they "know" its the wrong choice.
> This question jumps past the more fundamental question of whether policymakers, and the government in general, should prevent people from making their own choices.
When your choices include terrorizing businesses and being a public nuisance to everyone else, then yes, government should prevent people from making those choices.
We already have laws for theft and similar crimes. You don't need a government creating more rules preventing entire categories of choices from being made, especially if they already can't enforce the laws on the books.
I'm not advocating for the US legal/criminal system at all actually. The prior comment was pointing to crimes already being committed by people who make or made certain choices. My only point was that further regulation may not be a great solution when the activities being done are already illegal and going unenforced.
Personally I'd rather gut the legal system and drastically raise the bar by which people are locked up as punishment, but that's beside the point.
I don't see how you are saying anything different.
You seem to agree that punishment and violence is the primary tool of American government, and then you want to use it to control more choices. Call me cynical, but I expect that's how it will be approached. Theft and vagrancy is already a crime. Maybe it was the punk music that led to those so let's criminalize that as well.
In a healthy society there would be no need for intoxicants with so severe harms (BBC list for substances by harm is a good reference) and thus no exposure for a addictive substance.
Now the norm decides that, almost without exceptions, we must all be exposed.
You've completely missed the point. People don't drink alcohol because it's healthy. Just like people don't eat cake because it's healthy, nor drink coffee because it's healthy.
They do it because the unhealthy effects are desirable.
Which is why moderation is the key. There's absolutely nothing wrong with someone enjoying a drink. But there is with people who need to drink. And that's just as true for sugar addition and caffeine addition too.
Now I'm not suggesting that the negative effects of all vices are equal, because clearly they're not. But suggesting that total abstinence is the answer completely misses the point of why people enjoy a drink to begin with. You're setting an unreal expectation that will never work with society. Just like telling people that they shouldn't ever eat cake or drink coffee would be an unrealistic demand on society.
We already have a mountain of evidence that prove the removal of said vice without solving the underlying problem only drives people will just switch to something else. Often that "something else" can be much much worse. So it's far better to give people outlets but ensure there is support to ensure they descend into dependence (and the vast majority of people do consume in moderation).
> I was only using your own framing. You're the one who lazered in on health.
Actually no I wasn't. It was shrubby who mentioned "health" in the medical sense. I was replying to them using "health" in the social wellness sense. ie making the point that "health" is a nuanced term and shouldn't be used in an absolute way like they, and yourself now too, have done.
Health isn't just about physicality. There are social and emotional benefits. For example, enjoying a beer, or glass of wine, with my wife on a Friday evening when we rant about work is a great way to unwind for the weekend. It improves our mental health to have that shared experience. Our relationship is closer for spending time together. It has a net benefit despite it being an unhealthy treat.
You could replace the `wine` with `cake` in statement and have a similar point. But I don't personally enjoy cakes. Also take notice of how I'm not telling you that you shouldn't eat cakes because I don't personally like it ;)
> With alcohol this is well established to be false.
Again, you're missing the point. People enjoy stuff that isn't healthy, but sometimes that can still promote other benefits. Such as mental health. "Health" is a broader term than you give credit for.
Also the links you shared do not prove your point. There's no actual data in either of them. It's just pop-science articles with zero substance designed into scaremongering people. For example their arguments that it takes just one drink to become an addict is just laughable. The real statistics they don't print show a very different story where occasional to moderate drinking is not going to significantly increase your risk of cancer nor anything else. You're talking about fractions of a percent in the change of risk -- and that risk was already a low percentage to begin with. This is where understanding how statistics actually work makes a difference ;)
For example, some studies studies only show a correlation in 5% of cancer cases being related to alcohol consumption and that was proven against heavy drinkers. And the percentage of drinkers who have that cancer are < 1%. eg
And a lot of these studies exaggerate what I'd classed as a "light drinker". Take that link I shared:
> Even light drinkers can be at increased risk of some cancers. For example, women who have just one drink per day have a higher risk of breast cancer than those who have less than one drink a week, and risk is increased even more in heavy drinkers and binge drinkers (3-7).
If you're drinking 1 drink per day then you have a dependency. That isn't occasional consumption. I would not class that as demonstrating moderation. If you need to drink every single day then you fall into the category I described in my previous comment when I said there is an underlying problem that needs addressing.
Most people do not drink every day.
---
So to summarize:
- light and occasional drinking is a rounding error of 0 in terms of physical health risk. But it can have much more significant positive effects on mental health.
- understanding the actual statistics and how they work matter if you're going to argue about the risks to health
- people don't become alcoholics from one glass of wine
- if you don't want to drink then I agree nobody should force you. But please don't share bullshit pop-science articles claiming we're all going to become cancer-riddled addicts from an occasional drink just because you don't understand why some people do enjoy the occasional glass of wine. That just demonstrates you don't understand the subject matter.
- and please don't ignore the parallels I made about coffee and cake. They demonstrate the hypocrisy of comments where people claim absence is the only smart choice.
(and no, those bullet points were not AI generated)
edit: sorry for all the crappy grammar. I'm multitasking...badly it seems haha
I'm tempted to start the full deontology and Jellinek model on substance abuse on this, but don't have the effort now.
If we perform a cost benefit analysis on alcohol the downsides are plentiful and then some.
And the pluses are practically masked versions (taste, buzz,...) of the two major things that make human do anything: what others are doing and what I'm used to (which are pretty shit reasons to do anything IMO) it basically boils down to addiction. Not chemical, but functional and social.
Then we return to the cost benefit analysis and start figuring out how far the lying disease has progressed. The fierceness of the debate feels like a good indicator of this usually.
I'd be tempted to explain this more in depth, but I have stuff to do.
I actually don’t disagree with some of that. But that’s not the point I was discussing.
Let me put it another way: banning something that most people use sensibly and enjoy in moderation isn’t a society that anyone wants to live in nor should live in. I'm sure you'd be the first to complain if the government went after something you enjoyed that caused harm to a minority of other people.
Which is why I keep coming back to the cake analogy. The only reason people eat cake is because of the buzz and taste. Which are pretty shit reasons to do anything in your opinion. And people do get addicted to sugary snacks. Some people even eat for comfort. But a lot of other people do have self-control. Should we ban cake for everyone regardless? Of course not!
As I said in my earlier comment, the problem with substance abuse isn’t the alcohol. The alcohol is just a tool. If you banned alcohol today then people who want escapism will switch to something else. And we’ve seen this trend time and time again throughout history. And it's what any experienced doctor of medicine will also tell you.
So if you want to understand the problems of alcohol abuse better, you need to first understand what drove people to abuse alcohol. Banning alcohol isn’t a shortcut to solving that problem -- despite how much you might like it to be.
Also accusing all people who drink, even those who only do so occasionally, as being addicts (as you literally have done) is so far wrong that it’s just insulting.
Banning something that has so huge disadvantages, but has been lobbied just like cigarettes is exactly the kind of society I want to live in.
But the choice is not mine, so in that way I win.
It's a social norm and a poison from my POV and just like pfas or plastic in the drinking water I believe it should be controlled and the lobbying banned. Then we'd see the true wish of humanity.
Now our needs are manufactured, not around our wellbeing, but for what "must" be lobbied and advertised.
The norm is manufactured. Just like the addictive algorithms and almost any other thing in this world of pseudo-free will.
Even the likes of Joe Rogan are bringing up the issue, with many others so I see some light in the tunnel for my society, but so far you're right. Your side seems to be winning.
> Banning something that has so huge disadvantages, but has been lobbied just like cigarettes is exactly the kind of society I want to live in.
Alcohol isn't like cigarettes. It's more like coffee or cake in terms of the social aspect. You clearly have huge prejudice against alcohol as a whole, but you need to understand that the vast majority of people who drink, do not drink like the minority of people you associate with alcohol.
Also, cigarettes haven't been banned. Their sale has just been hugely restricted. Which is also true for alcohol.
> Now our needs are manufactured, not around our wellbeing, but for what "must" be lobbied and advertised.
You're now just reiterating the same point I made elsewhere ;)
> Your side seems to be winning.
It's not a battle to win. It’s about choice and support. You are responsible for making your own choices. But you shouldn't be dictating how others should live their own lives.
The way a healthy society works is you give people opportunities and support, and the freedom for individuals to make their own choices. However what you're advocating is taking those choices away for everyone based on your own personal prejudices of a small few. And that's not a world anyone else wants to live in.
You also keep ignoring my point that the actual subsection of society you have a problem with (alcoholics) are the same subsection of society that needs support first. If you simply take the booze away, then their underlying mental health and addiction will just drive them to switch to different substances. And if you solve their condition first, then alcohol no longer is the problem you protest so strongly against.
Simply put, you really don't understand the thing you have such a strong opinion about. And it's evidenced by the fact that you keep sidestepping the real issues behind alcohol. But you still want to restrict peoples freedoms regardless.
You're now making a rational argument against an irrational condition.
As I keep saying: the underlying causes behind alcoholism is something that needs to be specifically addressed if you don't want alcoholics to simply switch to something worse.
This is why support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous talk about people's lives and their struggles. They aren't trying to address the access to alcohol, they address the mental state that drove people to abuse alcohol.
This is the key part you keep ignoring. Making alcohol illegal doesn't solve these issues. People will still find a way to get smashed. And there's proof of this in Saudi and Iran where black markets thrive. The proof is also with people in the the EU, UK and US who keep switching from one recreational drug to the next as governments ban new substances in a game of whack-a-mole.
What you're trying to do is treat the symptom, not the cause. And that's why I keep disagreeing with you.
Root cause is the human biases and lying due to cognitive dissonance? And alcohol is a symptom that's easy to grasp.
You’re talking about waterfall management by laws and I’m talking about individual consciousness and the capability of understanding our biases? I guess that explains the perceived differences.
I stated earlier that I really don’t have the resources for this discussion in extent, but I’m leaving a draft for a blog post based on this too. I’ve been creating a matrix of different human habits to perform the cost/benefit calcucaltion. For alcohol and for practically anything individuals do.
I’ll try to sum it up here really quickly and hope for you to provide the pluses, should you have those, for alcohol. You already mentioned with strong emphasis that its normal thus right. And I don’t think either of the “facts” that we’re used to doing something (like smoking, before it was approached with honesty) or because others are doing it (like social media on the predatory and attention wrecking platforms) are good reasons, but I’ll accept that these are pluses to you.
So based on the homo economicus narrative we are rational and will make a rational choice, right? Then this matrix (a quick draft, for reference only, I hope you give me more minuses here than the buzz, the norm and the herd instinct) should work as the guiding light. https://imgur.com/a/NgV6dt9
Then we have the homo ephicus (ethical human with a twist of brutal praxis) that knows that human “mind” is actually an intuition making decisions and strategic reasoning and excuses and post-hoc justifications (thanks Jon Haidt & Hume) we use to lie to ourselves and to our societies.
So with the lingo of THN:
normal =! right
human =! reason
human === lying
But sorry, I can’t do this more clearly as the homo economicus world is putting immense pressure on the cog, I’m positioned to be. I’ll keep you in mind should I have the time to make this bit better.
I’ve never argued against the negative psychology of the minority. And understand the how it affects substance dependence. In fact I’ve talked about the psychological effects of addiction many times before on HN and have studied it in detail. Likely more than yourself owing to the fact that I also know there’s a chemical dependence component of alcohol addiction in the worst cases, which you’ve neglected to mention.
But I was never talking about addicts. I was talking about the majority of people who drive. And this is why you keep getting replies from me after your silly strawman arguments that all drinkers are alcoholics who need the government to save them.
The point you keep ignoring is that you’re repeatedly just talking about the minority and them extrapolating that like it’s equivalent to smoking. And that is simply just your own prejudices in action.
Take the cake example I keep making and you keep ignoring. People comfort eat. People get addicted to sugar. People get fat from sugar and cause a huge burden on health services, and cut their own lives short. But you’re not advocating the outright ban of sugar. Why? Because it can be consumed responsibly. And that’s the crux of the matter.
And even if we take your silly pop-science comparison with smoking, the end conclusion is still the same; smoking isn’t illegal either. It’s just heavily regulated )just like alcohol already is). So by your own silly comparison, you’re effectively just arguing for the status quo.
That’s an impossible to prove opinion without changing the laws of physics. But there are some precedence we can refer to as a counterargument.
1. There have been plenty of other substances that have been banned which were legal and widely taken since before such laws existed. Demonstrating that governments are willing to control substances that were previously legal.
2. There have also been other drugs that have been legalized after they were previously banned. Proving that governments are willing to accept the risk of people taking drugs.
3. And your augment about alcohol specific actually did happen in some places. It is commonly referred to as "prohibition". And that decision never stuck.
The reality is drugs aren't legal nor illegal based on solely the harm they do. They are judged based on how easy they are to regulate (read: monetize and tax) and the subsections of society which enjoy them.
To expand on that last point: there's a reason cannabis was illegal in most countries while cigarettes weren't. And that reason wasn't because cannabis was considered more dangerous than tobacco. It's was because certain leaders wanted us to think that the people who smoked cannabis was more dangerous than the people that smoked cigarettes.
> 3. And your augment about alcohol specific actually did happen in some places. It is commonly referred to as "prohibition". And that decision never stuck.
> Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, alcohol has been strictly banned in Iran, where consuming, producing, or selling alcohol is punishable by prison, floggings, and fines. Despite the official ban, Iranians still drink foreign and homemade alcoholic beverages that are sold on the black market. Over the past year, there has been a spike in the cases of fatal alcohol poisoning, according to medical officials in Iran.
And I'm pretty sure few Europeans nor Americans would want to mimic the laws seen in those Islamic countries. Even putting aside the depressing rise of nationalist parties in the west, Saudi and the US and EU are just culturally very different. So what works there isn't necessarily going to work here.
>In a healthy society there would be no need for intoxicants with so severe harms
Yeah but we don't live in a healthy society. We have more abundance and more advanced healthcare and drugs than ever before, but we are sick in terms of missing social connections and family unit, even in big cities. Hence why mental illnesses and substance abuse are going up.
People don't thrive on GDP line go up and cheap large screen TVs. People need friends, family, and a support network.
Yes. 100 percent agree. The addiction industry requires us to be desperate and wanting an escape, so that they can brainwash us into complicity and brain fog from hangover or doomscrollin.
And the substance abuse is a progressive lying disease so once we figure out "this has gone too far" the threshold for abuse has been crossed a long time ago in most cases.
First the close ones see the problem and the individual in question is the last to see it. Thus a lying disease.
I don't think humans are so straight forward. We have an instinctive nature to rebel that's not going anywhere, and we're all just so absurdly different, so what works for one person or family, may fail spectacularly for another. My opinion is that all you can do is be honest about things. DARE, for instance, ended up resulting in more kids trying drugs after all was said and done. It relied heavily on exaggeration and misleading statements - a lot like contemporary politics. And once people realized some of what was said was lies, the entire foundation fell apart and it all became seen as a joke.
So for instance I'll happily tell my kids that marijuana is enjoyable and relatively harmless in and of itself, yet you end up smelling bad, it ruins motivation, hurts your short-term memory, gives you the munchies, and is just generally is self-escapism, like most drugs. Gotta work on my exact pitch there, but that's the spirit of the point - honesty. They will make plenty of bad decisions in life, but I'd rather that with each one they see I was right, rather than see that I was lying or exaggerating - driving them further away from everything else I taught them.
> you only think you're making a rational one and to outsiders and in retrospect
In retrospect? It's really not hard to determine before the fact that petty crime is not a road to good things.
We have ways to prevent people from going down this path. It's called enforcement. He was more or less allowed to steal and sleep in the parks. If there was strict enforcement, this wouldn't have been a medium term viable option. Doesn't have to be throw the person in prison for the rest of their life, but either accept help, go through the criminal justice system or figure out another way to contribute to society in a positive way. It sounds like the author at any point could have found some kind of employment, but chose this because it was viable. And society wasn't doing him any favors by looking the other way
Enforcement is right of boom, essentially a safety net for the negative external affects of a person having already made a series of choices that resulted in an enforceable outcome. My impression from the thread is a query to identify the things that can prevent an enforceable outcome in the first place.
While one might say strict enforcement would discourage particular behavior choices. I would not disagree and add that suppression of behaviors is not as effective as replacement of behaviors.
Maybe also worth asking what he's doing along those lines as a father. Probably some interventions are in reach for the state, and there are some other things that parents are best positioned to do. He might have some insight into both.
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry)
Me? I have nothing to offer. My elementary aged kids will be in middle school soon and I am not looking forward to having to try and keep them on the straight and narrow. At home my parents afforded me a long leash and I rejected most of what my superiors at school/etc fed me. As soon I was able, I GTFO. Took many risks and things worked out okay for me in the end. I could tell my kids to do the opposite but I'd be lying and they'd know it.
This is a good and balanced reply. My brother was much more rebellious than me when he was younger. Not as crazy as your first post, but crazy enough for our relatively conservative family. When he got married and had kids later, he is -- to my great surprise -- a very strict, conservative parent. He has his daughters on the straight and narrow path. Sometimes I wonder will they go crazy as soon as they got to uni (move away from home). I saw more than a few crack during my first year of uni, living in dorms. You can probably find some books or blogs that people have written about their own journey as a parent, especially when they had a rocky start in life as an adult.
I am not a parent, but I have observed that the best style of parents adapt to the natural personality of each child. For example, I was very contientious from early childhood (I assume that part was genetic), and my brother was exactly the opposite. My parents really had to work with him to get him to take school seriously. Fortunately, he has a naturally high IQ, so it wasn't so hard for him.
> I saw more than a few crack during my first year of uni, living in dorms. You can probably find some books or blogs that people have written about their own journey as a parent, especially when they had a rocky start in life as an adult.
grew up around the military, ended up enlisting out of HS.
buncha my friends, all army/navy brats from outside of DC, all went off to college. easily 1/3 drank themselves stupid or otherwise went nuts.
off the leash they decided they'd rather be in a band and work part-time at the grocery store than keep going down the path they were forced. Most of them have since graduated and several are doing pretty well. Had to do that freedom thing, tho.
> Took many risks and things worked out okay for me in the end. I could tell my kids to do the opposite but I'd be lying and they'd know it.
Why do you think they'd know it? Working out in the end for you was the less likely option. Everything is possible but if you manage to explain the likelihood of each outcome compared to the expected payoff it could make the case clearer. Not an easy thing when dealing with small kids. It's hard because even adults are blinded by survivorship bias. Kids are easy victims, they can all become Cristiano Ronaldo, they can all launch the unicorn startup after dropping out of school, etc.
> I have nothing to offer.
Kids need guidance whether you think they'll take it or not, especially at that age. It's up to you to strike the balance between guidance, trickery, heavy handed rules, something works. Your teachers probably didn't care enough and your parents couldn't find the right button because it's not an easy job but it doesn't mean you can't or worse, that you shouldn't even try because you "have nothing to offer".
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry)
I dont know if you intended to reply to the OP/author or my reply. In my case, I dodged hard drugs for $reasons and can safely say that I chose my own adventure. I was had anxiety and apprehension about status quo and what was expected of a HS graduate circa 2000 so I said F it and did my own thing.
I guess one can only optimise the system for the majority following the beaten path. Some folks just have to find a way both through the world and through their own head.
Was there any bullying at school that kept you away from
it? Or boredom? Or just culture ? Grade schools seem all right in the US. Ridiculous amounts of activities/sports right there, teachers are well paid (compared to the rest of the world), the program difficulty seem pretty chill for any kid that learned to read early enough.
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry)
No, mostly just American 90s suburban boredom and at-home dysfunction.
At around 12/13 my old siblings drug addiction began tearing my house/family apart. The only escape available to me at the time in my town was a nascent, opioid-fueled high school party scene. Other kids might have followed their brothers footsteps but computers and music really interested me. I retreated to my bedroom and dialup modem for the next 5 or so years. I discovered the local BBS scene and (via that) the internet. Likewise, discovered a lively punk music scene in my region. Both connected me to other like minded ppl in my region and beyond. Very thankful for that.
My experience (and impression of others) is that sure, it's incredibly good by certain very basic metrics but that doesn't mean all participants find it desirable or even tolerable. I slogged through it for no reason other than that's just what was expected and I didn't see any realistic alternative but in retrospect I think I would have been better off dropping out and attending a community college (of course I could be wildly wrong about that).
> I slogged through it for no reason other than that's just what was expected and I didn't see any realistic alternative but in retrospect I think I would have been better off dropping out and attending a community college (of course I could be wildly wrong about that)
This is exactly where I zagged. To this day, I still think avoiding college was the best decision I've made in life. Both from the POV of finances and personal growth. I learned so much about the world and life between the ages of ~18-26. I did not own a computer or have internet access during any of it, and neither did most the ppl I knew. Feel very lucky I spent those years YOLO'ing it and not in front of a screen.
I was referring to K-12 there, not beyond. I found that I was much more compatible with the format, environment, and culture of academia and got a lot out of doing a bachelors. I expect I would have been better off omitting the US K-12 experience to the extent possible.
That said I also felt that many of the people I encountered there most likely weren't gaining enough for it to be worth the cost in time, money, and effort. I know some people who went the trade route straight out of highschool and provided that jobs were available it seems to have been a very good choice for most of them.
> Feel very lucky I spent those years YOLO'ing it and not in front of a screen.
Even in a STEM program I only spent a small fraction of study time in front of a screen. That said, the degree was indeed a huge time commitment overall.
I'm a Tradesman Baker (4 year apprenticeship and a 12 month pre-apprenticeship), that about 2 years after being a fully qualified tradesman switched to IT and have been in the industry for about 28 years. I suspect it will be my last porfession
I did not but would not be surprised. Scattered among the survivalist, bomb makers, pedos and neo nazis of the early internet there were some amazing communities. I like to think that I found my ppl back then but maybe those ppl found me and set me on my way. Either way, I'm thankful
Your story also reminded me of the early LUG scene, distributed all over the world. We believed and all we had access to were the dirtiest ratshit computers but hey they could boot Slackware or Debian and maybe if you said the right incantation you could get that 10Mb card you got for free but was still the most valuable part to work with cat5 Ethernet so you could download stuff from a local sunsite mirror so you could join in the future.
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry)
Nah, just throwaway here. A few tech/work friends know of it, most of my non-tech friends know of my background but most them have crazier stories. And those folks dont really understand what I do for work or how much money I'm making. I'm too much of a dirt bag for the tech world and too much of a yuppie for my old punk friends. Its double-sided imposter syndrome.
Fwiw, I didn't mention it because of your writing style at all, I wrote it because you literally said
> Couldn't sit still.
Also, for anyone curious, drug use and being in prison is much more common amongst adhd folk than the general population. A staggering 25% (approximately) of prison population is ADHD [1], far higher than the general population.
Same here, I too feel the same. I don't look as if I am neuro divergent but I am slightly and have radar for others and have begun to tell people, "that person is not late or slow in the mind but that person is simply a neuro divergent and needs to be given chance or looked at differently" lot of neuro divergents have been discriminated against in the past. My one professor used to ask me, "Are you on drugs". No I never have. It's just lack of sleep in college days can otherwise make my lucid brain super foggy
Haha, I can relate. I was once straight up asked if I used cocaine by my caretakers when I was 16. I was simply sleep deprived. And needed sleep bad. My neurodivergence mostly manifests as a sleep problem, in terms of it being a clinical issue. In other areas of life they are simply quirks.
To get the whole discussion of “I have seen this behavior before. I know an addict when I see one”. It was embarrassing. And then to hear “you’re 16 and acting out your puberty”.
Adults are silly sometimes when they are convinced of something, and fucking persistent.
I've had a few people tell me that I definitely have ADHD, even an internal medicine doctor and a neuro radiology friend. But I always change the subject.
Let's say they are correct. What would the solution look like from there?
As an example, and this is only 1% of it, but I have had my utilities turned off several times for not paying bills, while having $400k in the bank.
It took the collapse of my marriage for me to finally do something about the rampant ADHD that has been a feature of my life for 40 years, and yes, part of that collapse was when someone from the gas company showed up to turn off the supply unless I paid the bill right now, which of course I could easily do.
It took me five years to actually get to a point of a) having a diagnosis and b) getting medication. Most of that was due to the perverse way this process works in the UK, where to get a diagnosis of executive dysfunction you have to do a ton of personal admin, after which you’ll be handed another todo list in order to be able to get drugs prescribed.
I’m now on a good dose of drugs and I honestly mourn for the decades of my life I could have been feeling how I do now had I known. They don’t make everything better, it’s still an effort to make myself focus on the things I should be focusing on, but once I am focusing on them I’m able to continue doing so, and I no longer find myself having done no work for the last week because I was putting off a ten minute task I didn’t want to do. Despite spending 12 hours a day with a steady stream of amphetamines being released into my blood stream my blood pressure has dropped significantly since starting the drugs because I’m no longer in a constant state of low grade panic at all the things I’m not doing.
Please, go get a diagnosis (or not, maybe they’re all wrong). Talk to whoever you’re referred to about options, decide whether drugs are something you want to try. Give yourself options at least because it is possible to stop playing life on hard mode.
Cognitive behavioral therapy and, if you want to, medication. Studies have confirmed great results when those two are done together.
If you get your utilities shut off due to ADHD, and that is only 1% of it as you claim, your instinctual coping mechanisms obviously aren't enough to prevent a pretty bad impact on your day-to-day life. As you would seek help for acute medical problems from professionals, you should seek help for chronic mental problems from professionals.
> Let's say they are correct. What would the solution look like from there?
Personally after being diagnosed at 36, I started taking concerta occasionally. Mostly once a week to deal with all the things I have a tendency to not do otherwise. It's helped a lot.
And I'm saying this as someone who lost circa 120k in work I never invoiced because of ADHD
There’s both medication (which takes a while to get dosage right but can be extremely helpful for some) and also techniques you can use to help compensate.
Theres a pretty heavy "woo" presence on HN with lots of people who think you can just adopt a bunch of unproven metaphysical nonsense practices and magically delete your adhd (and anyone it doesnt work on just isnt trying hard enough). pay them no mind.
No disrespect, but this is not at all comparable to the situation described in the article. A few nights sleeping on the streets is much (!) easier when not addicted to substances.
Thank you for sharing your story! I wish you continued success and I also hope that one day someone will share with you about how YOUR story helped them do something similar, just like the article did for you.
It was incredibly refreshing to read an honest story, warts and all, written by a human. And equally infuriating to read a comment about it written by AI.
That's a really great point, and shows a deep understanding of how consistently humorless HN users are! If you want, I can show several more examples of people knee-jerk downvoting things that are actually pretty funny.
There's always been a general pushback on HN against turning threads into a series of quippy oneliners. It tends toward having a serious discussion about a topic, rather than farming low-effort humour for upvotes. I consider this a good thing, as there are plenty of other places where that is rewarded.
Yeah it seems harmless in isolation, but I'm pretty sure that lacking a norm against it it is one of the ways you end up with Reddit. And because HN doesn't have an actual anti-humour rule, in the best case it lets the funnier and more creative stuff through while punishing the obvious one-liners and boilerplate jokes that everyone would be clamouring to make first on a Reddit thread. (I don't want to be rude, but the thing where someone writes stereotypical AI speak in an ironic context has been done a billion times and doesn't need to be done again, unless it comes with an interesting twist or unusually sharp execution.)
> I don't want to be rude, but the thing where someone writes stereotypical AI speak in an ironic context has been done a billion times and doesn't need to be done again
Yeah. As the person who triggered this subthread by not detecting the attempt at "humor", the last thing we need is a version of Poe's Law for AI slop.
I agree though from my experience on HN people tend to upvote these funny quips instead of abstaining. Yet generally when I write something meaningful I get meaningful replies in return sans upvotes and I treasure those much more.
I still cling on to the quaint idea that "upvote" means "adds meaningfully and coherently to the discussion", while "downvote" means the opposite. So not "I agree with this" or "that made me chuckle" but rather "this enhances the conversation" - and especially if it's a well written argument I disagree with because that might make me learn or rethink my position. Humour in a well argued point is very welcome, of course.
Wish and reality aren't in alignment here but some places like HN or /r/AskHistorians are my refuges.
That's not how it works at all. In general I've noticed that many of the things I say might remain neutral or get some upvotes, and then get flagged and downvoted as soon as the USA wakes up. So I think here it is very very much based on agreement.
> Working at Techtonic was the best possible early-career experience I think anyone could have had. They did contract development, a lot of which was greenfield Saas MVP launches, across various tech stacks. There was not a lot of time for mentorship so it a very "trial-by-fire" experience -- either figure things out and ship stuff, or get the boot.
I *always* tell older people looking to switch into tech to start at agencies/contracting firms for this reason.
They are much more likely to hire people without experience, invest in your training (even if it's training by fire), and because they are usually heavy cert-driven, they'll pay for certs as well.
It doesn't pay well, and the work can be brutal (nights and weekends; on-call) but it's a great way to get the experience needed to get the job that does if you're starting from zero.
On the other hand, people with that sort of experience tend to have the worst instincts when it comes to actual maintenance and long-term development of projects. They're great at starting projects, and fast too, but rarely considers the design carefully enough so you don't need a full rewrite once every year just to continue being able to add features. Slow is fast in those cases, and the people who are experts in "greenfield SaaS MVP launches" basically operate with short-term expedience traded for long-term maintainability.
Not to say they cannot learn that, but worth being aware if you're building something long-term and does hiring for that sort of project, to be upfront that the development process will likely be very different compared to what they're used to.
Ha! I started my career in a company where I had to pump out custom web apps as fast as humanly possible. The apps were successful, and then I had to maintain them for several years. That's where the real learning occurred. I learned the cost of every one of my shortcuts and poor design decisions the hard way.
Many years ago, some famous developer said, "Always write your code as if the person who's going to maintain it is a violent psychopath who knows where you live." As I fixed my poor design choices one by one over endless late nights, I sometimes felt the anger of a violent psychopath toward the former, ignorant me who had stupidly plagued current me with all these problems.
When you learn the hard way, you know exactly why good design decisions are considered good. In later jobs, one of my fundamental goals for every new project was "I never want me or anyone else to have to answer a 3 a.m. call about why this system isn't working."
> It doesn't pay well, and the work can be brutal (nights and weekends; on-call) but it's a great way to get the experience needed to get the job that does if you're starting from zero.
sadly that's a non-starter for a lot of people in this economy. doubly so if you have kids.
This lacks perspective of the position of OP and people like him. For them, stringing together multiple full and part time minimum wage jobs is the norm. Not having health insurance is the norm. Extreme commutes, often not by car, is the norm. Are these kinds of consulting jobs great? No, probably not. Better compensation and hours than the alternative? Almost certainly.
Consider how he and his wife were surviving before he got back into tech. That's the norm for a lot of people.
> sadly that's a non-starter for a lot of people in this economy. doubly so if you have kids.
Seems to me like if it's the option on the table, and you have a family to take care of, then it would absolutely be a starter. If there are other options, then there are other options, but if you're just starting it's fairly likely that you need to prepare yourself for a battle. I don't see how "this economy" makes that anything but more true. I don't even have kids but I sure as hell wouldn't be picky if I did and was just getting going.
What would be a non-starter is no job or no pay for work.
I love such stories. Right now, a lot of folks I know are struggling to find jobs, so I read the part about how he got a job the first day he was out of jail with some astonishment and nostalgia for the simpler days, when showing interest was often enough to land the job! Now, hoop number 1, the AI resume filter, is a strange obstacle that one has to jump through first.
The job market is rough. My wife went back to school for audio/sound design, finished the program + got a bunch of certifications.
She's been trying to get anything, even an unpaid internship, doing sound design, going to local meetups, online conferences, and hasn't had much luck.
But I told her: it's just a matter of persistence and time. If you're agreeable to be around, passionate about something, and just show up everyday, eventually something is likely to happen.
As someone who has worked in the music sphere with many hats over the past few decades: her best shot is to get people talking about her, perhaps find some local musicians she likes and offer cheap\free recordings to fill in her portfolio and get that word of mouth started.
Successful people in the music world (both on and off stage) HAVE to mingle with musicians (not other engineers) heavily to get noticed and recommended
Would recommend joining a local film club, and get a few small projects done. Additionally, volunteer with local church events, or regular city music festivals.
Also, could join the local union intake for the production studios. It will be awful until one gets the base hours completed, but it is a feast or famine kind of work schedule some can tolerate. Fine work if you are still a kid.
Finding stuff online is usually a fools errand these days mostly due to "AI" data mining operations, or outright cons. Best of luck =3
I applied to 100+ places in 2005. Took a job an hour from home for a year and half. Eventually found something closer to home. You take what you can find at the time until you find where you want to be
I applied for about 50+ jobs as a graduate engineer in 1991. Back then you wrote letters. Hmmm: You printed letters - mail merge was a thing.
You signed each one by hand, with a quill pen and used a wax seal and cast a Spell of Engagement.
OK, you signed your covering letter with a pen (might be a Biro but I did use a Parker and Quink, myself) You also had to put your covering letter and curriculum vitae (CV == resume) in an envelope and pop a stamp on it (2nd class) and post it. None of that Linked In bollocks.
Your covering letter would be bespoke to the company approached. You did some research and mentioned something pertinent.
part of this I understand is survival. And I understand why you do this.
The other part of this is why it's so frustrating for me to find the right person. Everybody's resume looks perfect for the role, and I have to waste 30-45 mins digging into their actual experience. You have done yourself a great disservice by wasting that time sitting in an interview you were not qualified for, and worse still I always feel there are other, more qualified people, who I have missed/passed over their resume since it wasn't AI tuned.
I understand your frustration and i hope to have a earnest discussion on this.
One of the 3 jobs require hiring other developers. I don't find it difficult at all. I have my own intuition and technique I rely on. If you are wasting 30~45 minutes on a resume, you are probably chasing the wrong signals. It's not my fault.
> You have done yourself a great disservice by wasting that time sitting in an interview you were not qualified for, and worse still I always feel there are other, more qualified people, who I have missed/passed over their resume since it wasn't AI tuned.
How can I know if I meet the prospective employee's criteria or not before I do the interview? How am I to be held reliable for other people's failure to make themselves visible or your frankly your lack of skill at recruiment?
It's convenient to blame AI for any shortcomings these days but if you don't know what you are doing, you were always going to reach for something external something imagined to deflect your own areas that need improvement.
Why'd people downvote this? The minimum you need to be doing is pasting role descriptions and your résumé into ChatGPT and asking: should I hire this person? Because that's what every company's HR department is doing (automatically) and if the answer is no, then you may as well not bother sending the application. Or you could tweak it until it says yes.
I think earlier there were few HN users who didn't like my opinions on another thread, came here to flag and downvote my comments and leave rather mean replies all over my profile. I don't think much of it and I forgive people who do it.
Or maybe there really are people who think its okay to use AI to hire/filter candidates but not when candidates use AI to optimize to get around that screen. Using AI, I've been able to land several interviews and work 3 jobs remotely currently without much effort.
I accepted 3 of them and work 16 hours a day. So thats roughly 5 hours of deep work per day. if I wasn't remote working then the extra 3~5 hours would've been spent on commute, figuring out where to eat, silly banters with coworkers or office politics and just non-essential stuff that anti-remote people advocate for.
I would accepted all 5 if I could but its just impossible to fit more than 3 stand up meetings in different time zones. It's also tricky at times to manage schedule, you have to keep your work space segregated.
So it's a combination of Resume strength (don't spend too much time on polishing it with AI as it can't replace experience) and market demand (really question if you have anything special)
Don't get discouraged brother! I hope this can help you.
So you've used AI to do fraud and you're confused why people are opposed to this?
You're the reason companies are pushing return to office and putting candidates through gauntlets of interviews and homework - because otherwise they end up hiring someone who lied on their resume and is trying to collect 3 salaries until they get caught and fired.
> Using AI, I've been able to land several interviews and work 3 jobs remotely currently without much effort
Working 3 jobs is almost certainly defrauding the employers, your employment agreement likely forbids this due to IP ownership issues and expectations that you're, ya know, working for them when they're paying you and not secretly collecting a paycheck while working for a different company during the time they're paying you to work for them?
Also, unclear if you're also fraudulently claiming experience you don't have by having AI write a resume tailored to the job posting rather than representing what you've actually done.
If your 3 jobs are actually part-time jobs, with clearly delineated and compartmentalized time and work tracking and the employers are aware and the contracts allow that, then fine. But your description definitely reads like someone bragging that they're hacking the system to get away with tricking multiple employers into thinking you're working full time for them.
Not paid hourly rate and we are about delivering milestones on time
Everyone is satisfied with the rate of PRs closed and fine with AI use
I'm still waiting to hear what part of this is fraud?
> Also, unclear if you're also fraudulently claiming experience you don't have by having AI write a resume tailored to the job posting rather than representing what you've actually done.
Where have I said to use AI to fabricate experience? Do you actually believe that will work and thats what people are doing before background checks ?
I think the "fraud" they are likely referring to is working 3 jobs at the same time as a software developer. Do all of the jobs know you have 2 others in the same line of work? If you're a consultant and advertise as such, no big deal imo, but I do think there is something to be said if you can't be honest with all of your employers about what other work is on your plate.
Programming is by definition technical work that requires a significant amount of brain power and focus and if I am an employer (a good one!) I would intuitively expect a certain level of focus from each employee that also entails a certain amount of downtime in order to stay fresh and alert.
This is my attempt at a steel-man of their argument. If your employer(s) is happy with your output and you aren't lying about your availability in order to juggle everything, then there is no harm imo.
> No they don't know and if they did I would get fired obviously.
This already shows the problem. They assume they are paying for your time exclusively, while you are doing just enough to satisfy them.
The fact you go such lengths to hide the fact that you are three timing them also shows that you know what you are doing is not acceptable.
Most likely you are in breach of the employment contract.
You are also somehow justifying this to yourself. The problem is that such behavior causes loss of trust and makes other 95% of honest peoples' life painful.
I don't see an issue since they are happy with my output. Who's getting hurt here ? That I'm working more efficiently then someone hired to do the job 9-5 ?
so you want me to make less money, couple myself to an employer who doesn't offer any upward mobility or job stability because you think its immoral that finally the dynamics have tipped the balancing pole in the workers favor?
People who are getting hurt are people like you and me. Employers are seeing your comments. They are reading about others who do this. They are losing trust. When they pay you, they expect you to work for them diligently and not just up to a level of KPI. This behavior will make them to force people to come to work. Remote working will be gone. They will start paying less because they expect people to two time anyway. Overall society loses due to loss of trust.
So you gain something, but society as a whole loses.
P.S. Even if my wife is very happy with me, it doesn't mean that I can have another relationship. Either I have an agreed open marriage or I am cheating. A different thing, but I would say similar.
Breach of contract is a civil issue, they could probably fire you without recourse (contract is void) but that's the extent of it if you didn't do anything else wrong.
> No they don't know and if they did I would get fired obviously
And yet, above, you're still asking where the fraud is. You clearly know you're violating the terms of your employment agreement. That's the fraud. It's not complex.
A breach of contract, if there even is one, is not magically fraud because you dislike it or find it offensive. Fraud requires damages. So be specific:
What damages occurred if the work was delivered and accepted and both parties are satisfied?
the employer would be upset if they knew thats your assumption. But that’s not fraud that’s you projecting your own morals here over and over out of jealousy
My son Nicolas also followed a similar path. Sadly, he didn’t survive one of these ‘holes’ at 22. We shared a deep connection and had open, challenging conversations right up until he passed away, but it wasn’t enough... Can I be incredibly selfish and asked you something he might say to me had he been able to navigate these turbulent waters. Miss you Nico.
He would tell you that he's sorry he let you and everyone else around him down. That he didn't get to fix the bridges he burned, and mend the people he hurt.
That every time he came down from his high and was lying in bed unable to sleep, the guilt was like an ocean devouring him. That tonight would be the last time he would ever touch anything.
That he wanted to stop, knew he should stop, but when you wake up sweating & shaking all logic leaves your mind and the only thing you can think of is where to get more.
That it's not your (or anyone else's) fault, you did nothing wrong, and quite probably everything right. Some of us are just born with demons on our shoulder that won't stop whispering in our ear.
He would tell you of all the the plans he had come up with over the years, to make up the lost time with you and the rest of his loved ones. Doing things that YOU want to do, just to make you happy, because he had been selfish enough and you were owed at least that much.
That when things were their darkest, and he felt his lowest, one of the few saving graces and safe havens in his mind were the times he spent with you, before he fell into this pit of darkness.
---
I am, genuinely, sorry to hear that. Not in a "my condolences way", but in a grief-ridden and deeply personal way.
I lost my father and several of my closest friends to fentanyl. I know your grief. I know the feeling of anger that also gives you guilt, that they should have robbed the people that loved them most of the opportunity to experience them, and robbed themselves of the bright future they were capable of having.
Nothing I, or anyone else says, can make it any better.
I shed tears while writing this. Nico mourns for you as much as you mourn for him.
Extreme mental clarity in "Eventually, she told me that it made more sense for me to quit my job while she worked, so that I could spend all of my free time trying to get another tech job".
I could've never imagined long-term-thinking like this from a former addict.
> I could've never imagined long-term-thinking like this from a former addict.
I know a couple people who recovered from addiction (and lost a few who sadly couldn’t).
They’re just people from all walks of life. There are a lot of stereotypes about addicts, but drug addiction can hit anyone. The first few people I knew who became addicts were actually from good families, were educated, had good career prospects, and were happy people. They thought addiction didn’t apply to them because they were too smart or happy or wealthy. In my opinion, those stereotypes made them more vulnerable to letting their guard down and thinking they were going to use the drugs smartly.
Most of them are recovered now and back on track, minus a large chunk of their younger years and a trail of destroyed relationships and wasted opportunities. You wouldn’t peg them as former addicts, though. They’re just people.
I grew up solidly middle class, even went to a good private school. A couple of my friends got ripped off by an addict that ran in our social circle who had the same background. They couldn't find the person, but they were so angry that they looked up the parents' address and went to confront them, assuming they'd be like bad people or something or had failed to raise their kid right. Instead both parents were incredibly mild and apologetic, and basically said, "We don't know what happened to our child and where it all went wrong." My friends felt very ashamed, apologized and left them in peace. It's a really tragic thing, and it's not just a cliche that it can happen to anyone.
> I could've never imagined long-term-thinking like this from a former addict.
Nothing personal, but you are part of the problem here. You are why these stories are so rare and difficult to achieve. Not out of malice on your part, most likely. But addicts are not humans to you. Please rethink some things.
As a kid I read the book "Montyn" [0] that made a deep impression on me, about Jan Montyn who fled a strict Calvinistic upbringing to join the German army in WWII and found himself in all the big battles near the end of the war, to ultimately make a career as an artist in The Netherlands.
I was reminded of the book when I recently watched the origin story [1] of the Differentbreed TV channel on youtube that gives attention to the trench war in Ukraine. The channel owner went from serious alcohol addiction while working in a liquor store, to going in a coma when deciding to go cold turkey. And then a journey to almost becoming a policeman, then a firefighter, and deciding based on training and certifications gained there, to become a combat medic in Ukraine. Then fought in the International Legion and Azov brigade. And then settle in Ukraine running the channel, and be involved in all kinds of activities that help the defense of the country. Very interesting to hear the story told from first-hand experience.
Thank you for sharing. Stories like yours remind us that there is good in the world, and even if it isn’t everywhere, it is still worth cultivating.
I’m a software engineer née scientist, but my spouse is a therapist who specializes in addiction. They (and I!) cherish stories like yours because we had seen up-close the struggle that so many people face.
"AI Use Disclaimer: claude code was used to generate the OpenGraph SVG image.
No part of the prose was machine-generated. You will not find machine-written prose on this blog. I consider it deeply disrespectful."
I really like this disclaimer, by disclaiming that a single small thing was done with AI, you make very credible and notable that you did not use LLMs for the important parts.
Damn, tough reading about the 1 week deadline for finding work, then getting one after telling them you're jailed and them taking the chance on you.
I also found the article written so well (I suppose we don't encounter native English speakers in the blogosphere as much as we think we do), that it was a joy to read, if I can say so considering the subject matter.
Many very interesting stories here of people that took similar paths. As the parent of a teenager that used to be an absolute model student, but recently (last year) started rebellious behaviour, tanking their academics with it, I'm curious how many with similar stories think they would have or could have taken a different path with better or different parental support?
We're trying our very best to support and guide without shaming. The difficult part is the influence of friends, specifically a boyfriend, that were convinced led to much of this. Forbidding the relationship is not going to have the right effect. So we're trying to manage it with rules to try and prevent the opportunity to make bad decisions. And talking a lot about honesty, values and respect. There's still respect in our relationship, and I feel that's the key for us to be able to support her.
> I'm curious how many with similar stories think they would have or could have taken a different path with better or different parental support?
I'm sorry to hear about your kid. I'll be honest with you: it depends almost wholly on their disposition when it comes to reinforcement style.
I only respond to extreme, repeated negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement never did anything for me.
If your child responds to positive reinforcement in any way, there's a good chance you can support them through it. But if they're like me, they may "only learn the hard way."
And I don't mean negative reinforcement as in physical punishment or being talked down to, but having to live through direct negative consequences of your action.
Sometimes I think "what if I could go back in time, and tell myself not to do XYZ", but I know myself well enough that I'm sure I would not listen.
I sincerely hope that things pan out for your family.
If you want the nuclear option, can you move away from the current environment? If they're young enough not to have a car, that's one way to at least guarantee a "fresh start" where they can't actively go down the current path. They'd need to find a new way into trouble, which is still wholly possible but requires more effort at least.
> If you want the nuclear option, can you move away from the current environment?
The common refrain here is usually they can find a bad environment anywhere so just moving won’t solve the problem. Unless it’s really remote, and home schooling. Which would not be healthy for anyone imo.
A good felon buddy of mine has been out now for 4 years. He slowly built a car repair business, with steady clientele, and got his life back on track – including reasonable sobriety and a steady relationship. He and his girl would cruise around often, enjoying their newfound happiness.
Last week he totaled his Harley and his body (destroyed bike, multiple broken bones). Total reset. He now gets PTSD whenever a Harley revvs by passing... physically cannot work.
The wrecklessness which brings some people into prison, is what brings them & others lusting towards motorcycle culture, often shortly upon release. Something something something anti-social something.
I'm just offering real-world advice after witnessing all the broken bones and jerked roadrash upon this tattoo'd convict's broken body. Shouldn't be alive.
Billions of people have a motorcycle globally... Some anecdote from a chronically motorcycle adverse culture (US) doesn't mean a whole mean of transport is invalid...
Most people riding motorcycles globally are not doing so on busy freeways at 60mph+ multiple times per day, surrounded by 2.5 ton vehicles with poor visibility traveling 60mph+
Putzing around an urban center on a cafe bike is not what it means to "ride a motorcycle" in the US.
I'd much rather be on a freeway at 60+ MPH surrounded by 2.5 ton vehicles with poor visibility than riding an urban street. New riders are rightly intimidated by the freeways (they're fast, they're big), but they're far, far safer than the street with all of the starting, stopping, hard corners, folks turning onto the street, and, of course, the king of bike slayers, the "I didn't see them" left turn.
Not to mention all the junk on the streets: the oil, anti-freeze, gravel, wet painted turn arrows.
When freeways become unsafe is when the loose nut behind the handlebars decides to wick it up and just "go around all of these big slow things". But that's not the freeways fault.
First year/10,000 miles is the hardest. But the foundational rules apply: Wear the gear, slow down, don't ride impaired (drunk, high, tired...).
Lightning strikes, it sucks. But, anecdotally, my worst motor vehicle injury was while a passenger in a modern car when my friend drove into a left turning vehicle. "Fender bender", "no biggie". Chronic, notable, back pain ever since. Worst than anything I've ever suffered on a motorcycle.
You're describing American cities, while GP (to whom I was responding) was clearly describing the huge number of foreign cities (e.g. SE Asia) where motorcycles are the dominant form of urban transit.
The relevant factor is that a street where motorcycles, cycles, pedestrians, and small/slow cars are dominant – all of which move at generally slow speeds – is of far, far, far less danger than a street (freeway or not) where the primary form factor is large automobiles traveling quickly.
You're describing American cities, while GP (to whom I was responding) was clearly describing the huge number of foreign cities (e.g. SE Asia) where motorcycles are the dominant form of urban transit.
The relevant factor is that a street where motorcycles, cycles, pedestrians, and small/slow cars are dominant – all of which move at generally slow speeds – is of far, far, far less danger than a street (freeway or not) where the primary form factor is large automobiles traveling quickly.
> First year/10,000 miles is the hardest
This is typical Intermediate Syndrome. The median rider involved in a motorcycle accident has nearly 3 years of experience.
No, road defects, obstacles, and weather are almost never the cause of motorcycle accidents.
I lived in Bangkok and saw 4 motorcycle accidents or their immediate aftermath. Even in perpetually jammed third world megacity traffic, the motorcyclist always loses to the other vehicle, in several of those cases almost certainly fatally.
I guess this depends on whether you're emphasizing deadliness or likelihood.
I live in Thailand, and I can assure you that while scooters dominating city streets increases awareness by car drivers, it doesn't make accidents less likely.
Most accidents worldwide happen on low-speed streets, not highways. On highways, the speeds are higher, so the rare accidents that occur are more damaging, but the opportunities for accidents are also much, MUCH lower. (No/few turns, no/few stops, similar speed levels, better visibility, etc.)
First 10k are the hardest but the tail effect of an experienced rider is what gets you. I had crashes in my first 10k but my worst were after riding for decades when I would just randomly hit a tiny oil slick going 70+mph while using zero brakes, zero turning, and zero extra acceleration. Just get thrown low-side due to randomness of having to watch traffic while not noticing a tiny oil slick with enough random variations in the road that it immediately throws the bike when traction regains.
That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.
California is one of the safer places to ride given how many bikes are here and I've still had too many near misses as a trained, experienced, and conservative rider.
Most people put 1-2k miles a year on their bikes, when I was riding often I put on 2-3k/ month.
>That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.
Same with anything in life.
Same with a car, just less so. Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7 (and can still die from any number of things anyway).
At some point there's a tradeoff people make. Some people make it where the tradeoff slider says "motorcycle", rather than stop at "car". And I'm not talking a tiny niche, but about 1-1.2 billion people globally.
The risk is much much much higher with a motorcycle - especially in the US where most car drivers have next to zero experience sharing the road with motorcycles let alone driving a motorcycle. Saying it's the same thing is absurd here.
Vs what though? We're talking about a felon and addict channeling their risk-taking energy. I rode motorcycles exclusively as my transport in my 20s and it was one of the main things that checked use of intoxicants. You need your balance for a motorcycle and it uses the same risk-taking energy that many people would otherwise channel into drugs and destruction.
That is to say, those comparing car v motorcycle are doing the wrong comparison here. You'd be evaluating (car + substitute activity of drugs/crime/etc) vs. motorcycle -- rather than merely car v motorcycles.
> Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7
Quite an extreme and useless comparison. There's a large spectrum of transportation and entertainment options between motorcycle riding and home bound bumper suit at all times.
If someone uses the word 'same' followed by a 'but' for a significantly different case then the word 'same' is losing its meaning.
> Do you discourage people from riding bicycles too, lest they be hit?
I don't, and my point is these things all have wildly different cost-benefit tradeoffs. So it's unproductive to jump to some extreme risk averse example that no one was suggesting or implying.
Yeah exactly, same with BASE jumping or wingsuiting.
It's the same risk dynamic as driving a car to work, just more so. Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7 (and can still die from any number of things anyway).
> That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.
Same with a car, or anything really.
The point of parent stands, globally there are billions of people going through their lives with motorcycles as their main vehicles, yet aren't involved in any life-changing accidents.
Some places are more dangerous than others, probably places that doesn't have this already motorcycle-heavy culture, like other countries in the world, has a higher incident rate and more severe accidents, as drivers aren't aware of how motorcycles usually operate.
I live in Indonesia. We have the highest per-capita rate of bike ownership in the world.
I have seen what happens to motorcycle riders when there are accidents and I have seen what happens to car drivers when there are accidents. I won't get into the gory details but I avoid using bikes as much as possible.
And I've seen what happens when pedestrians get hit by a car going way too fast, it sucks, and is horrible, but also besides the point. Not to say one has worse/better accidents, motorcycles accidents obviously has a much higher fatality and serious injuries risk, hard to deny.
Which is why yesterday, in my mid-sized Southern City: after a motorcyclist hit&ran off the Interstate (dead, into a guardrail; 35, helmet'd/licensed, obeying traffic laws), the local biker clubs put down their swords and rallied in the median well after the accident occurred (as my local newspaper noted).
With all these millions already-spent on Flock cameræ, and T-DOT having dozens more (of their own)... you'd think we'd'a'already caught these guys.!?
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It's so sad that lack of accountability results in fleeing manslaughterers... but here we are.
Let me read both these comments some more, because after this one (above): I'm even more confused.
Quickly: we seem to agree that motorcycles are dangerous and worldwide their predominance is mostly correlated with poverty (unlike US outlaw/biker culture). I had associated your beside the point with a biker being more-safe than a pedestrian -- is that what you meant?
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I have done 120mph in both vehicles, car and motorcycle – and won't ever go over 55mph on a dirtbike (only, offroad); never again on-road riding.
Accidents. Not everything is under the driver's control, nor does it happen due to their intention (or even necessarily due to their lack of attention or whatever).
There's a reason the term accident is used (I know at least 10 countries where the meaning is the same).
> Saying "accident" implies that the tens of thousands of road deaths every year are an unavoidable consequence of the convenience of driving.
What? Where is that conclusion coming from? There can be thousands of "accidents" and they can all be preventable, calling it "crash" or "accident" doesn't imply if it's preventable or not.
Talk about arbitrary hill to die on, very inconsequential. Why is this somehow so important?
FWIW, countries like Sweden call them "accidents" yet treat them as preventable and something to aim to minimize, not sure why it'd matter so much if someone call it accident or not.
"Crash" sounds like it just happened by chance or for whatever reason. "Accident" makes it sound like something went wrong, maybe someone did something wrong, and then something happened because of that, maybe a crash, maybe something else.
I still think "accident" is more accurate, so I'll continue to use that. Thanks for explaining though!
Probably depends on the locale. In Europe, riding a moped in a big city is a way to drastically cut your commute compared to driving a car. It's not exactly dangerous when all the other road users are moving at 5m/min, and being able to just skip all the traffic jams is a godsend. By car, my trip to the office was about 45min - it was 15min on a moped, a stop at a shop for some snacks included. And that's with riding speed never exceeding 50km/h.
I had two accidents during my 5 years of commuting, and both times I only got minor scratches and had to replace my shoes. Both happened at speeds a determined bicycle rider could achieve, but I suspect I wouldn't be as well protected on a bicycle (both the machine itself and the protective gear tend to be much lighter there than on a moped). If I needed to do that again, I'd buy a model with two wheels at the front, which would have prevented both accidents - though I'm not sure if added stability wouldn't encourage me to ride faster.
So it's pretty specific, but if you're somewhere where driving culture is not too cutthroat, the roads can support single-track vehicles, and the traffic rather than actual distance is the limiting factor - owning a bike can be an objectively better option.
In Europe many people have both, and use the motorcycle to go to work/etc because it's faster and more convenient, especially in a larger city with traffic jams.
I am going to get to work with my classic Vespa scooter.
Its cheaper than a car and i live only 7 kms away from my workplace.
Riding bus and tram is time consuming and expensive.
Its fun to ride a classic scooter and it never failed so far because i use it everyday.
My classic runs up to 70km/h and people think its a slow, modern scooter so they dont really pay attention to me.
I've always thought it made more sense that instead of large metrobuses the local transit authority operate more like a locals-only taxiservice – similar to their already-existant handicapped-access services (which send a solitary transport driver, with ramped single-occupant van/vehicle).
Part of the reason for "US culture" (specifically: not walking mostly) is that zoning laws largely prevent over/under residential/storefront construction.
This makes everything so far apart as to make walking inconvenient. Add in unbearable weather for half of most years (whether hot/cold), and it just isn't convenient to grab something "on a quick walk" from the grocery store that is miles away from most homes.
Thankfully (some) cities are beginning to realize this, and are changing (IMHO: stupid) zoning/regulations. My favorite example has been of my own hometown's (Austin) reduction in required parking spaces for most commercial activities. This increases density, and encourages more walking. ATX's buslane-onlies leave a lot to be desired... but at least they've gotten rid of (most) downtown oneways.
I'm a motorcyclists. We usually refer to the smaller bikes as "motorbikes". Two wheels in the west is usually a hobby. In other parts of the world it might be a necessity, they don't do it for the pleasure. A lot of people forget this.
I’d say this is a strong case against getting one for anyone who has struggled with addiction. In my experience a part of the constant battle is a difficult relationship with sources of stimulation.
I’ll second this. Back in the 90s when my addict brain was in full flight, I had a street bike for a year. There was not a single ride when I didn’t massively exceed the speed limit and ride recklessly. I loved it! Lucky to be alive. Lucky I had a partner who convinced me to sell it after our first child was born.
Having said all that and despite being in recovery for many years... I still lust after the feeling of completely unfettered freedom being on a bike on an open road. Before I bought my bike a friend had warned me that once you ride, you’ll never not want to ride. He was right.
Same. I got spooked after a car pulled out on the country highway I was doing 160 on. Then ran out of money and sold it. I just rode my Dads Harley, first ride in 20 years. Was nice but I’m good. I have a longboard and a little hill once in a while gives me the occasional adrenaline rush I crave.
With a child it's easy to always justify spending the money on something else. I also miss the machine's simplicity and ease to work on.
While it probably sounds crazy, owning a tractor is almost as good. There are even more mechanical widgets to play with and it is dead simple and easy to work on like a motorcycle. I still miss the motorcycle but now I can actually do useful work while somewhat scratching the itch.
Motorcycles are ridiculously fun but yeah, if you have anything in your life worth preserving or sticking around for, it's statistically a pretty awful decision.
>Motorcycles are ... statistically a pretty awful decision.
This has been my favorite sentence (so far) in this discussion – whatever one's opinion is on motorcycling. Capital 't' Truth.
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Thirty years ago, my mother gave me some small amount of money to NOT ride a motorcycle on roadways until after she died. Being young and broke, I took the money. stopped riding.
After she died, I had aged just enough to realize that I didn't actually want to ride motorcycles on-road, anymore. Even after decades of wanting to...
Somehow mama-up-there knew I'd eventually grow up, and it only cost her a few hundred dollars [to not have to witness my motorcycle accident (while alive, nor ever from-above)].
What are your thoughts on Roller Coasters? Hit a good theme park, ride maybe 6 with your eyes closed within a couple of hours.
I can't help but feel riding one (Roller Coaster) is much more optimal than $200/hr flying a plane, and much safer than a motorcycle, even if you rented vs purchase one.
I haven't ridden in two decades, but I think a high-powered jetski is close to your description.
Either stand-up (small one-rider) or a 3-seater; each has its perks.
You can waterski behind a larger HP machine, and it's always nice to have a fellow beloved rider saddling-up alongside your antic't britches – whatever the hell that means, to you.
Or go be stupid and jumpwake on a crotchrocket standup jetski #LifeIsShort #CrippleLife #DontGetRunOver
Yeah, I think this is the point. It's a "legal high" of sorts and a dangerous one. That flying feeling is addictive. Some are lucky enough to grow out of it, some aren't.
Family owns acreage less than a mile from the recent Wimberley smallplane crash. As far as "statistical anomolies" are concered [+neighbors motorcycle accident] I'm not presently up for much risk-taking rn.
They could have just-as-easily landed on the barn I built, a decade ago – years of work.
Pilot's stupidity (flying in such known weather conditions, inexperienced) could have killed more than just he & his pickleball passengers.
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The part where I start getting upset is when others' lives are put into risk (particularly when: no fault of their own, bystanders).
Motorcycles aren't invulnerable 3 ton steel tanks but the stats and anecdotes are deceptive. They're really not that bad if you're not a moron, even if you're mostly worried about other road users. The stat are wildly bimodal.
~30% of deaths involve drunk riding
~30% of deaths involve not wearing any helmet (let alone full face ECE 22.06 rated ones or any other gear at all)
~30% of deaths involve someone with no motorcycle licence.
These aren't all mutually exclusive obviously, rather the Venn diagram probably looks rather...circular.
The issue isn't so much everyone trying to kill you, you can fix a lot of the visibility issues and you have some additional options if someone is about to hit you. The problem is that two wheels make for a VERY dynamic system and you're managing two different brakes with weight shifting between two wheels based on your inputs. To that end ABS and TCS are absolutely huge, IIRC something like >60% safety improvement.
Tldr don't buy an old retro bike with no safety systems and ride it drunk without a license or gear, you'll continue to pad the numbers.
Well since we're doing anecdotes, I'm a sober, fully helmeted, geared rider with 8 years and tens of thousands of miles under my tires. I've had two incidents:
1. I fell over at a stop sign on a canted hill while stopped because the rented Harley was so fucking big. I immediately returned it and will never ride a Harley again, those things suck.
2. I stupidly stopped just before the crest of a gravel road because I couldn't determine the best path (should have just trusted my tires and picked one), started sliding backwards. Rather than spin my tires and risk shooting off, or slide backwards into the unknown, I just tipped over and rolled off the bike.
No injuries either times. No at speed near misses. I have a simple rule: if I'm not 100% sure, I don't do it. A pass, a light, an intersection, when in doubt, I slow down, or stop, or hang out where I am in a lane.
Maybe one day I'll get taken out at a stop light or something random like that but the joy that riding has brought me I just can't give up. Exploring the world on a motorcycle is just amazing.
All activities come with risks. Motorcycling is up there but so is rock climbing, kayaking, rafting, hiking, bicycling, swimming - all activities I personally know someone who has been severely injured doing. You take precautions but you gotta live.
>Exploring the world on a motorcycle is just amazing.
I agree. Among my fondest (and 3rd-most-painful) memories is sitting atop my Honda XR80 – FREE – pondering what my adolescent mind might eventually wish to accomplish.
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>all activities I personally know someone who has been severely injured doing
My twin's friend, an experienced multi-pitch climber, recently perished in a freak-drowning accident (while leading amateurs) on a simple repelling expedition (single-pitch, lots of attention-to-safety). Somehow he slipped, fell into rainstorm-capture... and nobody knew how to help him quickly enough.
Obviously he should have had another experienced buddy, but it apparently "all happened so quickly" that nobody thought otherwise (was possible).
There’s a study demonstrating life expectancy of 3+ years for bicycle Paris commuters (2+ for public transport) compared to cars. They didn’t evaluate motorbike.
The effect on physical and psychic health largely outweighs (sometimes to x30) the risk of accidents and pollution disease.
It's a lot easier to ride recklessly on a motorcycle than an ordinary bike. I suppose mopeds/motor scooters (especially electric ones) are the sensible middle-of-the-road option.
It's laughable how proud some cyclists become when they think a painted stripe will somehow protect them from cellphoned sharks.
Obviously US bicycling infrastructure is laughably dangerous, and nobody deserves full-blame for exercising their legal rights upon roadways -- but e.g: biking up Lookout Mountain's shoulderless 2-lane highway is. stupid.ly common. These are tourist roadways winding through a mountainrange – are you cyclist's suicidal, or just hubric? Nobody knows where they are, and your dumb_ass is in the blindcurve going 2mph.
I sometimes lament that I wish I could ride in a group again, but it’s such a hurdle to get over mentally for me.
It is a lot of fun having camaraderie with similarly skilled riders hammering it out in the big ring for two hours, but just never have been able to get back to that place where I’m comfortable enough to do it.
Edit: oh, rereading your comment… my friend was not at fault in her crash. She was a careful rider just out for a spin and happened to cross paths with the wrong idiot who was distracted and veered onto the shoulder. I was expressing sadness that that is all it took to end her life.
I do wonder how much to trust averages on these statistics. I observe that I am much more risk averse than the average cyclist in my city. Perhaps my risk is really much lower, conditional on that knowledge?
In both cases the reasons often come back to the average motorcyclist and bicycle rider abjectly REFUSING to learn or respect road laws.
I live in a non-California state and I'm shocked whenever I see a motorcyclist who doesn't illegally lane split, who maintains a standard following distance (ideally 3 car lengths on an interstate), etc. Plus, most of them aren't even good at choosing leather jackets (not enough schotts or even made in Japan actual horsehide, lots of slop non-protective because most of these people are poor from the Harley purchase) and they don't wear proper protective heavy bottoms (i.e. leather/kevlar pants or HEAVY selvedge denim like 25 oz+). Many don't wear helmets because doing so might make them look like "fairies" to their friends in the outlaw biker gang.
Similarly, half or more of the cyclists in your average complete streets/walkable cities liberal area either 1. actually don't have a drivers license and are thus oblivious to road laws when they routinely get on the road, 2. refuse to use a helmet/put lights on at night/hand signal when turning, and 3. refuse to use perfectly good empty sidewalks (yes its legal here to bike on the sidewalk) to cycle on when possible.
I see this shit all the time, and I understand why they end up as roadkill time-and-time again. Keep winning Darwin awards. My heart goes out to those who legitimately did everything right and ends up squashed anyway, but the myriad number of idiots ruins it for the victims.
I actually don't know which makes me more scared to see on the road, a clapped out Nissan/dodge, a Harley rider, or a cyclist. At least the cyclists and nissan drivers are probably young and thus far more alert than the average geriatric who thinks they're so cool for owning the worlds most gaudy motorcycle.
if you do, I’d recommend taking motorcycle safety courses on a regular cadence in order to practice your skills. even if you’re a regular rider it’s great to learn the limits of your bike and do emergency maneuvers in a controlled environment
there’s lots offered near the bay area (where I’m from) and they don’t cost that much for what you’re getting in return
Neither of us have health insurance (forty-something Americans -- USA! USA! USA!). My helpfulness towards him mostly knowing he has nobody else to help him (ER already stabilized him post-accident, plus another trip for sepsis). Also, I love dogs.
This has been a very terrible and very real lesson in mortality. Wish we had some basic social safety nets for middle-aged unemployables (e.g. single-payer healthcare).
It's a risky activity, yes, but lets not forget metropolitan areas in other countries are shock filled with motorcycles and most people live their entire life without being involved in any majorly serious accidents.
You mean scooters traveling <35mph surrounded by other scooters traveling <35mph
E.g. the most common motorcycle in Vietnam is the 110cc Honda Wave with a top speed under ideal conditions of ~60mph. It literally would not be called a motorcycle in the US.
No, I'm talking about motorcycles traveling ~50mph surrounded by other motorcycles, cars, trucks and whatever else goes on around and in metropolitan areas, even in countries in Europe.
> I don't think any city in Europe is as anti-human as your standard American metro, suburb, or small town.
Agreed
> Also: European metro areas are full of two-wheeled not-motorcycles, like the Honda above.
Not the European metropolitan area I live right next to and travel to/from, they are proper motorcycles, who also travel on the highway, which isn't legal for the "two-wheeled not-motorcycles" you talk about.
It's OK to not be aware of how everything is everywhere in the world, no one thinks less of you for that. However, being so confident about something you obviously can't know, isn't as harmless and does indeed make you look slightly weird for being so combative about it.
Your point is that there are cities that are full of motorcycles. My point is: sure, but most of those in most cities are not the 1000cc+ motorcycles Americans are typically referring to, and even if they are, a city full of motorcycles is a completely different risk environment from a city that is not full of motorcycles.
The bikes, usage patterns, and environment are all totally different. It's obviously silly to act like they're not.
From time spent living in the Philippines I have no idea what they're even on about. Sometimes I watched the local news and it was absolutely plastered with endless mass death of motorcyclists. Life is just cheap in south east asia so when a gazillion people get splattered on their bike no one thinks too much about it, it's just the risk of doing the business.
Right; he is fucked up. Girl is now gone, having caught charges herself (stabbed him because he refuses most pain killers and is in a lot of pain right now//ashole).
So sad to see; I am walking his dogs; last time I saw him I said "I am just worried that this will make you spin out, again."
Definitely helped me continue deciding not to get a motorcycle, myself.
He had a fully-enclosed helmet, was wearing leathers and boots, and has years of experience. Was legitimately sober (I talked with him right before he left). One hand now looks like a grimreaper's bones, sticking out from blood-caked jerkybits.
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Certainly speed was a factor but isn't that why ya'll ride?
Can never predict your future. Enjoy what you will, when you can. I was in a motorcycle accident in 2021, TBI, hospitalized for 3mo, induced coma, and rehab for 9 months after.
I am back on the horse. It is just a zen and still relaxing time, albeit more anxiety while riding, than before. Thankful I can still ride, and I do.
I'm sorry, but from a European perspective, this is the problem, not bikes. If your roads and driving culture encourage driving a tank for safety, that's a bit less than ideal.
I commuted to work for 5 years on a moped. I never used a highway, almost never exceeded 50km/h, and had 2 accidents during that time; both resulted in just a few scratches and bruises.
In another post, you said: "maybe speed was a factor" - actually, it's the only factor. If you never go too fast and never use roads where others may go too fast, you're safe - at least from life-altering tragedies.
If, on the other hand, it's generally impossible to get where you want to without using highways, or the sheer distance forces you to step on it - then yeah, don't buy a motorbike. Just note that it's not the bike's fault!
I lack the commenting impulse control to say this in a politically correct way so my apologies for the outrage that will follow, but to put it crudely there is someone in my extended family who became a retard after falling off their bicycle at roughly walking speed and with a helmet on. It's rare but you can easily die just from walking and slipping on a banana peel.
While you're right about slower generally being safer, you should still treat it like a life-altering tragedy could happen at any time and like you're going 200 kph.
I'm sorry for your relative, and of course you should always do things like driving (diving, cycling, sailing, climbing - or even cooking and cleaning) as if a tiny mistake could cost you everything: that's because it's actually true. These activities will never be risk-free; the best you can do is bring the risk down to a level comparable to that of alternatives (with "just don't do it" included in the set) and hope no unfortunate incidents occur to you.
It's still worth noting the relative probability: death or life-changing injury is basically what happens in every single accident when you're going 200km/h on a highway surrounded by (what could as well be) steel walls moving at the same speed; in my use case, when not exceeding 40-50 km/h and using roads where other users basically stand still most of the time, you need a pretty specific conditions and a lot of bad luck to even have an accident, much less die or become permanently disabled as a result of one. Still, not a zero probability, but the difference between 100% and 0.01% is kind of noticeable.
Thanks for sharing this story and congratulations on finding a way back up. So many people never do.
> people willing to judge me by what I could do next instead of only by what I had done before
I think this is a really tragic take so common in the United States. It feels like, at least to me, that societal trust has broken down so much that people are broadly unwilling to take a chance on anyone.
Jail is supposed to mean you paid your debt to society. It's supposed to say 'okay, you've made a mistake, have had time to ruminate on it, now go forth and prosper.' It's not retribution or vengeance, or at least it shouldn't be - especially for non-violent crimes.
I'm truly glad you were fortunate and strong enough to climb out. I wish that this was a more common story.
Had to look away to stop from tearing up in Panera a few times at the end.
Sending this to my sister who has had struggles like this. She recently finished her BS and hopes to be an counselor or therapist after finishing her masters.
>I was a model student up until around puberty and middle school. Then, I think a combination of being bullied for being overweight and teenage hormones, led me to be just the wrong combination of resentful, angry, unhappy, and rebellious.
Myself, but I was just depressive until I got a PC, then I became a half-Hikkikomori until by brain exploded and seeked some nice metalheads around.
Logos/God/whatever bless that guy who gave me a Glam Rock/Metal CD at age 19/20, it changed my life a little for the good.
Metal and computers saved my life.
Except that I'm still unemployed even if I did tons of stuff after the advance trade (basic OOP Java/C# courses, Lisp, a bit of Docker and such...)
I even did some pre-college Math (calculus, discrete Math...) but no luck. Living and growing up in Spain sucks because almost no one would believe you that people can be a self-apprentice, here people it's very social-bounded (X does course-> Y joins it too). That's it.
My mentality it's more Atlantic than Mediterranean and I always had tons of conflcts.
I wonder how many more people in tech have those felony records but just never talk about it. The Preston Thorpe mention makes me think there's a whole underground network.
I apologize in advance for rambling. I never comment or post anywhere, but your post motivated me to share part of my story. I very much relate to the feeling that sharing can be too personal and too easy to misread.
Thank you for sharing. It’s refreshing to see that there are people who will take a chance on you. Your story helps with the burnout of pushing through with little to no results and exponentially diminishing resources.
I haven’t been so lucky, I joined a tiny startup in 2018 that shut down a year later, landed contract work in 2019 that was meant to convert into full-time, but was let go due to the pandemic right before converting. My most recent employer fired me on christmas of 2022.
I had a falling out with friends because they wouldn’t refer me for any role including tech sales. My uni wouldn't consider me for a master's degree because my microprocessor architecture professor wasn't "comfortable" writing a rec letter despite me sitting front of class and getting an A, all while practically begging students to apply (all 2/2 people that applied got into the program). Even in grade school my 2nd grade teacher was fired for lying to my parents that I was underperforming in school and that I needed to get kicked out of the talented and gifted program and repeat the grade. I still don't know what to make of all of this.
I haven’t been able to land phone screenings, let alone a first round interview anywhere. I am having a hard time getting minimum wage work due to being "over-qualified". I've been priced out of my hometown. I’ve completed web development, data science, and cloud infra bootcamps as a way to up-skill while also having a degree in electrical engineering. I would consider myself adaptable: I've worked in designing/improving electrical hardware, reverse engineering, web, mobile.
I am first-gen American, grew up homeless, but received a world-class education. Sometimes I wonder if I’m on a blacklist somewhere, or if I need to fall further for something to finally click. I guess I’m just having a really long bad luck streak, so here’s to hoping something better is around the corner!
Having your friends refuse to refer you and a professor out-right reject a request for letter of rec reeks of there being more to the story.
(More helpfully: when applying for job's you'd be called over-qualified for, just lie. Especially jobs that don't require a degree anyway, just leave it off the resume. Had to do that for a bit during the pandemic slump).
This is the type of response I expect, since it’s the natural conclusion to jump to, but it’s also a reason why I keep my story to myself.
This same professor willingly approached my parents and me, wishing us well when I graduated, with no mention of the letter. The same friends called me sobbing, that they “forgot” to refer me to their managers, despite receiving daily reminders from me. They even tried to offer me money to remain friends. I don’t know what to make of that, either. Other friends have simply said they don’t know my quality of work, despite having me help them with assignments in college and beyond.
I appreciate the advice, however. Oddly enough, I’ve been rejected by companies due to my interviewers’ disbelief that I had actually accomplished what was on my resume. Maybe lying will convince them lol
Shoutout to the author. I don't think I've met you, but I'm proud of you. What you've done is not easy. Neither is talking about it.
I've not had nearly the adversity of the author, but I do know a little bit about what it's like to have an alternative background that makes companies not want to take a chance on you. It motivates you to take advantage of the chances you're given. The first time someone gave me a job, I felt so utterly grateful that I worked twice as hard as most and complained half as much. You could cynically call that exploitation, but I didn't see it that way.
When I came into a position to make my own hiring calls, I tried paying that forward, and I got some great employees from it. Arguably a couple duds as well, but I never regretted giving the chance.
Shout out to Hasura as well, btw. I've encountered their leadership team a couple times and everything about them has screamed integrity. It did not surprise me to hear that they are part of this story.
> When I came into a position to make my own hiring calls, I tried paying that forward, and I got some great employees from it. Arguably a couple duds as well, but I never regretting giving the chance.
That is the most impactful thing you could have done, I'm sure you changed several peoples lives
Thanks. At this point, I believe it's what I will look back on as my legacy. Software is ephemeral, but the people you build it with are what shape how you reflect on it.
Is a success story line this still possible with coding assistants, or do they basically pull up the ladder that this guy climbed? I don't have enough insight into the job market right now to know.
I'll be honest -- if the pace of AI improvement continues at the current rate, I'm not sure I'll have a job in a few years' time.
Right now, the reason why you need humans in the loop is because you need someone with deep domain expertise and understanding of the particular nuances and architectural history behind a software product.
The reasons LLM's can't do this job currently is not an INHERENT limitation -- it's a technical one around context window limits and documentation.
There will always be people who don't want entirely autonomous development (who do you blame/fire when things go wrong) though.
I realize that it's not PRACTICAL advice, but I really do think if building software is what you're INTERESTED in, you should still give it your best try.
You spend the majority of your experienced life at work. Doing something you don't want to do, or find uninteresting, for most of your life (even though for many people this is the case) is a depressing and bleak prospect.
You may as well spend your time and energy trying to do something you like, because you're sort of stuck with it.
I appreciate you for the absolute honesty and having the brave heart to share your entire life story without holding anything to the entire internet.
Oh man, this really got my tears out:
> she told me that it made more sense for me to quit my job while she worked, so that I could spend all of my free time trying to get another tech job. So she alone carried us for several months.
That reflects how many people's experiences, especially in this job market.
I'll be honest, a lot of it was my wife. And also hitting my lowest bottom after becoming homeless and penniless.
So a combination of looking at what I had done to myself + everyone around me and going "what the fuck." and my ever-vigilant wife who knew I had the capacity and desire to get better.
For me it really took literally losing everything.
Recovered opiate addict and for me it was a mix of everything: Some advice I had gotten from NA meetings, finally doing something about the other mental health issues I was dealing with, and most importantly: medications that prevented me from using (methadone/suboxone).
It was definitely a process (that included multiple jail stints and only god knows how many treatment centers), but 10 years later life is pretty awesome.
I think the stigma around methadone is causing a ton of harm. Having a program where you quite literally have to show up every day, take drug tests, and get counseling was really important.
I am recovering alcoholic and almost have two years sober but I can only imagine how hard it would be to quit if you loved alcohol, I hated it but was just physically addicted or something, just could not stop it was too fun, I have to use thc only now which has its own issues but will not affect my health in same way as alcohol did. Alcohol is too fun for me and hurts my family a lot
> The beginning of the end: The day I bought an Adderall from a classmate. When that amphetamine feeling kicked-in, it was as if life was perfect for the first time. I was happy, confident, felt I could do anything.
You know, I had a similar experience, but in my case I got an appointment with a psychiatrist afterwards, described the experience in detail, was given a computer test, diagnosed with ADHD, and then given a prescription. (Also in my case, I learned Adderall doesn’t actually feel great or help you if you take too much).
Take care of your kids. The war on drugs is stupid. Etc.
I've read many similar stories, in nearly all of them a couple of helpful friends always show up to save the day. I find it absurd that some people consider this zero.
I too was bullied during all my childhood, I haven't had a single friend in my life, I can barely imagine the possibility of being able to ask a favor from someone and even receive something.
Having someone to rely on sounds luxurious to me. My life has been a series of rejections. Apart from that I was always healthy, able to provide for myself, but I don't have a story. Somehow I feel like that if I could start a new life, I would choose one like this guy's rather than relive mine.
> I haven't had a single friend in my life
> I can barely imagine the possibility of being able to ask a favor from someone and even receive something
> My life has been a series of rejections
It's true, I had a lot of help, and that's not universal.
I'm going to say this, and I mean it genuinely, so please do not find this insensitive:
What if you went to lunch with someone, and the first things they said to you were those 3 quotes at the top?
You'd probably much rather hear something like:
> I haven't had much luck making friends, YET
> In the past, I've not been very good at asking others for help, and sometimes I get afraid if I did, they might not give it
> I've been through a lot of hardships, SO FAR
Even if we don't say things out loud, our mental states and attitudes are clear as day to others around us. You can tell when someone is upset, or having a bad day, without ever speaking to them.
One of the most impactful things a mentor once told me is:
> "We are the stories we tell ourselves."
Look at the story you tell yourself today, in those quotes above.
I want to genuinely ask you, to give "telling yourself a different story" a try. You might be surprised at how well you can "fake it 'til you make it!"
Sorry to hear that life has been a struggle for you and that you've not had a good support system to aid you.
But it doesn't have to stay that way -- every day you live & breathe is an opportunity to start the first chapter of a very different story...
You don't have to apologize! Your feelings are yours, and if it's not hateful, no shame in expressing them
I really do think if you put your mind to shifting the framing/perspective of your feelings though, that you can have a much different future than past
Hoping things start to go your way, mate
(And yeah, definitely don't dump personal issues on new friends. I find that making friends is much easier if you ask thoughtful questions after listening to them and letting other people do most of the talking at first.)
(reviving an account this once to just say...) I've been lucky to work closely with Gavin at Hasura for years, and he is really a brilliant and versatile engineer, and is just a pleasure to work with. Great energy, down-to-earth, hilarious. If I had to assemble a "dream team" he would be on it for sure.
Good on him and shout out for Hasura as well, probably the most pleasant dev experience I had in past 10 years. It was so good, the startup I was at dropped it because CTO got scared that there was no work for the backend devs, ha.
I feel like US is ridiculously hard on even low grade drugs. Half of my high school would have gone to prison in the US.
Sending a 14 year old convicted of drug crimes anywhere but a location that will help them is bizarre. Sending them to a max security anything leaves me speechless.
Yeah I feel like there's less discussion than I expected of how many different things had to be done utterly ass backwards wrong by society for this guy to have his downward spiral in the first place.
Is programming underrated art form when it comes to helping people come out of such situations? Addiction or depression.
It easier to get paid, you can be in a flow state for hours. Enough to forget about other addictions. and less likely to be high always while programming
> and less likely to be high always while programming
It depends on the drug. If you're an amphetamine/meth addict (or other designer stimulants), you very well might be coding for days on end. I certainly was.
It will even get to the point where you feel dependent on them to focus and "get things done", like being sober is a handicap.
I'm a recovering addict, felon, and have depression (lucky me). And though there were times where I could work an entire weekend without stopping, it was always followed by 2-3 days of doing absolutely nothing because I was so dope sick/depressed. The worse my addiction got, the shorter the "flow" period and the longer the recovery period took.
Thank you for asking. I didn't want to disclose it publicly, but when we met she was in a very bad place in life and actually had a planned suicide date.
It wasn't until years later she told me this.
We were able to send her back to university a second time to study something she is passionate about; she has a great support network of friends and (my) family.
(Her family are drug addicts and gang members, so my family has sort of adopted her. It's a bit sad but none of her family were invited to our wedding.)
She's unemployed, but she's trying, and she says she never imagined that she could be so lucky in life.
I feel happiness reading stories like this. You proved to the world that you can become something great even when all the cards are stacked against you. I often feel despair when I think about where our society is heading, but there will always be people like you who are there to push back against all the wrongs in the world and make the best out of it.
I'm glad! It sounds really corny, but someone once told me "The only thing you can choose in life is your attitude."
Sometimes it felt like I'd never get a break, things wouldn't get better. But I tried to tell myself "Every occurrence in life is a numbers game. Against tiny odds, eventually enough attempts statistically OUGHT to pay off."
And the alternative is bleak, sort of sulking in this pit of despair without hope for tomorrow.
This is true. It requires a combination of luck, support, and persistence.
You can help cultivate "luck" to a degree by increasing your number of experiences. Every person you happen across could be the one to change your life, and every job application could be the one that calls you back. You never know who is standing next to you in line.
And "support" you can tilt in your favor by trying to be a genuinely good person and being pleasant to be around + making others feel good. Humans gravitate towards people that they like being around.
Every time I read stories like this my heart hurts. And I feel like I've been punched in the gut.
Every single time I read stories like this all my shit comes to the surface. Thank goodness for mental health professionals and prescription drugs.
No matter how I feel about your experiences, I want to know more. I want others to feel like they can share with people who are ready to listen and be supportive however we can.
I love this question! Because yes, this one has a happy ending =)
I had estranged my mother, didn't really talk to my adoptive father, and purposefully kept my maternal grandparents (who I am closest with) in the dark because I didn't want them to see me like this.
I also have 3 much younger sisters, who I didn't talk to for the same reasons as the grandparents.
I've made a HUGE effort to reconnect and make amends with my family. I'm on good terms with my parents and talk to both of them regularly, I explained to my grandparents after I got sober and visit them at least once a year, and I reconnected with my siblings who I now text regularly and we host a "sibling trip" where we get together over a weekend once each year.
I am very grateful that they saw my efforts and gave me a second chance. My oldest sister in particular was very wary.
As a libertarian right leaning guy I opened your story with pessimism but I really enjoyed it and greatly appreciated the personal responsibility you took in your situation. People should be inspired by this - it’s precisely because of personal responsibility that you are so successful.
> it’s precisely because of personal responsibility that you are so successful.
No it's not. It's absolutely not personal responsibility that gets people through addiction.
And if you read the entire article, this should stand out:
> I don't tell this story because I think it is clean, heroic, or universally applicable -- It isn't. I made TERRIBLE choices. I hurt people who loved me. I wasted chances that other people would have killed for. And even when I finally started doing the right things, I still needed luck, help, timing, forgiveness, and people willing to judge me by what I could do next instead of only by what I had done before.
That doesn't sound like personal responsibility that sounds like having people around you that stick around even after you mess up.
I've been an addict for over 20 years (and spent the last 10 clean). I've been in close to a dozen treatment centers. What set me apart from the others (and why I technically "made" it) had very little to do with me. What set me apart was having an insane support system and grace from people who loved me.
I could not have climbed out of the hole I dug on my own, that I am almost CERTAIN of.
At the same time, if I had felt as though I were owed "more", and indignant about being "wronged", I think it would have made me slightly vindictive and less-positive.
To me, "Libertarianism" is about the power of personal-effort and opportunity. Not everything will pan out if you "just try hard and long enough", but at least THINKING it will (even if you know it's unlikely) feels like a better mindset to me than the alternative.
I was commenting too much, and thus can't reply with the same account, but I wanted to say I do agree with the fact that while you can't control what happened to you in the past (and maybe even what led you to drugs in the first place), your addiction is yours and having a victim-complex (warranted or not) is pretty detrimental to getting clean.
I was pretty fortunate in that while I may not have had the picture perfect childhood, my family was always there for me and in no way shaped my decisions to use. So even if I wanted to feel like a victim, I'd get snapped out of it pretty quickly.
When I look back at what set me apart from most others (I've been in numerous treatment centers, jails, and hundreds of NA meetings), the one thing that stood out to me the most was my support system. Others probably had a greater desire or more to lose, but because desire alone isn't enough, didn't always make it through. One example, my mom would drive hours each weekend to come visit me in treatment. That just didn't exist for the others I was there with.
I was fortunate to have the help of others ("No man is an island unto himself") but I do think that having the mindset of not being owed anything helped me keep a positive perspective when things were their worst.
I'm not political, but I would consider myself left-leaning Libertarian.
My mother is an Ayn Rand-loving die-hard Libertarian that was very active in politics. She gave me a lot of her books that I read in my youth.
I was raised in a very "The world owes you nothing, you only deserve what you earn." and "by your bootstraps" capitalist family.
(Family did not pay for my first car, my community college, etc. "Go get a job, you bum!")
The original libertarians were anarchists, which is as far to the left as you can get. They adoption of the term on the right seems to date from the 1970s. Anarchists would typically see this version as rule by the rich, privatized tyranny.
"a legal "Research Chemical" with effects similar to MDMA (Methylone/bk-MDMA)"
Someone that is quick to assume without reading could easily make this mistake.. there are my research chemicals that are not technically categorized and not MDMA.
Yes, it was Methylone (and advertised as such, nobody cared as long as it worked). NBOMe was really popular in my town during my late teens as well for the same reasons.
RIP Sasha, PiHKaL and TiHKaL were, stereotypically, staple books on my shelf during adolescence.
I know a guy who bankrupted multiple businesses and is 34 time convicted felon and adjudicated rapist and he’s gone on to become president … don’t let your past control your future! /s
> sobriety doesn’t guarantee that AI companies won’t kill off what’s left of your career
You're being downvoted, but I'd be lying if I said I don't see that as a distinct (and logical) possibility.
The ironic thing is, I work for one of those "AI Companies" ;^)
Claude Code and Codex have done most of my work for the last year, and with the pace of AI improvement, I'm not sure that you'd need (or even want) me in the mix.
From a business perspective, it makes a lot of financial sense, too.
I'm sure it's a limited amount of time before I'm dead weight, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, and I'll figure something out if/when it happens =)
My lived experience doesn’t care what the downvotes say (many here are privileged, after all), and it is only a matter of time imo unless something is done about the industry to change course.
I see karma as form of a currency to afford getting downvoted. I actually don't mind the downvotes especially when it's followed by a comment on why. Helps me see parts I've missed.
I wouldn't internalize that idea too much. In a lot of countries traffic fines are a fixed amount, so some people feel like they don't have to respect traffic rules since they can afford to just pay the fine.
It's one way to process the negative feeling of being fined. But it doesn't really make the roads safer.
Goes both ways, if you're afraid of getting downvoted you might never find out that people actually agree with you, same goes with traffic tickets sometimes they don't make sense especially related to parking in crowded cities and ebikes, as long as you're not an asshole about it it's fine.
I find the downvotes excessive for this kind of thing. They are basically a censorship mechanism, enough downvotes and a comment will basically disappear. I've used it about twice since I got the ability several years ago, and both times it was somebody promoting a Trump-related conspiracy theory.
Have an upvote. Sobriety is an expectation. I will say though that people I’ve known who went through the journey are some of the smarter people I’ve met. Not all of them, but the whole numbing yourself because your brain can’t quite understand all the thoughts it has, that’s a real thing. Probably sounds insane, but it’s real.
By your own logic the man you 'commend' for turning his life around would be dead at 19 - every good thing he's done since, including the post you're replying to, exists only because nobody took your advice.
No, you are projecting your own opinion here. I've commended him for turning away from his wrong path while condemning him for his actions individually that have destroyed lives through the same exact suffering he experienced. I offered no advice.
IF you read the full story that was his gate way drug and he graduated into selling hard drugs so he could use harder drugs.
It's incredibly sad to see people not realize that drugs can do enormous harm just as a terrorist would inflict upon the population.
The fact that people here are upset that other countries recognize the enormity of going easy on drug pushers but show no empathy for victims of drug use is quite telling.
the drugs he describes selling are prescription pills and a research chemical that was legal when he sold it, and his conviction was a 'low-grade felony'
Had similarly unorthodox path to tech, albeit without the drug addiction or prison.
90s early internet/BBS punk rocker/computer nerd. Hated school angry.
Dropped out to work as a bike messenger for 5 years before packing a bag and moving west randomly. Couldn't sit still. Rode freight trains around the country for a few months.
Washed dishes and landscaped to cover my cheap rent till that fell thru. Discovered shop lifting. Covered food and beer stealing from local progressive grocery store chain. Stole goods to sell on CL to cover my rent. That scam went tits up and narrowly escaped serious charges after the head of loss prevention from a regional retailer caught up to me
Was sleeping in the park--this was pre super meth/fentanyl crisis so street living was a bit more stable and low key. Didn't want to wash dishes or dig holes any more so looked around on CL. Found a small company trying to bootstrap a regional office for an established linux-related open source company. Worked for free / interned using a stolen laptop for a year or so while sleeping outside or couch surfing local punk houses.
Eventually got hired on for s but stayed for a couple years and made many FOSS connections. Eventually left to join a well known FOSS-centered company that was fully remote.
Told myself when I was young that I would never work in an office. ~15 years later and I never have ,but now work in bit tech, get paid too much, own a home and have a great family with kids who play at the same parks I used to crash at. We shop (and pay) at the same stores I used to crib from.
I'm respected and tenured at my gig but Imposter syndrome still holds me back. Nobody I work with knows where I came from and thankfully have nothing incriminating that would block a background check
You are what I've started to call "34yo Patrice".
34yo Patrice has a stable job, a fiancé and broadly speaking has his life in order.
Nobody in his circle knows he dropped out of high school, got in the wrong crowd and, inevitably, did time.
This archetype is a mix of several people I've met and I usually mention it when a younger person says this and that thing (e.g. dropping out of college) is the end of the world for them. In your 20s it commonly isn't and you can start from scratch - after a decade or so nobody will have any idea about this unless you tell them.
used to work with a dude -- who is probably on / posts here -- who copped serious felony charges for growing and distributing mary jane. some time in the slammer, but nothing crazy.
couple decades later lives in the burbs, wife, kids, regular coding job, etc.
Growing some weed, what a horrible person. Do it now and its respected entrepreneur. Same person, 10 years difference.
Maybe folks should not just take passively morals from society or media but think for themselves? Society has been wrong uncountable amount of time, way more than it has been right.
The 20 yr olds of now and the future will have far less luxury being forgotten than the previous generation I suspect
i’ve been through all of this, and it turned out fine. seriously people don’t hold a drug bust against you, if you can do the job. i’ve lived on the road, camped in Golden Gate Park, attended several Rainbow Gatherings, etc. after spending years in India as a monk, i couldn’t find a place in american society. i bootstrapped a new identity that let me live as a teacher and developer; but i had to move to Śrī Laṅkā to do it.
> seriously people don’t hold a drug bust against you, if you can do the job.
Seriously, they seriously do. There's always someone as qualified as you applying for whatever job. Why would anyone choose someone with a record over someone without, all else being equal? It's a liability that can turn into a headache, so most employers will choose the person without the record.
True, you can even get a government security clearance. They hold financial debts, gambling history, and dubious associations against you much more.
*Providing the drug use was short lived.
My war story from dot-com times is being asked by a (v well known and then horribly imploded) Bay Area start-up what about its hiring form would need to change for the UK (if I was to run the UK office)... So under the "bad things you've done" section I said to change the exclusion from "minor drug stuff" to "fixed-penalty motoring offences"...
They will hold undisclosed drug busts/use against you.
drug use will definitely be a problem, esp. if it was within the last couple of years.
you're ~35 and admit to smoking a buncha weed and maybe some other stuff in your college frat 10+ years ago? not much of a discussion topic, esp. if you've had a steady job, house, family, etc. since then. doesn't have to be short, you could have been called Mikey Pipes for all 4 years of school... just that it was a phase, and it's been long gone.
smoke weed and pop some lsd 1.5 year ago? that could be a problem, esp. if you're still living the same life essentially as then.
> smoke weed and pop some lsd 1.5 year ago? that could be a problem, esp. if you're still living the same life essentially as then.
Given the huge numbers of bay area tech people at Burningman, its clearly a bit more nuanced than that. Partying with Zuck or Sergey and Larry would be a very positive career move I suspect.
Looking In retrospect, if you were a policy maker today how would you try to prevent the new generation for having to go through this (today your path likely would not be viable due to fentanyl).
Did he have to? Some of that sounds like choices, especially in the start.
Almost everything is a choice. The difference is that sometimes you're making a rational one and sometimes you only think you're making a rational one and to outsiders and in retrospect it obviously wasn't the best choice, or event a good choice.
There are two aspects to the type of question that was asked. How do you prevent people from ha I g to make choices which are rational and good for their options but still really bad overall, and how do you convinve/educate people about available options they weren't aware of so they don't make outright bad choices when better ones are available that they are unaware of.
There are many possible answers to "why did you take off to the west and ride trains and sleep in parks and steak to feed yourself", but most of them aren't "well I just felt like leaving my entirely stable, loving and supportive friends and family." What to an outsider seems like a poor choice to a specific person imight seem like the decision that saved their life, even in retrospect.
This question jumps past the more fundamental question of whether policymakers, and the government in general, should prevent people from making their own choices.
Education is a very different story which ends with letting people make their own decisions after (hopefully) having more information about realistic outcomes.
I don't personally want a government preventing me from making my own choices. That line is blurry for sure, like if my decision directly negatively impacts someone else for example. But if packing up and riding the rails or sleeping in parks primarily impacts only me, the government shouldn't be able to stop me because they "know" its the wrong choice.
The question was simply how to avoid people falling through the cracks. That was it and while not worded all that well, it was a noble question.
It didn’t need that level of sermon. Every reasonably educated person got your point after the first sentence.
Best way to keep people from falling through the cracks to put them all in prison
> This question jumps past the more fundamental question of whether policymakers, and the government in general, should prevent people from making their own choices.
When your choices include terrorizing businesses and being a public nuisance to everyone else, then yes, government should prevent people from making those choices.
We already have laws for theft and similar crimes. You don't need a government creating more rules preventing entire categories of choices from being made, especially if they already can't enforce the laws on the books.
[flagged]
I'm not advocating for the US legal/criminal system at all actually. The prior comment was pointing to crimes already being committed by people who make or made certain choices. My only point was that further regulation may not be a great solution when the activities being done are already illegal and going unenforced.
Personally I'd rather gut the legal system and drastically raise the bar by which people are locked up as punishment, but that's beside the point.
I don't see how you are saying anything different.
You seem to agree that punishment and violence is the primary tool of American government, and then you want to use it to control more choices. Call me cynical, but I expect that's how it will be approached. Theft and vagrancy is already a crime. Maybe it was the punk music that led to those so let's criminalize that as well.
Well said here.
We don't have a honest discussion about the progression of addiction so the choices are not visible, until later.
The first beer is the most critical choice, yet it's made for us (in 99% of the cases) by our peers. So is it a choice really?
We're routine (addiction) prone herd animals and as long as we pretend otherwise (free will and the likes) we're stuck in repeating this.
Why is the first beer the most critical choice?
Why isn’t the last beer the most critical one, for example?
Without the first beer there is no last beer.
This.
In a healthy society there would be no need for intoxicants with so severe harms (BBC list for substances by harm is a good reference) and thus no exposure for a addictive substance.
Now the norm decides that, almost without exceptions, we must all be exposed.
What’s healthy isn’t complete abstinence, it’s moderation.
This is true of coffee, sugar, alcohol, social gatherings, work, play, and everything else in life.
That is true of some things, but the modern evidence is quite clear on the healthiest amount of alcohol being zero.
You've completely missed the point. People don't drink alcohol because it's healthy. Just like people don't eat cake because it's healthy, nor drink coffee because it's healthy.
They do it because the unhealthy effects are desirable.
Which is why moderation is the key. There's absolutely nothing wrong with someone enjoying a drink. But there is with people who need to drink. And that's just as true for sugar addition and caffeine addition too.
Now I'm not suggesting that the negative effects of all vices are equal, because clearly they're not. But suggesting that total abstinence is the answer completely misses the point of why people enjoy a drink to begin with. You're setting an unreal expectation that will never work with society. Just like telling people that they shouldn't ever eat cake or drink coffee would be an unrealistic demand on society.
We already have a mountain of evidence that prove the removal of said vice without solving the underlying problem only drives people will just switch to something else. Often that "something else" can be much much worse. So it's far better to give people outlets but ensure there is support to ensure they descend into dependence (and the vast majority of people do consume in moderation).
I was only using your own framing. You're the one who lazered in on health.
> What’s healthy isn’t complete abstinence, it’s moderation.
With alcohol this is well established to be false.
https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h... (Headline: "Drinking alcohol is a health risk regardless of the amount.")
> I was only using your own framing. You're the one who lazered in on health.
Actually no I wasn't. It was shrubby who mentioned "health" in the medical sense. I was replying to them using "health" in the social wellness sense. ie making the point that "health" is a nuanced term and shouldn't be used in an absolute way like they, and yourself now too, have done.
Health isn't just about physicality. There are social and emotional benefits. For example, enjoying a beer, or glass of wine, with my wife on a Friday evening when we rant about work is a great way to unwind for the weekend. It improves our mental health to have that shared experience. Our relationship is closer for spending time together. It has a net benefit despite it being an unhealthy treat.
You could replace the `wine` with `cake` in statement and have a similar point. But I don't personally enjoy cakes. Also take notice of how I'm not telling you that you shouldn't eat cakes because I don't personally like it ;)
> With alcohol this is well established to be false.
Again, you're missing the point. People enjoy stuff that isn't healthy, but sometimes that can still promote other benefits. Such as mental health. "Health" is a broader term than you give credit for.
Also the links you shared do not prove your point. There's no actual data in either of them. It's just pop-science articles with zero substance designed into scaremongering people. For example their arguments that it takes just one drink to become an addict is just laughable. The real statistics they don't print show a very different story where occasional to moderate drinking is not going to significantly increase your risk of cancer nor anything else. You're talking about fractions of a percent in the change of risk -- and that risk was already a low percentage to begin with. This is where understanding how statistics actually work makes a difference ;)
For example, some studies studies only show a correlation in 5% of cancer cases being related to alcohol consumption and that was proven against heavy drinkers. And the percentage of drinkers who have that cancer are < 1%. eg
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...
And a lot of these studies exaggerate what I'd classed as a "light drinker". Take that link I shared:
> Even light drinkers can be at increased risk of some cancers. For example, women who have just one drink per day have a higher risk of breast cancer than those who have less than one drink a week, and risk is increased even more in heavy drinkers and binge drinkers (3-7).
If you're drinking 1 drink per day then you have a dependency. That isn't occasional consumption. I would not class that as demonstrating moderation. If you need to drink every single day then you fall into the category I described in my previous comment when I said there is an underlying problem that needs addressing.
Most people do not drink every day.
---
So to summarize:
- light and occasional drinking is a rounding error of 0 in terms of physical health risk. But it can have much more significant positive effects on mental health.
- understanding the actual statistics and how they work matter if you're going to argue about the risks to health
- people don't become alcoholics from one glass of wine
- if you don't want to drink then I agree nobody should force you. But please don't share bullshit pop-science articles claiming we're all going to become cancer-riddled addicts from an occasional drink just because you don't understand why some people do enjoy the occasional glass of wine. That just demonstrates you don't understand the subject matter.
- and please don't ignore the parallels I made about coffee and cake. They demonstrate the hypocrisy of comments where people claim absence is the only smart choice.
(and no, those bullet points were not AI generated)
edit: sorry for all the crappy grammar. I'm multitasking...badly it seems haha
I'm tempted to start the full deontology and Jellinek model on substance abuse on this, but don't have the effort now.
If we perform a cost benefit analysis on alcohol the downsides are plentiful and then some.
And the pluses are practically masked versions (taste, buzz,...) of the two major things that make human do anything: what others are doing and what I'm used to (which are pretty shit reasons to do anything IMO) it basically boils down to addiction. Not chemical, but functional and social.
Then we return to the cost benefit analysis and start figuring out how far the lying disease has progressed. The fierceness of the debate feels like a good indicator of this usually.
I'd be tempted to explain this more in depth, but I have stuff to do.
I actually don’t disagree with some of that. But that’s not the point I was discussing.
Let me put it another way: banning something that most people use sensibly and enjoy in moderation isn’t a society that anyone wants to live in nor should live in. I'm sure you'd be the first to complain if the government went after something you enjoyed that caused harm to a minority of other people.
Which is why I keep coming back to the cake analogy. The only reason people eat cake is because of the buzz and taste. Which are pretty shit reasons to do anything in your opinion. And people do get addicted to sugary snacks. Some people even eat for comfort. But a lot of other people do have self-control. Should we ban cake for everyone regardless? Of course not!
As I said in my earlier comment, the problem with substance abuse isn’t the alcohol. The alcohol is just a tool. If you banned alcohol today then people who want escapism will switch to something else. And we’ve seen this trend time and time again throughout history. And it's what any experienced doctor of medicine will also tell you.
So if you want to understand the problems of alcohol abuse better, you need to first understand what drove people to abuse alcohol. Banning alcohol isn’t a shortcut to solving that problem -- despite how much you might like it to be.
Also accusing all people who drink, even those who only do so occasionally, as being addicts (as you literally have done) is so far wrong that it’s just insulting.
Banning something that has so huge disadvantages, but has been lobbied just like cigarettes is exactly the kind of society I want to live in.
But the choice is not mine, so in that way I win.
It's a social norm and a poison from my POV and just like pfas or plastic in the drinking water I believe it should be controlled and the lobbying banned. Then we'd see the true wish of humanity.
Now our needs are manufactured, not around our wellbeing, but for what "must" be lobbied and advertised.
The norm is manufactured. Just like the addictive algorithms and almost any other thing in this world of pseudo-free will.
Even the likes of Joe Rogan are bringing up the issue, with many others so I see some light in the tunnel for my society, but so far you're right. Your side seems to be winning.
> Banning something that has so huge disadvantages, but has been lobbied just like cigarettes is exactly the kind of society I want to live in.
Alcohol isn't like cigarettes. It's more like coffee or cake in terms of the social aspect. You clearly have huge prejudice against alcohol as a whole, but you need to understand that the vast majority of people who drink, do not drink like the minority of people you associate with alcohol.
Also, cigarettes haven't been banned. Their sale has just been hugely restricted. Which is also true for alcohol.
> Now our needs are manufactured, not around our wellbeing, but for what "must" be lobbied and advertised.
You're now just reiterating the same point I made elsewhere ;)
> Your side seems to be winning.
It's not a battle to win. It’s about choice and support. You are responsible for making your own choices. But you shouldn't be dictating how others should live their own lives.
The way a healthy society works is you give people opportunities and support, and the freedom for individuals to make their own choices. However what you're advocating is taking those choices away for everyone based on your own personal prejudices of a small few. And that's not a world anyone else wants to live in.
You also keep ignoring my point that the actual subsection of society you have a problem with (alcoholics) are the same subsection of society that needs support first. If you simply take the booze away, then their underlying mental health and addiction will just drive them to switch to different substances. And if you solve their condition first, then alcohol no longer is the problem you protest so strongly against.
Simply put, you really don't understand the thing you have such a strong opinion about. And it's evidenced by the fact that you keep sidestepping the real issues behind alcohol. But you still want to restrict peoples freedoms regardless.
Escape can be done with a lot of things, most of those aren't as harmful as alcohol.
Even in substances there are some with very light harms compared to ethanol, but "this is what we've always been doing".
You're now making a rational argument against an irrational condition.
As I keep saying: the underlying causes behind alcoholism is something that needs to be specifically addressed if you don't want alcoholics to simply switch to something worse.
This is why support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous talk about people's lives and their struggles. They aren't trying to address the access to alcohol, they address the mental state that drove people to abuse alcohol.
This is the key part you keep ignoring. Making alcohol illegal doesn't solve these issues. People will still find a way to get smashed. And there's proof of this in Saudi and Iran where black markets thrive. The proof is also with people in the the EU, UK and US who keep switching from one recreational drug to the next as governments ban new substances in a game of whack-a-mole.
What you're trying to do is treat the symptom, not the cause. And that's why I keep disagreeing with you.
Root cause is the human biases and lying due to cognitive dissonance? And alcohol is a symptom that's easy to grasp.
You’re talking about waterfall management by laws and I’m talking about individual consciousness and the capability of understanding our biases? I guess that explains the perceived differences.
I stated earlier that I really don’t have the resources for this discussion in extent, but I’m leaving a draft for a blog post based on this too. I’ve been creating a matrix of different human habits to perform the cost/benefit calcucaltion. For alcohol and for practically anything individuals do.
I’ll try to sum it up here really quickly and hope for you to provide the pluses, should you have those, for alcohol. You already mentioned with strong emphasis that its normal thus right. And I don’t think either of the “facts” that we’re used to doing something (like smoking, before it was approached with honesty) or because others are doing it (like social media on the predatory and attention wrecking platforms) are good reasons, but I’ll accept that these are pluses to you.
So based on the homo economicus narrative we are rational and will make a rational choice, right? Then this matrix (a quick draft, for reference only, I hope you give me more minuses here than the buzz, the norm and the herd instinct) should work as the guiding light. https://imgur.com/a/NgV6dt9
Then we have the homo ephicus (ethical human with a twist of brutal praxis) that knows that human “mind” is actually an intuition making decisions and strategic reasoning and excuses and post-hoc justifications (thanks Jon Haidt & Hume) we use to lie to ourselves and to our societies.
So with the lingo of THN: normal =! right
human =! reason
human === lying
But sorry, I can’t do this more clearly as the homo economicus world is putting immense pressure on the cog, I’m positioned to be. I’ll keep you in mind should I have the time to make this bit better.
I’ve never argued against the negative psychology of the minority. And understand the how it affects substance dependence. In fact I’ve talked about the psychological effects of addiction many times before on HN and have studied it in detail. Likely more than yourself owing to the fact that I also know there’s a chemical dependence component of alcohol addiction in the worst cases, which you’ve neglected to mention.
But I was never talking about addicts. I was talking about the majority of people who drive. And this is why you keep getting replies from me after your silly strawman arguments that all drinkers are alcoholics who need the government to save them.
The point you keep ignoring is that you’re repeatedly just talking about the minority and them extrapolating that like it’s equivalent to smoking. And that is simply just your own prejudices in action.
Take the cake example I keep making and you keep ignoring. People comfort eat. People get addicted to sugar. People get fat from sugar and cause a huge burden on health services, and cut their own lives short. But you’re not advocating the outright ban of sugar. Why? Because it can be consumed responsibly. And that’s the crux of the matter.
And even if we take your silly pop-science comparison with smoking, the end conclusion is still the same; smoking isn’t illegal either. It’s just heavily regulated )just like alcohol already is). So by your own silly comparison, you’re effectively just arguing for the status quo.
[dead]
If alcohol was only discovered in 2026, there isn't a country in the world that would legalise it.
It's legal only because it's been grandfathered in, from before legal systems were created.
That’s an impossible to prove opinion without changing the laws of physics. But there are some precedence we can refer to as a counterargument.
1. There have been plenty of other substances that have been banned which were legal and widely taken since before such laws existed. Demonstrating that governments are willing to control substances that were previously legal.
2. There have also been other drugs that have been legalized after they were previously banned. Proving that governments are willing to accept the risk of people taking drugs.
3. And your augment about alcohol specific actually did happen in some places. It is commonly referred to as "prohibition". And that decision never stuck.
The reality is drugs aren't legal nor illegal based on solely the harm they do. They are judged based on how easy they are to regulate (read: monetize and tax) and the subsections of society which enjoy them.
To expand on that last point: there's a reason cannabis was illegal in most countries while cigarettes weren't. And that reason wasn't because cannabis was considered more dangerous than tobacco. It's was because certain leaders wanted us to think that the people who smoked cannabis was more dangerous than the people that smoked cigarettes.
> 3. And your augment about alcohol specific actually did happen in some places. It is commonly referred to as "prohibition". And that decision never stuck.
sticks pretty well in muslim areas.
Not as well as you'd think:
1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68085190
> Saudi Arabia to get first alcohol shop in more than 70 years. [...] Saudi officials said the shop would counter "the illicit trade of alcohol".
2. https://www.rferl.org/a/farda-briefing-fatal-alcohol-poisoni...
> Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, alcohol has been strictly banned in Iran, where consuming, producing, or selling alcohol is punishable by prison, floggings, and fines. Despite the official ban, Iranians still drink foreign and homemade alcoholic beverages that are sold on the black market. Over the past year, there has been a spike in the cases of fatal alcohol poisoning, according to medical officials in Iran.
And I'm pretty sure few Europeans nor Americans would want to mimic the laws seen in those Islamic countries. Even putting aside the depressing rise of nationalist parties in the west, Saudi and the US and EU are just culturally very different. So what works there isn't necessarily going to work here.
>In a healthy society there would be no need for intoxicants with so severe harms
Yeah but we don't live in a healthy society. We have more abundance and more advanced healthcare and drugs than ever before, but we are sick in terms of missing social connections and family unit, even in big cities. Hence why mental illnesses and substance abuse are going up.
People don't thrive on GDP line go up and cheap large screen TVs. People need friends, family, and a support network.
Yes. 100 percent agree. The addiction industry requires us to be desperate and wanting an escape, so that they can brainwash us into complicity and brain fog from hangover or doomscrollin.
And the substance abuse is a progressive lying disease so once we figure out "this has gone too far" the threshold for abuse has been crossed a long time ago in most cases.
First the close ones see the problem and the individual in question is the last to see it. Thus a lying disease.
When the train hits you, it isn’t the caboose that kills you.
I don't think humans are so straight forward. We have an instinctive nature to rebel that's not going anywhere, and we're all just so absurdly different, so what works for one person or family, may fail spectacularly for another. My opinion is that all you can do is be honest about things. DARE, for instance, ended up resulting in more kids trying drugs after all was said and done. It relied heavily on exaggeration and misleading statements - a lot like contemporary politics. And once people realized some of what was said was lies, the entire foundation fell apart and it all became seen as a joke.
So for instance I'll happily tell my kids that marijuana is enjoyable and relatively harmless in and of itself, yet you end up smelling bad, it ruins motivation, hurts your short-term memory, gives you the munchies, and is just generally is self-escapism, like most drugs. Gotta work on my exact pitch there, but that's the spirit of the point - honesty. They will make plenty of bad decisions in life, but I'd rather that with each one they see I was right, rather than see that I was lying or exaggerating - driving them further away from everything else I taught them.
> you only think you're making a rational one and to outsiders and in retrospect
In retrospect? It's really not hard to determine before the fact that petty crime is not a road to good things.
We have ways to prevent people from going down this path. It's called enforcement. He was more or less allowed to steal and sleep in the parks. If there was strict enforcement, this wouldn't have been a medium term viable option. Doesn't have to be throw the person in prison for the rest of their life, but either accept help, go through the criminal justice system or figure out another way to contribute to society in a positive way. It sounds like the author at any point could have found some kind of employment, but chose this because it was viable. And society wasn't doing him any favors by looking the other way
Enforcement is right of boom, essentially a safety net for the negative external affects of a person having already made a series of choices that resulted in an enforceable outcome. My impression from the thread is a query to identify the things that can prevent an enforceable outcome in the first place.
While one might say strict enforcement would discourage particular behavior choices. I would not disagree and add that suppression of behaviors is not as effective as replacement of behaviors.
Maybe also worth asking what he's doing along those lines as a father. Probably some interventions are in reach for the state, and there are some other things that parents are best positioned to do. He might have some insight into both.
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry) Me? I have nothing to offer. My elementary aged kids will be in middle school soon and I am not looking forward to having to try and keep them on the straight and narrow. At home my parents afforded me a long leash and I rejected most of what my superiors at school/etc fed me. As soon I was able, I GTFO. Took many risks and things worked out okay for me in the end. I could tell my kids to do the opposite but I'd be lying and they'd know it.
This is a good and balanced reply. My brother was much more rebellious than me when he was younger. Not as crazy as your first post, but crazy enough for our relatively conservative family. When he got married and had kids later, he is -- to my great surprise -- a very strict, conservative parent. He has his daughters on the straight and narrow path. Sometimes I wonder will they go crazy as soon as they got to uni (move away from home). I saw more than a few crack during my first year of uni, living in dorms. You can probably find some books or blogs that people have written about their own journey as a parent, especially when they had a rocky start in life as an adult.
I am not a parent, but I have observed that the best style of parents adapt to the natural personality of each child. For example, I was very contientious from early childhood (I assume that part was genetic), and my brother was exactly the opposite. My parents really had to work with him to get him to take school seriously. Fortunately, he has a naturally high IQ, so it wasn't so hard for him.
> I saw more than a few crack during my first year of uni, living in dorms. You can probably find some books or blogs that people have written about their own journey as a parent, especially when they had a rocky start in life as an adult.
grew up around the military, ended up enlisting out of HS.
buncha my friends, all army/navy brats from outside of DC, all went off to college. easily 1/3 drank themselves stupid or otherwise went nuts.
off the leash they decided they'd rather be in a band and work part-time at the grocery store than keep going down the path they were forced. Most of them have since graduated and several are doing pretty well. Had to do that freedom thing, tho.
better choice than the one I made, too
> Took many risks and things worked out okay for me in the end. I could tell my kids to do the opposite but I'd be lying and they'd know it.
Why do you think they'd know it? Working out in the end for you was the less likely option. Everything is possible but if you manage to explain the likelihood of each outcome compared to the expected payoff it could make the case clearer. Not an easy thing when dealing with small kids. It's hard because even adults are blinded by survivorship bias. Kids are easy victims, they can all become Cristiano Ronaldo, they can all launch the unicorn startup after dropping out of school, etc.
> I have nothing to offer.
Kids need guidance whether you think they'll take it or not, especially at that age. It's up to you to strike the balance between guidance, trickery, heavy handed rules, something works. Your teachers probably didn't care enough and your parents couldn't find the right button because it's not an easy job but it doesn't mean you can't or worse, that you shouldn't even try because you "have nothing to offer".
> Took many risks and things worked out okay for me in the end. I could tell my kids to do the opposite but I'd be lying and they'd know it.
"Do whatever you want and things will work out because it worked out for me" is not a good (or honest) message for children.
[survivor-bias-airplane.jpg]
I'm not the parent commenter, but I think this is not what they are saying.
This is more of a "Do what you must, come what may" thing.
You can and should teach your kids the ways of life and make them understand that
- the choices are theirs
- responsibility for said choices is also theirs
- results may not reflect choices
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry)
I dont know if you intended to reply to the OP/author or my reply. In my case, I dodged hard drugs for $reasons and can safely say that I chose my own adventure. I was had anxiety and apprehension about status quo and what was expected of a HS graduate circa 2000 so I said F it and did my own thing.
I guess one can only optimise the system for the majority following the beaten path. Some folks just have to find a way both through the world and through their own head.
> Some folks just have to find a way both through the world and through their own head
You need to stop seeing me so hard rn
Sweet Jesus. What a hell of a post! You need to turn this into a e-book or a series of blog posts. They would be a big hit on HN.
Was there any bullying at school that kept you away from it? Or boredom? Or just culture ? Grade schools seem all right in the US. Ridiculous amounts of activities/sports right there, teachers are well paid (compared to the rest of the world), the program difficulty seem pretty chill for any kid that learned to read early enough.
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry)
No, mostly just American 90s suburban boredom and at-home dysfunction.
At around 12/13 my old siblings drug addiction began tearing my house/family apart. The only escape available to me at the time in my town was a nascent, opioid-fueled high school party scene. Other kids might have followed their brothers footsteps but computers and music really interested me. I retreated to my bedroom and dialup modem for the next 5 or so years. I discovered the local BBS scene and (via that) the internet. Likewise, discovered a lively punk music scene in my region. Both connected me to other like minded ppl in my region and beyond. Very thankful for that.
> Grade schools seem all right in the US.
My experience (and impression of others) is that sure, it's incredibly good by certain very basic metrics but that doesn't mean all participants find it desirable or even tolerable. I slogged through it for no reason other than that's just what was expected and I didn't see any realistic alternative but in retrospect I think I would have been better off dropping out and attending a community college (of course I could be wildly wrong about that).
> I slogged through it for no reason other than that's just what was expected and I didn't see any realistic alternative but in retrospect I think I would have been better off dropping out and attending a community college (of course I could be wildly wrong about that)
This is exactly where I zagged. To this day, I still think avoiding college was the best decision I've made in life. Both from the POV of finances and personal growth. I learned so much about the world and life between the ages of ~18-26. I did not own a computer or have internet access during any of it, and neither did most the ppl I knew. Feel very lucky I spent those years YOLO'ing it and not in front of a screen.
I was referring to K-12 there, not beyond. I found that I was much more compatible with the format, environment, and culture of academia and got a lot out of doing a bachelors. I expect I would have been better off omitting the US K-12 experience to the extent possible.
That said I also felt that many of the people I encountered there most likely weren't gaining enough for it to be worth the cost in time, money, and effort. I know some people who went the trade route straight out of highschool and provided that jobs were available it seems to have been a very good choice for most of them.
> Feel very lucky I spent those years YOLO'ing it and not in front of a screen.
Even in a STEM program I only spent a small fraction of study time in front of a screen. That said, the degree was indeed a huge time commitment overall.
I'm a Tradesman Baker (4 year apprenticeship and a 12 month pre-apprenticeship), that about 2 years after being a fully qualified tradesman switched to IT and have been in the industry for about 28 years. I suspect it will be my last porfession
Did you ever bounce around the crackmonkey list? nick and friends seemed to know people with similar backgrounds.
I did not but would not be surprised. Scattered among the survivalist, bomb makers, pedos and neo nazis of the early internet there were some amazing communities. I like to think that I found my ppl back then but maybe those ppl found me and set me on my way. Either way, I'm thankful
Your story also reminded me of the early LUG scene, distributed all over the world. We believed and all we had access to were the dirtiest ratshit computers but hey they could boot Slackware or Debian and maybe if you said the right incantation you could get that 10Mb card you got for free but was still the most valuable part to work with cat5 Ethernet so you could download stuff from a local sunsite mirror so you could join in the future.
That is an absolutely crazy story, I hope you have it written down somewhere besides HN comments lol
(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry)
Nah, just throwaway here. A few tech/work friends know of it, most of my non-tech friends know of my background but most them have crazier stories. And those folks dont really understand what I do for work or how much money I'm making. I'm too much of a dirt bag for the tech world and too much of a yuppie for my old punk friends. Its double-sided imposter syndrome.
I appreciate the stories. To some extent they are inspiring to read.
Impressive story. Here's a slightly off topic question. Are you hiring right now ? :) Foss work sounds fun.
So... going by the story, I guess you never did go to the doctor to get diagnosed for adhd?
(Yeah, armchair doctor and all that. But doesn't make it wrong or at least worth a look.)
Nah, definitely not ADHD. Wrote that quickly from my phone, which is why it's so scatter brained.
Good if you're sure of it.
Fwiw, I didn't mention it because of your writing style at all, I wrote it because you literally said
> Couldn't sit still.
Also, for anyone curious, drug use and being in prison is much more common amongst adhd folk than the general population. A staggering 25% (approximately) of prison population is ADHD [1], far higher than the general population.
1 - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4301200/
And to whoever downvoted me, I've successfully "diagnosed" (read - identified) multiple friends already. NDs often have decent ND-radars.
Same here, I too feel the same. I don't look as if I am neuro divergent but I am slightly and have radar for others and have begun to tell people, "that person is not late or slow in the mind but that person is simply a neuro divergent and needs to be given chance or looked at differently" lot of neuro divergents have been discriminated against in the past. My one professor used to ask me, "Are you on drugs". No I never have. It's just lack of sleep in college days can otherwise make my lucid brain super foggy
Haha, I can relate. I was once straight up asked if I used cocaine by my caretakers when I was 16. I was simply sleep deprived. And needed sleep bad. My neurodivergence mostly manifests as a sleep problem, in terms of it being a clinical issue. In other areas of life they are simply quirks.
To get the whole discussion of “I have seen this behavior before. I know an addict when I see one”. It was embarrassing. And then to hear “you’re 16 and acting out your puberty”.
Adults are silly sometimes when they are convinced of something, and fucking persistent.
I've had a few people tell me that I definitely have ADHD, even an internal medicine doctor and a neuro radiology friend. But I always change the subject.
Let's say they are correct. What would the solution look like from there?
As an example, and this is only 1% of it, but I have had my utilities turned off several times for not paying bills, while having $400k in the bank.
It took the collapse of my marriage for me to finally do something about the rampant ADHD that has been a feature of my life for 40 years, and yes, part of that collapse was when someone from the gas company showed up to turn off the supply unless I paid the bill right now, which of course I could easily do.
It took me five years to actually get to a point of a) having a diagnosis and b) getting medication. Most of that was due to the perverse way this process works in the UK, where to get a diagnosis of executive dysfunction you have to do a ton of personal admin, after which you’ll be handed another todo list in order to be able to get drugs prescribed.
I’m now on a good dose of drugs and I honestly mourn for the decades of my life I could have been feeling how I do now had I known. They don’t make everything better, it’s still an effort to make myself focus on the things I should be focusing on, but once I am focusing on them I’m able to continue doing so, and I no longer find myself having done no work for the last week because I was putting off a ten minute task I didn’t want to do. Despite spending 12 hours a day with a steady stream of amphetamines being released into my blood stream my blood pressure has dropped significantly since starting the drugs because I’m no longer in a constant state of low grade panic at all the things I’m not doing.
Please, go get a diagnosis (or not, maybe they’re all wrong). Talk to whoever you’re referred to about options, decide whether drugs are something you want to try. Give yourself options at least because it is possible to stop playing life on hard mode.
Cognitive behavioral therapy and, if you want to, medication. Studies have confirmed great results when those two are done together.
If you get your utilities shut off due to ADHD, and that is only 1% of it as you claim, your instinctual coping mechanisms obviously aren't enough to prevent a pretty bad impact on your day-to-day life. As you would seek help for acute medical problems from professionals, you should seek help for chronic mental problems from professionals.
> Let's say they are correct. What would the solution look like from there? Personally after being diagnosed at 36, I started taking concerta occasionally. Mostly once a week to deal with all the things I have a tendency to not do otherwise. It's helped a lot.
And I'm saying this as someone who lost circa 120k in work I never invoiced because of ADHD
There’s both medication (which takes a while to get dosage right but can be extremely helpful for some) and also techniques you can use to help compensate.
Theres a pretty heavy "woo" presence on HN with lots of people who think you can just adopt a bunch of unproven metaphysical nonsense practices and magically delete your adhd (and anyone it doesnt work on just isnt trying hard enough). pay them no mind.
[flagged]
Nitpick but,
> without the drug addiction
and
> beer stealing
doesn't compute.
> albeit without the drug addiction or prison.
No disrespect, but this is not at all comparable to the situation described in the article. A few nights sleeping on the streets is much (!) easier when not addicted to substances.
Thank you for sharing your story! I wish you continued success and I also hope that one day someone will share with you about how YOUR story helped them do something similar, just like the article did for you.
Also, Preston Thorpe (who Gavin mentions as inspiration) has an interesting story as well: https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/
Also recommend folks check out Unlocked Labs, who run a prison program for this sort of thing. Jessica is an angel:
https://unlockedlabs.org/
Thank you for the link, and for sharing your story.
Thank you for that link. I recommend reading to the very last line.
How nice is that!
“ No part of the prose was machine-generated. You will not find machine-written prose on this blog. I consider it deeply disrespectful.”
<3
Writing articles by hand isn’t just smart— it’s important. No shortcuts. No filler. No excuses.
Key insight: relying on AI for writing assistance helps neither the author nor the audience.
> Writing articles by hand isn’t just smart— it’s important. No shortcuts. No filler. No excuses.
You're absolutely right! Would you like to delve into more issues like this one?
It was incredibly refreshing to read an honest story, warts and all, written by a human. And equally infuriating to read a comment about it written by AI.
I had assumed the comment you’re responding to is tongue in cheek but it’s honestly hard to tell sometimes.
It is, it’s designed to invoke rage over ChatGPT speak as an example of how awful it is to read.
Ironically saying "isn’t just smart— it’s important" (complete with em-dash!) and "No shortcuts. No filler. No excuses." sounds very AI-generated.
Not saying it is, just pointing out how messed up the world we live in now is.
But... was it?
i have a feeling that the fp was being sarcastic / satirical.
That’s the unlock.
that's the joke
Aw, poops. It got flagged :-(
Even LLMs have better sense of humor than HN readers.
That's a really great point, and shows a deep understanding of how consistently humorless HN users are! If you want, I can show several more examples of people knee-jerk downvoting things that are actually pretty funny.
There's always been a general pushback on HN against turning threads into a series of quippy oneliners. It tends toward having a serious discussion about a topic, rather than farming low-effort humour for upvotes. I consider this a good thing, as there are plenty of other places where that is rewarded.
Yeah it seems harmless in isolation, but I'm pretty sure that lacking a norm against it it is one of the ways you end up with Reddit. And because HN doesn't have an actual anti-humour rule, in the best case it lets the funnier and more creative stuff through while punishing the obvious one-liners and boilerplate jokes that everyone would be clamouring to make first on a Reddit thread. (I don't want to be rude, but the thing where someone writes stereotypical AI speak in an ironic context has been done a billion times and doesn't need to be done again, unless it comes with an interesting twist or unusually sharp execution.)
> I don't want to be rude, but the thing where someone writes stereotypical AI speak in an ironic context has been done a billion times and doesn't need to be done again
Yeah. As the person who triggered this subthread by not detecting the attempt at "humor", the last thing we need is a version of Poe's Law for AI slop.
I agree though from my experience on HN people tend to upvote these funny quips instead of abstaining. Yet generally when I write something meaningful I get meaningful replies in return sans upvotes and I treasure those much more.
I still cling on to the quaint idea that "upvote" means "adds meaningfully and coherently to the discussion", while "downvote" means the opposite. So not "I agree with this" or "that made me chuckle" but rather "this enhances the conversation" - and especially if it's a well written argument I disagree with because that might make me learn or rethink my position. Humour in a well argued point is very welcome, of course.
Wish and reality aren't in alignment here but some places like HN or /r/AskHistorians are my refuges.
That's not how it works at all. In general I've noticed that many of the things I say might remain neutral or get some upvotes, and then get flagged and downvoted as soon as the USA wakes up. So I think here it is very very much based on agreement.
Ya otherwise the one-liners/jokes drown out actual discussion since they attract a lot of votes
I laughed
Many HNers have their sense of humor removed, when they get their first colonoscopy.
I still crack jokes, anyway. Get the occasional downvote, but life’s too short…
Now it all comes together. Want the wrap-up?
It reads as clear ironic AI speak.
And honestly, you're brave to point that out.
"You're absolutely right for pushing back on that!"
I want a "You're absolutely right to be upset!" printed on a shirt.
You're absolutely right to be upset by this t-shirt!
But, allow me to complete the sandwich.
> Working at Techtonic was the best possible early-career experience I think anyone could have had. They did contract development, a lot of which was greenfield Saas MVP launches, across various tech stacks. There was not a lot of time for mentorship so it a very "trial-by-fire" experience -- either figure things out and ship stuff, or get the boot.
I *always* tell older people looking to switch into tech to start at agencies/contracting firms for this reason.
They are much more likely to hire people without experience, invest in your training (even if it's training by fire), and because they are usually heavy cert-driven, they'll pay for certs as well.
It doesn't pay well, and the work can be brutal (nights and weekends; on-call) but it's a great way to get the experience needed to get the job that does if you're starting from zero.
On the other hand, people with that sort of experience tend to have the worst instincts when it comes to actual maintenance and long-term development of projects. They're great at starting projects, and fast too, but rarely considers the design carefully enough so you don't need a full rewrite once every year just to continue being able to add features. Slow is fast in those cases, and the people who are experts in "greenfield SaaS MVP launches" basically operate with short-term expedience traded for long-term maintainability.
Not to say they cannot learn that, but worth being aware if you're building something long-term and does hiring for that sort of project, to be upfront that the development process will likely be very different compared to what they're used to.
Ha! I started my career in a company where I had to pump out custom web apps as fast as humanly possible. The apps were successful, and then I had to maintain them for several years. That's where the real learning occurred. I learned the cost of every one of my shortcuts and poor design decisions the hard way.
Many years ago, some famous developer said, "Always write your code as if the person who's going to maintain it is a violent psychopath who knows where you live." As I fixed my poor design choices one by one over endless late nights, I sometimes felt the anger of a violent psychopath toward the former, ignorant me who had stupidly plagued current me with all these problems.
When you learn the hard way, you know exactly why good design decisions are considered good. In later jobs, one of my fundamental goals for every new project was "I never want me or anyone else to have to answer a 3 a.m. call about why this system isn't working."
> It doesn't pay well, and the work can be brutal (nights and weekends; on-call) but it's a great way to get the experience needed to get the job that does if you're starting from zero.
sadly that's a non-starter for a lot of people in this economy. doubly so if you have kids.
This lacks perspective of the position of OP and people like him. For them, stringing together multiple full and part time minimum wage jobs is the norm. Not having health insurance is the norm. Extreme commutes, often not by car, is the norm. Are these kinds of consulting jobs great? No, probably not. Better compensation and hours than the alternative? Almost certainly.
Consider how he and his wife were surviving before he got back into tech. That's the norm for a lot of people.
> sadly that's a non-starter for a lot of people in this economy. doubly so if you have kids.
Seems to me like if it's the option on the table, and you have a family to take care of, then it would absolutely be a starter. If there are other options, then there are other options, but if you're just starting it's fairly likely that you need to prepare yourself for a battle. I don't see how "this economy" makes that anything but more true. I don't even have kids but I sure as hell wouldn't be picky if I did and was just getting going.
What would be a non-starter is no job or no pay for work.
lots of people with kids take jobs with a lot of hours that don't pay well...
I love such stories. Right now, a lot of folks I know are struggling to find jobs, so I read the part about how he got a job the first day he was out of jail with some astonishment and nostalgia for the simpler days, when showing interest was often enough to land the job! Now, hoop number 1, the AI resume filter, is a strange obstacle that one has to jump through first.
The job market is rough. My wife went back to school for audio/sound design, finished the program + got a bunch of certifications.
She's been trying to get anything, even an unpaid internship, doing sound design, going to local meetups, online conferences, and hasn't had much luck.
But I told her: it's just a matter of persistence and time. If you're agreeable to be around, passionate about something, and just show up everyday, eventually something is likely to happen.
As someone who has worked in the music sphere with many hats over the past few decades: her best shot is to get people talking about her, perhaps find some local musicians she likes and offer cheap\free recordings to fill in her portfolio and get that word of mouth started.
Successful people in the music world (both on and off stage) HAVE to mingle with musicians (not other engineers) heavily to get noticed and recommended
Without a portfolio it will be difficult.
Would recommend joining a local film club, and get a few small projects done. Additionally, volunteer with local church events, or regular city music festivals.
Also, could join the local union intake for the production studios. It will be awful until one gets the base hours completed, but it is a feast or famine kind of work schedule some can tolerate. Fine work if you are still a kid.
Finding stuff online is usually a fools errand these days mostly due to "AI" data mining operations, or outright cons. Best of luck =3
The key, for me, was to get a computer. Once I had that, the world opened up.
It allowed me to "get my hands dirty," and experiment, as well as build a portfolio.
To this day, I have a large amount of public code. It's a habit that I've had, all my adult life.
I applied to 100+ places in 2005. Took a job an hour from home for a year and half. Eventually found something closer to home. You take what you can find at the time until you find where you want to be
I'm from the UK and another age 8)
I applied for about 50+ jobs as a graduate engineer in 1991. Back then you wrote letters. Hmmm: You printed letters - mail merge was a thing.
You signed each one by hand, with a quill pen and used a wax seal and cast a Spell of Engagement.
OK, you signed your covering letter with a pen (might be a Biro but I did use a Parker and Quink, myself) You also had to put your covering letter and curriculum vitae (CV == resume) in an envelope and pop a stamp on it (2nd class) and post it. None of that Linked In bollocks.
Your covering letter would be bespoke to the company approached. You did some research and mentioned something pertinent.
Nowadays I'm the employer.
Don't forget the specialty resume paper.
Not around these parts. We write on Basildon Bond 8)
Wow!
I applied over and over using Monster dot com.
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part of this I understand is survival. And I understand why you do this.
The other part of this is why it's so frustrating for me to find the right person. Everybody's resume looks perfect for the role, and I have to waste 30-45 mins digging into their actual experience. You have done yourself a great disservice by wasting that time sitting in an interview you were not qualified for, and worse still I always feel there are other, more qualified people, who I have missed/passed over their resume since it wasn't AI tuned.
Sincerely, I don't know how t make this better.
I understand your frustration and i hope to have a earnest discussion on this.
One of the 3 jobs require hiring other developers. I don't find it difficult at all. I have my own intuition and technique I rely on. If you are wasting 30~45 minutes on a resume, you are probably chasing the wrong signals. It's not my fault.
> You have done yourself a great disservice by wasting that time sitting in an interview you were not qualified for, and worse still I always feel there are other, more qualified people, who I have missed/passed over their resume since it wasn't AI tuned.
How can I know if I meet the prospective employee's criteria or not before I do the interview? How am I to be held reliable for other people's failure to make themselves visible or your frankly your lack of skill at recruiment?
It's convenient to blame AI for any shortcomings these days but if you don't know what you are doing, you were always going to reach for something external something imagined to deflect your own areas that need improvement.
Why'd people downvote this? The minimum you need to be doing is pasting role descriptions and your résumé into ChatGPT and asking: should I hire this person? Because that's what every company's HR department is doing (automatically) and if the answer is no, then you may as well not bother sending the application. Or you could tweak it until it says yes.
I think earlier there were few HN users who didn't like my opinions on another thread, came here to flag and downvote my comments and leave rather mean replies all over my profile. I don't think much of it and I forgive people who do it.
Or maybe there really are people who think its okay to use AI to hire/filter candidates but not when candidates use AI to optimize to get around that screen. Using AI, I've been able to land several interviews and work 3 jobs remotely currently without much effort.
How did you do that? I don't get many interviews even after making sure AI likes my resume.
I applied to 1000 jobs over the year
17 interviews
5 offers
I accepted 3 of them and work 16 hours a day. So thats roughly 5 hours of deep work per day. if I wasn't remote working then the extra 3~5 hours would've been spent on commute, figuring out where to eat, silly banters with coworkers or office politics and just non-essential stuff that anti-remote people advocate for.
I would accepted all 5 if I could but its just impossible to fit more than 3 stand up meetings in different time zones. It's also tricky at times to manage schedule, you have to keep your work space segregated.
So it's a combination of Resume strength (don't spend too much time on polishing it with AI as it can't replace experience) and market demand (really question if you have anything special)
Don't get discouraged brother! I hope this can help you.
So you've used AI to do fraud and you're confused why people are opposed to this?
You're the reason companies are pushing return to office and putting candidates through gauntlets of interviews and homework - because otherwise they end up hiring someone who lied on their resume and is trying to collect 3 salaries until they get caught and fired.
How is that fraud?
where is the fraud ? you are making outlandish accusations.
how am I to blame you cant work remotely ? I dont even know if you work!
> Using AI, I've been able to land several interviews and work 3 jobs remotely currently without much effort
Working 3 jobs is almost certainly defrauding the employers, your employment agreement likely forbids this due to IP ownership issues and expectations that you're, ya know, working for them when they're paying you and not secretly collecting a paycheck while working for a different company during the time they're paying you to work for them?
Also, unclear if you're also fraudulently claiming experience you don't have by having AI write a resume tailored to the job posting rather than representing what you've actually done.
If your 3 jobs are actually part-time jobs, with clearly delineated and compartmentalized time and work tracking and the employers are aware and the contracts allow that, then fine. But your description definitely reads like someone bragging that they're hacking the system to get away with tricking multiple employers into thinking you're working full time for them.
3 jobs done on 3 separate computers
Not paid hourly rate and we are about delivering milestones on time
Everyone is satisfied with the rate of PRs closed and fine with AI use
I'm still waiting to hear what part of this is fraud?
> Also, unclear if you're also fraudulently claiming experience you don't have by having AI write a resume tailored to the job posting rather than representing what you've actually done.
Where have I said to use AI to fabricate experience? Do you actually believe that will work and thats what people are doing before background checks ?
I think the "fraud" they are likely referring to is working 3 jobs at the same time as a software developer. Do all of the jobs know you have 2 others in the same line of work? If you're a consultant and advertise as such, no big deal imo, but I do think there is something to be said if you can't be honest with all of your employers about what other work is on your plate.
Programming is by definition technical work that requires a significant amount of brain power and focus and if I am an employer (a good one!) I would intuitively expect a certain level of focus from each employee that also entails a certain amount of downtime in order to stay fresh and alert.
This is my attempt at a steel-man of their argument. If your employer(s) is happy with your output and you aren't lying about your availability in order to juggle everything, then there is no harm imo.
No they don't know and if they did I would get fired obviously.
Thus 3 laptops and sometimes there are meetings which can overlap and that is always a challenge.
Yes nobody is complaining about the output and they are getting their money's worth.
I just think that as a modern day salaryman its silly to rely on one employer now or have any sort of loyalty.
It's okay to ** over the average working guy but not okay when they do anything to position themselves away from that arrangement.
> No they don't know and if they did I would get fired obviously.
This already shows the problem. They assume they are paying for your time exclusively, while you are doing just enough to satisfy them.
The fact you go such lengths to hide the fact that you are three timing them also shows that you know what you are doing is not acceptable.
Most likely you are in breach of the employment contract.
You are also somehow justifying this to yourself. The problem is that such behavior causes loss of trust and makes other 95% of honest peoples' life painful.
I don't see an issue since they are happy with my output. Who's getting hurt here ? That I'm working more efficiently then someone hired to do the job 9-5 ?
so you want me to make less money, couple myself to an employer who doesn't offer any upward mobility or job stability because you think its immoral that finally the dynamics have tipped the balancing pole in the workers favor?
are you not speaking out of jealousy here?
>are you not speaking out of jealousy here?
I am not envying your situation at all.
People who are getting hurt are people like you and me. Employers are seeing your comments. They are reading about others who do this. They are losing trust. When they pay you, they expect you to work for them diligently and not just up to a level of KPI. This behavior will make them to force people to come to work. Remote working will be gone. They will start paying less because they expect people to two time anyway. Overall society loses due to loss of trust.
So you gain something, but society as a whole loses.
P.S. Even if my wife is very happy with me, it doesn't mean that I can have another relationship. Either I have an agreed open marriage or I am cheating. A different thing, but I would say similar.
How am I getting hurt here my income is 3x
The KPIs are there specifically to measure time to results not how long you stuck around the office for
How am I responsible for your situation (I don't even know you) and why do you look to others to do it for you?
Are my employers here right now in the room with us ?
Are you going to blame me if your wife leaves you tomorrow because she read you hinted at wishing you were with somebody else?
Like how far does this go ? What else do you plan on blaming me for ?
Breach of contract is a civil issue, they could probably fire you without recourse (contract is void) but that's the extent of it if you didn't do anything else wrong.
> No they don't know and if they did I would get fired obviously
And yet, above, you're still asking where the fraud is. You clearly know you're violating the terms of your employment agreement. That's the fraud. It's not complex.
contract violation != fraud
A breach of contract, if there even is one, is not magically fraud because you dislike it or find it offensive. Fraud requires damages. So be specific:
What damages occurred if the work was delivered and accepted and both parties are satisfied?
the employer would be upset if they knew thats your assumption. But that’s not fraud that’s you projecting your own morals here over and over out of jealousy
Fraud is a specific thing. Failing to uphold a contract, even deliberately, isn't automatically fraud.
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> because you wished death upon a member of this community in an earlier comment
where did i say this ? this is getting weird now. can you please follow HN guidelines and keep discussions relevant ?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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My son Nicolas also followed a similar path. Sadly, he didn’t survive one of these ‘holes’ at 22. We shared a deep connection and had open, challenging conversations right up until he passed away, but it wasn’t enough... Can I be incredibly selfish and asked you something he might say to me had he been able to navigate these turbulent waters. Miss you Nico.
He would tell you that he's sorry he let you and everyone else around him down. That he didn't get to fix the bridges he burned, and mend the people he hurt.
That every time he came down from his high and was lying in bed unable to sleep, the guilt was like an ocean devouring him. That tonight would be the last time he would ever touch anything.
That he wanted to stop, knew he should stop, but when you wake up sweating & shaking all logic leaves your mind and the only thing you can think of is where to get more.
That it's not your (or anyone else's) fault, you did nothing wrong, and quite probably everything right. Some of us are just born with demons on our shoulder that won't stop whispering in our ear.
He would tell you of all the the plans he had come up with over the years, to make up the lost time with you and the rest of his loved ones. Doing things that YOU want to do, just to make you happy, because he had been selfish enough and you were owed at least that much.
That when things were their darkest, and he felt his lowest, one of the few saving graces and safe havens in his mind were the times he spent with you, before he fell into this pit of darkness.
---
I am, genuinely, sorry to hear that. Not in a "my condolences way", but in a grief-ridden and deeply personal way.
I lost my father and several of my closest friends to fentanyl. I know your grief. I know the feeling of anger that also gives you guilt, that they should have robbed the people that loved them most of the opportunity to experience them, and robbed themselves of the bright future they were capable of having.
Nothing I, or anyone else says, can make it any better.
I shed tears while writing this. Nico mourns for you as much as you mourn for him.
Extreme mental clarity in "Eventually, she told me that it made more sense for me to quit my job while she worked, so that I could spend all of my free time trying to get another tech job".
I could've never imagined long-term-thinking like this from a former addict.
> I could've never imagined long-term-thinking like this from a former addict.
I know a couple people who recovered from addiction (and lost a few who sadly couldn’t).
They’re just people from all walks of life. There are a lot of stereotypes about addicts, but drug addiction can hit anyone. The first few people I knew who became addicts were actually from good families, were educated, had good career prospects, and were happy people. They thought addiction didn’t apply to them because they were too smart or happy or wealthy. In my opinion, those stereotypes made them more vulnerable to letting their guard down and thinking they were going to use the drugs smartly.
Most of them are recovered now and back on track, minus a large chunk of their younger years and a trail of destroyed relationships and wasted opportunities. You wouldn’t peg them as former addicts, though. They’re just people.
I grew up solidly middle class, even went to a good private school. A couple of my friends got ripped off by an addict that ran in our social circle who had the same background. They couldn't find the person, but they were so angry that they looked up the parents' address and went to confront them, assuming they'd be like bad people or something or had failed to raise their kid right. Instead both parents were incredibly mild and apologetic, and basically said, "We don't know what happened to our child and where it all went wrong." My friends felt very ashamed, apologized and left them in peace. It's a really tragic thing, and it's not just a cliche that it can happen to anyone.
I'm a parent. Is there really no useful prevention?
> I could've never imagined long-term-thinking like this from a former addict.
Nothing personal, but you are part of the problem here. You are why these stories are so rare and difficult to achieve. Not out of malice on your part, most likely. But addicts are not humans to you. Please rethink some things.
As a kid I read the book "Montyn" [0] that made a deep impression on me, about Jan Montyn who fled a strict Calvinistic upbringing to join the German army in WWII and found himself in all the big battles near the end of the war, to ultimately make a career as an artist in The Netherlands.
I was reminded of the book when I recently watched the origin story [1] of the Differentbreed TV channel on youtube that gives attention to the trench war in Ukraine. The channel owner went from serious alcohol addiction while working in a liquor store, to going in a coma when deciding to go cold turkey. And then a journey to almost becoming a policeman, then a firefighter, and deciding based on training and certifications gained there, to become a combat medic in Ukraine. Then fought in the International Legion and Azov brigade. And then settle in Ukraine running the channel, and be involved in all kinds of activities that help the defense of the country. Very interesting to hear the story told from first-hand experience.
[0] https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/montyn_dirk-ayelt-kooiman/3291...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2mDNmlkJZQ
Not following how that is relevant to the article at hand?
Building from zero after addiction, to picking up a career and find a new purpose in life.
Thank you for sharing. Stories like yours remind us that there is good in the world, and even if it isn’t everywhere, it is still worth cultivating.
I’m a software engineer née scientist, but my spouse is a therapist who specializes in addiction. They (and I!) cherish stories like yours because we had seen up-close the struggle that so many people face.
Thank you!!
"AI Use Disclaimer: claude code was used to generate the OpenGraph SVG image.
No part of the prose was machine-generated. You will not find machine-written prose on this blog. I consider it deeply disrespectful."
I really like this disclaimer, by disclaiming that a single small thing was done with AI, you make very credible and notable that you did not use LLMs for the important parts.
Damn, tough reading about the 1 week deadline for finding work, then getting one after telling them you're jailed and them taking the chance on you.
I also found the article written so well (I suppose we don't encounter native English speakers in the blogosphere as much as we think we do), that it was a joy to read, if I can say so considering the subject matter.
Many very interesting stories here of people that took similar paths. As the parent of a teenager that used to be an absolute model student, but recently (last year) started rebellious behaviour, tanking their academics with it, I'm curious how many with similar stories think they would have or could have taken a different path with better or different parental support?
We're trying our very best to support and guide without shaming. The difficult part is the influence of friends, specifically a boyfriend, that were convinced led to much of this. Forbidding the relationship is not going to have the right effect. So we're trying to manage it with rules to try and prevent the opportunity to make bad decisions. And talking a lot about honesty, values and respect. There's still respect in our relationship, and I feel that's the key for us to be able to support her.
I only respond to extreme, repeated negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement never did anything for me.
If your child responds to positive reinforcement in any way, there's a good chance you can support them through it. But if they're like me, they may "only learn the hard way."
And I don't mean negative reinforcement as in physical punishment or being talked down to, but having to live through direct negative consequences of your action.
Sometimes I think "what if I could go back in time, and tell myself not to do XYZ", but I know myself well enough that I'm sure I would not listen.
I sincerely hope that things pan out for your family.
If you want the nuclear option, can you move away from the current environment? If they're young enough not to have a car, that's one way to at least guarantee a "fresh start" where they can't actively go down the current path. They'd need to find a new way into trouble, which is still wholly possible but requires more effort at least.
> If you want the nuclear option, can you move away from the current environment?
The common refrain here is usually they can find a bad environment anywhere so just moving won’t solve the problem. Unless it’s really remote, and home schooling. Which would not be healthy for anyone imo.
Please don't get a motorcycle:
A good felon buddy of mine has been out now for 4 years. He slowly built a car repair business, with steady clientele, and got his life back on track – including reasonable sobriety and a steady relationship. He and his girl would cruise around often, enjoying their newfound happiness.
Last week he totaled his Harley and his body (destroyed bike, multiple broken bones). Total reset. He now gets PTSD whenever a Harley revvs by passing... physically cannot work.
Please don't get a motorcycle.
I’m sorry if i’m missing something… what does this have to do with his story other than addiction and felony?
(fwiw i agree regardless, don’t get a motorcycle, lost too many friends to accidents or the following addiction)
The wrecklessness which brings some people into prison, is what brings them & others lusting towards motorcycle culture, often shortly upon release. Something something something anti-social something.
I'm just offering real-world advice after witnessing all the broken bones and jerked roadrash upon this tattoo'd convict's broken body. Shouldn't be alive.
Billions of people have a motorcycle globally... Some anecdote from a chronically motorcycle adverse culture (US) doesn't mean a whole mean of transport is invalid...
Most people riding motorcycles globally are not doing so on busy freeways at 60mph+ multiple times per day, surrounded by 2.5 ton vehicles with poor visibility traveling 60mph+
Putzing around an urban center on a cafe bike is not what it means to "ride a motorcycle" in the US.
I'd much rather be on a freeway at 60+ MPH surrounded by 2.5 ton vehicles with poor visibility than riding an urban street. New riders are rightly intimidated by the freeways (they're fast, they're big), but they're far, far safer than the street with all of the starting, stopping, hard corners, folks turning onto the street, and, of course, the king of bike slayers, the "I didn't see them" left turn.
Not to mention all the junk on the streets: the oil, anti-freeze, gravel, wet painted turn arrows.
When freeways become unsafe is when the loose nut behind the handlebars decides to wick it up and just "go around all of these big slow things". But that's not the freeways fault.
First year/10,000 miles is the hardest. But the foundational rules apply: Wear the gear, slow down, don't ride impaired (drunk, high, tired...).
Lightning strikes, it sucks. But, anecdotally, my worst motor vehicle injury was while a passenger in a modern car when my friend drove into a left turning vehicle. "Fender bender", "no biggie". Chronic, notable, back pain ever since. Worst than anything I've ever suffered on a motorcycle.
You're describing American cities, while GP (to whom I was responding) was clearly describing the huge number of foreign cities (e.g. SE Asia) where motorcycles are the dominant form of urban transit.
The relevant factor is that a street where motorcycles, cycles, pedestrians, and small/slow cars are dominant – all of which move at generally slow speeds – is of far, far, far less danger than a street (freeway or not) where the primary form factor is large automobiles traveling quickly.
You're describing American cities, while GP (to whom I was responding) was clearly describing the huge number of foreign cities (e.g. SE Asia) where motorcycles are the dominant form of urban transit.
The relevant factor is that a street where motorcycles, cycles, pedestrians, and small/slow cars are dominant – all of which move at generally slow speeds – is of far, far, far less danger than a street (freeway or not) where the primary form factor is large automobiles traveling quickly.
> First year/10,000 miles is the hardest
This is typical Intermediate Syndrome. The median rider involved in a motorcycle accident has nearly 3 years of experience.
No, road defects, obstacles, and weather are almost never the cause of motorcycle accidents.
I lived in Bangkok and saw 4 motorcycle accidents or their immediate aftermath. Even in perpetually jammed third world megacity traffic, the motorcyclist always loses to the other vehicle, in several of those cases almost certainly fatally.
I guess this depends on whether you're emphasizing deadliness or likelihood.
I live in Thailand, and I can assure you that while scooters dominating city streets increases awareness by car drivers, it doesn't make accidents less likely.
Most accidents worldwide happen on low-speed streets, not highways. On highways, the speeds are higher, so the rare accidents that occur are more damaging, but the opportunities for accidents are also much, MUCH lower. (No/few turns, no/few stops, similar speed levels, better visibility, etc.)
First 10k are the hardest but the tail effect of an experienced rider is what gets you. I had crashes in my first 10k but my worst were after riding for decades when I would just randomly hit a tiny oil slick going 70+mph while using zero brakes, zero turning, and zero extra acceleration. Just get thrown low-side due to randomness of having to watch traffic while not noticing a tiny oil slick with enough random variations in the road that it immediately throws the bike when traction regains.
> chronically adverse culture
That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.
California is one of the safer places to ride given how many bikes are here and I've still had too many near misses as a trained, experienced, and conservative rider.
Most people put 1-2k miles a year on their bikes, when I was riding often I put on 2-3k/ month.
>That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.
Same with anything in life.
Same with a car, just less so. Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7 (and can still die from any number of things anyway).
At some point there's a tradeoff people make. Some people make it where the tradeoff slider says "motorcycle", rather than stop at "car". And I'm not talking a tiny niche, but about 1-1.2 billion people globally.
The risk is much much much higher with a motorcycle - especially in the US where most car drivers have next to zero experience sharing the road with motorcycles let alone driving a motorcycle. Saying it's the same thing is absurd here.
- Licensed motorcycle driver
Vs what though? We're talking about a felon and addict channeling their risk-taking energy. I rode motorcycles exclusively as my transport in my 20s and it was one of the main things that checked use of intoxicants. You need your balance for a motorcycle and it uses the same risk-taking energy that many people would otherwise channel into drugs and destruction.
That is to say, those comparing car v motorcycle are doing the wrong comparison here. You'd be evaluating (car + substitute activity of drugs/crime/etc) vs. motorcycle -- rather than merely car v motorcycles.
Motorcycles are not sobriety tests...
> Same with a car, just less so.
So not the same?
> Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7
Quite an extreme and useless comparison. There's a large spectrum of transportation and entertainment options between motorcycle riding and home bound bumper suit at all times.
>So not the same?
Does it have to be the same?
Do you discourage people from riding bicycles too, lest they be hit?
> Does it have to be the same?
If someone uses the word 'same' followed by a 'but' for a significantly different case then the word 'same' is losing its meaning.
> Do you discourage people from riding bicycles too, lest they be hit?
I don't, and my point is these things all have wildly different cost-benefit tradeoffs. So it's unproductive to jump to some extreme risk averse example that no one was suggesting or implying.
Yeah exactly, same with BASE jumping or wingsuiting.
It's the same risk dynamic as driving a car to work, just more so. Of course you could also stay at home, wearing protective bumper suit 24/7 (and can still die from any number of things anyway).
> That's the thing. On a bike you can do everything right and still lose.
Same with a car, or anything really.
The point of parent stands, globally there are billions of people going through their lives with motorcycles as their main vehicles, yet aren't involved in any life-changing accidents.
Some places are more dangerous than others, probably places that doesn't have this already motorcycle-heavy culture, like other countries in the world, has a higher incident rate and more severe accidents, as drivers aren't aware of how motorcycles usually operate.
I live in Indonesia. We have the highest per-capita rate of bike ownership in the world.
I have seen what happens to motorcycle riders when there are accidents and I have seen what happens to car drivers when there are accidents. I won't get into the gory details but I avoid using bikes as much as possible.
And I've seen what happens when pedestrians get hit by a car going way too fast, it sucks, and is horrible, but also besides the point. Not to say one has worse/better accidents, motorcycles accidents obviously has a much higher fatality and serious injuries risk, hard to deny.
>but also besides the point.
Hard disagree.
Both pedestrians and motorcyclists are raw to the elements, entirely. At least when on roadways an automobile provides a chassis/rollcage.
When vulnerable road users are killed in other countries there is strict liability. That is, the driver is assumed at fault unless proven otherwise.
In America it's the perfect crime.
"I'm so sorry officer I never saw them."
Case closed Lou.
~>here in America
Which is why yesterday, in my mid-sized Southern City: after a motorcyclist hit&ran off the Interstate (dead, into a guardrail; 35, helmet'd/licensed, obeying traffic laws), the local biker clubs put down their swords and rallied in the median well after the accident occurred (as my local newspaper noted).
With all these millions already-spent on Flock cameræ, and T-DOT having dozens more (of their own)... you'd think we'd'a'already caught these guys.!?
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It's so sad that lack of accountability results in fleeing manslaughterers... but here we are.
You disagree with me agreeing with what you just wrote about it being more dangerous to go with motorcycles?
The "besides the point" is that the point I was raising was how common motorcycles are, globally. Is that what you're disagreeing with?
Let me read both these comments some more, because after this one (above): I'm even more confused.
Quickly: we seem to agree that motorcycles are dangerous and worldwide their predominance is mostly correlated with poverty (unlike US outlaw/biker culture). I had associated your beside the point with a biker being more-safe than a pedestrian -- is that what you meant?
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I have done 120mph in both vehicles, car and motorcycle – and won't ever go over 55mph on a dirtbike (only, offroad); never again on-road riding.
> worldwide their predominance is mostly correlated with poverty (unlike US outlaw/biker culture).
Huh? No, it's mostly correlated with working class and below, hardly "correlated with poverty", at least the places I'm familiar with.
I do agree they're dangerous. I don't agree that everyone should always avoid everything dangerous simply because it's dangerous.
Crashes. Not accidents.
Accidents. Not everything is under the driver's control, nor does it happen due to their intention (or even necessarily due to their lack of attention or whatever).
There's a reason the term accident is used (I know at least 10 countries where the meaning is the same).
Crash.
Google crash not accident will give many resources.
https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/safety/road-users/crash...
> there's a reason
Yes, the auto lobby.
Saying "accident" implies that the tens of thousands of road deaths every year are an unavoidable consequence of the convenience of driving.
That's just not true.
> Saying "accident" implies that the tens of thousands of road deaths every year are an unavoidable consequence of the convenience of driving.
What? Where is that conclusion coming from? There can be thousands of "accidents" and they can all be preventable, calling it "crash" or "accident" doesn't imply if it's preventable or not.
Talk about arbitrary hill to die on, very inconsequential. Why is this somehow so important?
FWIW, countries like Sweden call them "accidents" yet treat them as preventable and something to aim to minimize, not sure why it'd matter so much if someone call it accident or not.
Please don't say accident when you really mean crash.
Promote language of responsibility and accountability.
Most crashes, but not all, are accidents. I think I'm talking about accidents, not crashes.
Someone is always at fault.
Look into auto lobby and this "accident" term history.
Use the language of accountability.
My vehicle has collision insurance – is this an intermediary term (or something more specific)?
"Crash" sounds like it just happened by chance or for whatever reason. "Accident" makes it sound like something went wrong, maybe someone did something wrong, and then something happened because of that, maybe a crash, maybe something else.
I still think "accident" is more accurate, so I'll continue to use that. Thanks for explaining though!
>Someone is always at fault.
Only by a very lose definition of "fault", chosen for moralistic purposes.
Of course people saying what you say, if it happens to them, they'll suddenly swear theirs was a real accident.
Get a dirt bike. 10X more fun than street riding and much safer.
The issue is the bodily risk of injury or death compared to nearly any other routine transportation or sporting activity: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/motorcy...
A fairly large % of those people--I would wager most, personally--would probably rather have cars, but can't afford to.
Probably depends on the locale. In Europe, riding a moped in a big city is a way to drastically cut your commute compared to driving a car. It's not exactly dangerous when all the other road users are moving at 5m/min, and being able to just skip all the traffic jams is a godsend. By car, my trip to the office was about 45min - it was 15min on a moped, a stop at a shop for some snacks included. And that's with riding speed never exceeding 50km/h.
I had two accidents during my 5 years of commuting, and both times I only got minor scratches and had to replace my shoes. Both happened at speeds a determined bicycle rider could achieve, but I suspect I wouldn't be as well protected on a bicycle (both the machine itself and the protective gear tend to be much lighter there than on a moped). If I needed to do that again, I'd buy a model with two wheels at the front, which would have prevented both accidents - though I'm not sure if added stability wouldn't encourage me to ride faster.
So it's pretty specific, but if you're somewhere where driving culture is not too cutthroat, the roads can support single-track vehicles, and the traffic rather than actual distance is the limiting factor - owning a bike can be an objectively better option.
oh interesting, I should have realized it was fairly common in Europe
In Europe many people have both, and use the motorcycle to go to work/etc because it's faster and more convenient, especially in a larger city with traffic jams.
I am going to get to work with my classic Vespa scooter. Its cheaper than a car and i live only 7 kms away from my workplace. Riding bus and tram is time consuming and expensive. Its fun to ride a classic scooter and it never failed so far because i use it everyday. My classic runs up to 70km/h and people think its a slow, modern scooter so they dont really pay attention to me.
>Riding bus is time consuming and expensive.
I've always thought it made more sense that instead of large metrobuses the local transit authority operate more like a locals-only taxiservice – similar to their already-existant handicapped-access services (which send a solitary transport driver, with ramped single-occupant van/vehicle).
And thank God for it.
If every scooter rider in Taipei had a car, the city traffic would move a meter a day.
It's also about convenience, btw, not just cost. It's basically impossible to park a car here. Scooters are also difficult but at least possible.
A huge chunk of people here just take public transit now, as it should be.
Part of the reason for "US culture" (specifically: not walking mostly) is that zoning laws largely prevent over/under residential/storefront construction.
This makes everything so far apart as to make walking inconvenient. Add in unbearable weather for half of most years (whether hot/cold), and it just isn't convenient to grab something "on a quick walk" from the grocery store that is miles away from most homes.
Thankfully (some) cities are beginning to realize this, and are changing (IMHO: stupid) zoning/regulations. My favorite example has been of my own hometown's (Austin) reduction in required parking spaces for most commercial activities. This increases density, and encourages more walking. ATX's buslane-onlies leave a lot to be desired... but at least they've gotten rid of (most) downtown oneways.
I'm a motorcyclists. We usually refer to the smaller bikes as "motorbikes". Two wheels in the west is usually a hobby. In other parts of the world it might be a necessity, they don't do it for the pleasure. A lot of people forget this.
yeah I think you have PTSD from your friends accident.
Not all bike owners and riders have a shady history or risk taking behavior (aside from riding a motrobike).
He's just pointing out that after putting so much work into getting their life turned around it can easy be ruined by indulging in high risk behavior.
It's not bad advice, just unlikely to land. Thrill seekers seek thrills.
Have you ever been on a motorcycle?
Closest feeling you can get to flying and a helluva lot cheaper.
Bike costs are line noise, (cheap!) planes I fly are better part of $200 an hour.
I get what you're saying though. Barely been on bike since latest baby and wondering if I should just sell them for now.
As much as I miss riding and wife misses riding with me, if the worst were to happen, yikes.
> Closest feeling you can get to flying
I’d say this is a strong case against getting one for anyone who has struggled with addiction. In my experience a part of the constant battle is a difficult relationship with sources of stimulation.
I’ll second this. Back in the 90s when my addict brain was in full flight, I had a street bike for a year. There was not a single ride when I didn’t massively exceed the speed limit and ride recklessly. I loved it! Lucky to be alive. Lucky I had a partner who convinced me to sell it after our first child was born.
Having said all that and despite being in recovery for many years... I still lust after the feeling of completely unfettered freedom being on a bike on an open road. Before I bought my bike a friend had warned me that once you ride, you’ll never not want to ride. He was right.
Same. I got spooked after a car pulled out on the country highway I was doing 160 on. Then ran out of money and sold it. I just rode my Dads Harley, first ride in 20 years. Was nice but I’m good. I have a longboard and a little hill once in a while gives me the occasional adrenaline rush I crave.
>first ride in 20 years. Was nice but I’m good
This, is wisdom.
Glad we both made it (so far).
With a child it's easy to always justify spending the money on something else. I also miss the machine's simplicity and ease to work on.
While it probably sounds crazy, owning a tractor is almost as good. There are even more mechanical widgets to play with and it is dead simple and easy to work on like a motorcycle. I still miss the motorcycle but now I can actually do useful work while somewhat scratching the itch.
>Have you ever been on a motorcycle?
Absolutely. Broken bones, and all.
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>wondering if I should just sell them for now
>if the worst were to happen, yikes
Listen to yourself, Papa.
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It's a young (dumb) man's game.
Motorcycles are ridiculously fun but yeah, if you have anything in your life worth preserving or sticking around for, it's statistically a pretty awful decision.
>Motorcycles are ... statistically a pretty awful decision.
This has been my favorite sentence (so far) in this discussion – whatever one's opinion is on motorcycling. Capital 't' Truth.
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Thirty years ago, my mother gave me some small amount of money to NOT ride a motorcycle on roadways until after she died. Being young and broke, I took the money. stopped riding.
After she died, I had aged just enough to realize that I didn't actually want to ride motorcycles on-road, anymore. Even after decades of wanting to...
Somehow mama-up-there knew I'd eventually grow up, and it only cost her a few hundred dollars [to not have to witness my motorcycle accident (while alive, nor ever from-above)].
Thanks for sharing!
What are your thoughts on Roller Coasters? Hit a good theme park, ride maybe 6 with your eyes closed within a couple of hours.
I can't help but feel riding one (Roller Coaster) is much more optimal than $200/hr flying a plane, and much safer than a motorcycle, even if you rented vs purchase one.
> ride maybe 6 with your eyes closed
That’s like telling a skydiver to go ride the Drop Tower (or whatever the ride is that drops you straight down).
Not only is the experience different, but you aren’t in control. You aren’t controlling what’s happening.
For me a big part of the enjoyment comes from being in control of the bike.
Personally I would get zero enjoyment riding as a passenger on a bike. The thrill comes from riding and maneuvering the bike, not just going fast.
> For me a big part of the enjoyment comes from being in control of the bike.
Yes. Chasing perfection every time.
How smoothly can you roll out of this corner. How perfect a line can you take. How smoothly can you shift up or rev match and shift down.
I don't think I've ever been a passenger. My young wife enjoyed riding with me before our youngest came.
So an important invention that would save lives is a combined bumper cars + rollercoaster. Like the Witching Waves but faster.
I haven't ridden in two decades, but I think a high-powered jetski is close to your description.
Either stand-up (small one-rider) or a 3-seater; each has its perks.
You can waterski behind a larger HP machine, and it's always nice to have a fellow beloved rider saddling-up alongside your antic't britches – whatever the hell that means, to you.
Or go be stupid and jumpwake on a crotchrocket standup jetski #LifeIsShort #CrippleLife #DontGetRunOver
Great America gold pass holder for many years.
It's a thrill for sure. Mostly on the smaller coasters thee days because of the kids.
I've ridden a bike and I've also jumped out of an airplane. One of these is a lot closer to flying than the other, and it's not the one you suggested.
Yeah, I think this is the point. It's a "legal high" of sorts and a dangerous one. That flying feeling is addictive. Some are lucky enough to grow out of it, some aren't.
Family owns acreage less than a mile from the recent Wimberley smallplane crash. As far as "statistical anomolies" are concered [+neighbors motorcycle accident] I'm not presently up for much risk-taking rn.
They could have just-as-easily landed on the barn I built, a decade ago – years of work.
Pilot's stupidity (flying in such known weather conditions, inexperienced) could have killed more than just he & his pickleball passengers.
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The part where I start getting upset is when others' lives are put into risk (particularly when: no fault of their own, bystanders).
> Closest feeling you can get to flying and a helluva lot cheaper.
Hah, that's funny for someone who got into FPV quadcopters recently and just passed his motorcycle license. I might have a problem.
I fly RC planes. I've done a bit of RC FPV with monitors never tried goggles or quads though.
EUC or FPV are closer, FPV is also safer..
Motorcycles aren't invulnerable 3 ton steel tanks but the stats and anecdotes are deceptive. They're really not that bad if you're not a moron, even if you're mostly worried about other road users. The stat are wildly bimodal.
~30% of deaths involve drunk riding
~30% of deaths involve not wearing any helmet (let alone full face ECE 22.06 rated ones or any other gear at all)
~30% of deaths involve someone with no motorcycle licence.
These aren't all mutually exclusive obviously, rather the Venn diagram probably looks rather...circular.
The issue isn't so much everyone trying to kill you, you can fix a lot of the visibility issues and you have some additional options if someone is about to hit you. The problem is that two wheels make for a VERY dynamic system and you're managing two different brakes with weight shifting between two wheels based on your inputs. To that end ABS and TCS are absolutely huge, IIRC something like >60% safety improvement.
Tldr don't buy an old retro bike with no safety systems and ride it drunk without a license or gear, you'll continue to pad the numbers.
Isn’t this suggesting that the majority of motorbike deaths are licensed, sober, safety-geared riders?
I absolutely love statistics – be careful with inferrences, though.
This rider (I described above) was
~sober
~helmetted (fully faced)
~licensed
Well since we're doing anecdotes, I'm a sober, fully helmeted, geared rider with 8 years and tens of thousands of miles under my tires. I've had two incidents:
1. I fell over at a stop sign on a canted hill while stopped because the rented Harley was so fucking big. I immediately returned it and will never ride a Harley again, those things suck.
2. I stupidly stopped just before the crest of a gravel road because I couldn't determine the best path (should have just trusted my tires and picked one), started sliding backwards. Rather than spin my tires and risk shooting off, or slide backwards into the unknown, I just tipped over and rolled off the bike.
No injuries either times. No at speed near misses. I have a simple rule: if I'm not 100% sure, I don't do it. A pass, a light, an intersection, when in doubt, I slow down, or stop, or hang out where I am in a lane.
Maybe one day I'll get taken out at a stop light or something random like that but the joy that riding has brought me I just can't give up. Exploring the world on a motorcycle is just amazing.
All activities come with risks. Motorcycling is up there but so is rock climbing, kayaking, rafting, hiking, bicycling, swimming - all activities I personally know someone who has been severely injured doing. You take precautions but you gotta live.
>Exploring the world on a motorcycle is just amazing.
I agree. Among my fondest (and 3rd-most-painful) memories is sitting atop my Honda XR80 – FREE – pondering what my adolescent mind might eventually wish to accomplish.
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>all activities I personally know someone who has been severely injured doing
My twin's friend, an experienced multi-pitch climber, recently perished in a freak-drowning accident (while leading amateurs) on a simple repelling expedition (single-pitch, lots of attention-to-safety). Somehow he slipped, fell into rainstorm-capture... and nobody knew how to help him quickly enough.
Obviously he should have had another experienced buddy, but it apparently "all happened so quickly" that nobody thought otherwise (was possible).
#RIP, assailedclimberbro
You could make a similar argument for bicycles.
Apparently the numbers for bicycles are a bit better, even in adjusted terms, but still. They're very unsafe in general.
There’s a study demonstrating life expectancy of 3+ years for bicycle Paris commuters (2+ for public transport) compared to cars. They didn’t evaluate motorbike.
The effect on physical and psychic health largely outweighs (sometimes to x30) the risk of accidents and pollution disease.
(2012, french) https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefic...
It's a lot easier to ride recklessly on a motorcycle than an ordinary bike. I suppose mopeds/motor scooters (especially electric ones) are the sensible middle-of-the-road option.
I lost a good friend, a cycling partner, when she was hit by a car. I think she was a Cat 3 or 4 racer. Talented rider.
I haven’t ridden on the road since. Just no joy in riding anymore if it just takes one careless individual on a cell phone…
Every so often I think about linking up with a group ride again or even going to a spin class, but I just don’t see the fun in it anymore.
>I haven’t ridden on the road since.
It's laughable how proud some cyclists become when they think a painted stripe will somehow protect them from cellphoned sharks.
Obviously US bicycling infrastructure is laughably dangerous, and nobody deserves full-blame for exercising their legal rights upon roadways -- but e.g: biking up Lookout Mountain's shoulderless 2-lane highway is. stupid.ly common. These are tourist roadways winding through a mountainrange – are you cyclist's suicidal, or just hubric? Nobody knows where they are, and your dumb_ass is in the blindcurve going 2mph.
Your legal right #RIP
Indeed.
I sometimes lament that I wish I could ride in a group again, but it’s such a hurdle to get over mentally for me.
It is a lot of fun having camaraderie with similarly skilled riders hammering it out in the big ring for two hours, but just never have been able to get back to that place where I’m comfortable enough to do it.
Edit: oh, rereading your comment… my friend was not at fault in her crash. She was a careful rider just out for a spin and happened to cross paths with the wrong idiot who was distracted and veered onto the shoulder. I was expressing sadness that that is all it took to end her life.
>that is all it took to end her life.
#RIP – life is too precious to text-and-drive
Indeed.
Even as a pedestrian, I hate crossing a small road using crosswalks at a 4 way stop.
More than once, I’ve been nearly run over — even by vehicles that came to a complete stop.
Others were too distracted and plowed nonstop going 40+mph through the 4way stop.
I actually prefer to cross in the middle of the road on my own terms.
People do advocate for separated bike paths and concrete barriers between bike lanes and car lanes.
What an odd thing to say to someone lamenting the passing of their friend. Maybe you should try some cardio.
Perhaps we could move away from victim blaming, the same way we've moved away from blaming assaulted women for dressing a certain way.
I am very risk averse person and I won't ride a bike in LA. In a city with proper infrastructure I would love to.
I do wonder how much to trust averages on these statistics. I observe that I am much more risk averse than the average cyclist in my city. Perhaps my risk is really much lower, conditional on that knowledge?
In both cases the reasons often come back to the average motorcyclist and bicycle rider abjectly REFUSING to learn or respect road laws.
I live in a non-California state and I'm shocked whenever I see a motorcyclist who doesn't illegally lane split, who maintains a standard following distance (ideally 3 car lengths on an interstate), etc. Plus, most of them aren't even good at choosing leather jackets (not enough schotts or even made in Japan actual horsehide, lots of slop non-protective because most of these people are poor from the Harley purchase) and they don't wear proper protective heavy bottoms (i.e. leather/kevlar pants or HEAVY selvedge denim like 25 oz+). Many don't wear helmets because doing so might make them look like "fairies" to their friends in the outlaw biker gang.
Similarly, half or more of the cyclists in your average complete streets/walkable cities liberal area either 1. actually don't have a drivers license and are thus oblivious to road laws when they routinely get on the road, 2. refuse to use a helmet/put lights on at night/hand signal when turning, and 3. refuse to use perfectly good empty sidewalks (yes its legal here to bike on the sidewalk) to cycle on when possible.
I see this shit all the time, and I understand why they end up as roadkill time-and-time again. Keep winning Darwin awards. My heart goes out to those who legitimately did everything right and ends up squashed anyway, but the myriad number of idiots ruins it for the victims.
I actually don't know which makes me more scared to see on the road, a clapped out Nissan/dodge, a Harley rider, or a cyclist. At least the cyclists and nissan drivers are probably young and thus far more alert than the average geriatric who thinks they're so cool for owning the worlds most gaudy motorcycle.
Yeah man, it's the cyclists who are the problem, right? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39986875/
> maintains a standard following distance (ideally 3 car lengths on an interstate)
3 car lengths is a ridiculously too close following distance at freeway speeds.
I grew up riding dirtbikes in a non-helmet-required US state.
>Many don't wear helmets because doing so might make them look like "fairies" to their friends in the outlaw biker gang.
I now live in a state which requires helmets for all riders.
This is a good idea – for exactly the reason you stated.
I ride. No way in hell I'd ride in the US.
if you do, I’d recommend taking motorcycle safety courses on a regular cadence in order to practice your skills. even if you’re a regular rider it’s great to learn the limits of your bike and do emergency maneuvers in a controlled environment
there’s lots offered near the bay area (where I’m from) and they don’t cost that much for what you’re getting in return
That's horrible but also a stark reminder for how quickly life can change for any one of us...
Neither of us have health insurance (forty-something Americans -- USA! USA! USA!). My helpfulness towards him mostly knowing he has nobody else to help him (ER already stabilized him post-accident, plus another trip for sepsis). Also, I love dogs.
This has been a very terrible and very real lesson in mortality. Wish we had some basic social safety nets for middle-aged unemployables (e.g. single-payer healthcare).
True but a motorcycle is basically 100% given that you will crash and have bad injuries.
There are old riders and there are bold riders...
But somehow no old bold riders.
It's hardly any given. You can just ride properly.
In other countries they are a huge means of transport.
True. If you ride properly, then everyone else on the road is not allowed to hit you by the laws of physics.
Like how if you ride in a car, or a bicycle, or walk as a pedestrian, then everyone else on the road is not allowed to hit you by the laws of physics.
"Oh, but this is acceptable risk"
Well, for billions, a motorcycle is too.
Yes same with BASE jumping. Since you walk as a pedestrian, which has risk, it's virtually the same as BASE jumping, which also has risk.
You can drive like a saint, you will still get plowed by someone who is dumb, or just on their phone. It's over!
It's a risky activity, yes, but lets not forget metropolitan areas in other countries are shock filled with motorcycles and most people live their entire life without being involved in any majorly serious accidents.
You mean scooters traveling <35mph surrounded by other scooters traveling <35mph
E.g. the most common motorcycle in Vietnam is the 110cc Honda Wave with a top speed under ideal conditions of ~60mph. It literally would not be called a motorcycle in the US.
No, I'm talking about motorcycles traveling ~50mph surrounded by other motorcycles, cars, trucks and whatever else goes on around and in metropolitan areas, even in countries in Europe.
The cities that Americans travel to in order to experience quaint and whimsical urban environments?
I don't think any city in Europe is as anti-human as your standard American metro, suburb, or small town.
Also: European metro areas are full of two-wheeled not-motorcycles, like the Honda above.
> I don't think any city in Europe is as anti-human as your standard American metro, suburb, or small town.
Agreed
> Also: European metro areas are full of two-wheeled not-motorcycles, like the Honda above.
Not the European metropolitan area I live right next to and travel to/from, they are proper motorcycles, who also travel on the highway, which isn't legal for the "two-wheeled not-motorcycles" you talk about.
It's OK to not be aware of how everything is everywhere in the world, no one thinks less of you for that. However, being so confident about something you obviously can't know, isn't as harmless and does indeed make you look slightly weird for being so combative about it.
It has nothing to do with awareness.
Your point is that there are cities that are full of motorcycles. My point is: sure, but most of those in most cities are not the 1000cc+ motorcycles Americans are typically referring to, and even if they are, a city full of motorcycles is a completely different risk environment from a city that is not full of motorcycles.
The bikes, usage patterns, and environment are all totally different. It's obviously silly to act like they're not.
From time spent living in the Philippines I have no idea what they're even on about. Sometimes I watched the local news and it was absolutely plastered with endless mass death of motorcyclists. Life is just cheap in south east asia so when a gazillion people get splattered on their bike no one thinks too much about it, it's just the risk of doing the business.
100% given? Lol
It's only been a week; right?
Right; he is fucked up. Girl is now gone, having caught charges herself (stabbed him because he refuses most pain killers and is in a lot of pain right now//ashole).
So sad to see; I am walking his dogs; last time I saw him I said "I am just worried that this will make you spin out, again."
Definitely helped me continue deciding not to get a motorcycle, myself.
HD riders are known for not using decent safety equipment and that bullshit open helmet or none.
A freaking motorcycle with 300+ kilos moving ate highway speeds or more.
He had a fully-enclosed helmet, was wearing leathers and boots, and has years of experience. Was legitimately sober (I talked with him right before he left). One hand now looks like a grimreaper's bones, sticking out from blood-caked jerkybits.
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Certainly speed was a factor but isn't that why ya'll ride?
Well, I don’t speed. Had a accident once that made me learn the lesson.
May your rides continue Perfectly.
[dead]
as someone who just got back from a nice motorcycle group ride: lol
Stay safe, young grasshopper.
You can be the best rider in the world and still have a bad day/week/month/year/life.
Can never predict your future. Enjoy what you will, when you can. I was in a motorcycle accident in 2021, TBI, hospitalized for 3mo, induced coma, and rehab for 9 months after.
I am back on the horse. It is just a zen and still relaxing time, albeit more anxiety while riding, than before. Thankful I can still ride, and I do.
You were in a crash sir.
I'm glad you're better. Tenacity.
Safest travels. Glad to hear you humped back on 'er.
And you can be the best car driver and still sway off or have some idiot crash into you head-on or miss a red light...
At a minimum you're belted in surrounded by a cage.
More likely you're belted in your cage and surrounded by airbags.
Apples to orangutans.
>surrounded by a cage
THIS is the major difference, protecting even the best motorcyclist's abilities.
Some US highways are posted at 85mph [137km/h] – unprotected flesh doesn't stand a chance!
> Some US highways
I'm sorry, but from a European perspective, this is the problem, not bikes. If your roads and driving culture encourage driving a tank for safety, that's a bit less than ideal.
I commuted to work for 5 years on a moped. I never used a highway, almost never exceeded 50km/h, and had 2 accidents during that time; both resulted in just a few scratches and bruises.
In another post, you said: "maybe speed was a factor" - actually, it's the only factor. If you never go too fast and never use roads where others may go too fast, you're safe - at least from life-altering tragedies.
If, on the other hand, it's generally impossible to get where you want to without using highways, or the sheer distance forces you to step on it - then yeah, don't buy a motorbike. Just note that it's not the bike's fault!
I lack the commenting impulse control to say this in a politically correct way so my apologies for the outrage that will follow, but to put it crudely there is someone in my extended family who became a retard after falling off their bicycle at roughly walking speed and with a helmet on. It's rare but you can easily die just from walking and slipping on a banana peel.
While you're right about slower generally being safer, you should still treat it like a life-altering tragedy could happen at any time and like you're going 200 kph.
I'm sorry for your relative, and of course you should always do things like driving (diving, cycling, sailing, climbing - or even cooking and cleaning) as if a tiny mistake could cost you everything: that's because it's actually true. These activities will never be risk-free; the best you can do is bring the risk down to a level comparable to that of alternatives (with "just don't do it" included in the set) and hope no unfortunate incidents occur to you.
It's still worth noting the relative probability: death or life-changing injury is basically what happens in every single accident when you're going 200km/h on a highway surrounded by (what could as well be) steel walls moving at the same speed; in my use case, when not exceeding 40-50 km/h and using roads where other users basically stand still most of the time, you need a pretty specific conditions and a lot of bad luck to even have an accident, much less die or become permanently disabled as a result of one. Still, not a zero probability, but the difference between 100% and 0.01% is kind of noticeable.
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I don't see the appeal of group rides myself. Always seems to be some stupid shit happening.
Half of the group rides I see are to "honor" or "remember " a rider who died doing something stupid as well.
That's a bit like saying "I don't wear a seatbelt when driving a car, but I've never had a problem."
The previous is a bit like saying "My pal got hurt in a car crash, never get a car".
And then when almost every person says that, it turns out to be good advice. But we have statistics on this!
Get a motorcycle. Definitely don't get a HD though.
Thanks for sharing this story and congratulations on finding a way back up. So many people never do.
> people willing to judge me by what I could do next instead of only by what I had done before
I think this is a really tragic take so common in the United States. It feels like, at least to me, that societal trust has broken down so much that people are broadly unwilling to take a chance on anyone.
Jail is supposed to mean you paid your debt to society. It's supposed to say 'okay, you've made a mistake, have had time to ruminate on it, now go forth and prosper.' It's not retribution or vengeance, or at least it shouldn't be - especially for non-violent crimes.
I'm truly glad you were fortunate and strong enough to climb out. I wish that this was a more common story.
I will not get started on the US Criminal "Justice" system. I could write a book on the horrors I saw in there.
We need a bigger emphasis on rehabilitation. It ultimately costs LESS for society.
I can also tell you from my 3 years in prison + jail that the grand majority of people in there do not have the innate desire or intention to change.
But for the small percentage that do, they deserve the resources and opportunity.
Powerful. Thank you for sharing.
Had to look away to stop from tearing up in Panera a few times at the end.
Sending this to my sister who has had struggles like this. She recently finished her BS and hopes to be an counselor or therapist after finishing her masters.
>I was a model student up until around puberty and middle school. Then, I think a combination of being bullied for being overweight and teenage hormones, led me to be just the wrong combination of resentful, angry, unhappy, and rebellious.
Myself, but I was just depressive until I got a PC, then I became a half-Hikkikomori until by brain exploded and seeked some nice metalheads around.
Logos/God/whatever bless that guy who gave me a Glam Rock/Metal CD at age 19/20, it changed my life a little for the good.
Metal and computers saved my life.
Except that I'm still unemployed even if I did tons of stuff after the advance trade (basic OOP Java/C# courses, Lisp, a bit of Docker and such...)
I even did some pre-college Math (calculus, discrete Math...) but no luck. Living and growing up in Spain sucks because almost no one would believe you that people can be a self-apprentice, here people it's very social-bounded (X does course-> Y joins it too). That's it.
My mentality it's more Atlantic than Mediterranean and I always had tons of conflcts.
Thanks for sharing, Gavin.
Can relate. Been 45 years, for me. Got my act together at 18, but before that...
I wonder how many more people in tech have those felony records but just never talk about it. The Preston Thorpe mention makes me think there's a whole underground network.
Your compassionate and honest story will, I hope, bear much fruit. You write well..very readable and engaging.
I apologize in advance for rambling. I never comment or post anywhere, but your post motivated me to share part of my story. I very much relate to the feeling that sharing can be too personal and too easy to misread.
Thank you for sharing. It’s refreshing to see that there are people who will take a chance on you. Your story helps with the burnout of pushing through with little to no results and exponentially diminishing resources.
I haven’t been so lucky, I joined a tiny startup in 2018 that shut down a year later, landed contract work in 2019 that was meant to convert into full-time, but was let go due to the pandemic right before converting. My most recent employer fired me on christmas of 2022.
I had a falling out with friends because they wouldn’t refer me for any role including tech sales. My uni wouldn't consider me for a master's degree because my microprocessor architecture professor wasn't "comfortable" writing a rec letter despite me sitting front of class and getting an A, all while practically begging students to apply (all 2/2 people that applied got into the program). Even in grade school my 2nd grade teacher was fired for lying to my parents that I was underperforming in school and that I needed to get kicked out of the talented and gifted program and repeat the grade. I still don't know what to make of all of this.
I haven’t been able to land phone screenings, let alone a first round interview anywhere. I am having a hard time getting minimum wage work due to being "over-qualified". I've been priced out of my hometown. I’ve completed web development, data science, and cloud infra bootcamps as a way to up-skill while also having a degree in electrical engineering. I would consider myself adaptable: I've worked in designing/improving electrical hardware, reverse engineering, web, mobile.
I am first-gen American, grew up homeless, but received a world-class education. Sometimes I wonder if I’m on a blacklist somewhere, or if I need to fall further for something to finally click. I guess I’m just having a really long bad luck streak, so here’s to hoping something better is around the corner!
Having your friends refuse to refer you and a professor out-right reject a request for letter of rec reeks of there being more to the story.
(More helpfully: when applying for job's you'd be called over-qualified for, just lie. Especially jobs that don't require a degree anyway, just leave it off the resume. Had to do that for a bit during the pandemic slump).
This is the type of response I expect, since it’s the natural conclusion to jump to, but it’s also a reason why I keep my story to myself.
This same professor willingly approached my parents and me, wishing us well when I graduated, with no mention of the letter. The same friends called me sobbing, that they “forgot” to refer me to their managers, despite receiving daily reminders from me. They even tried to offer me money to remain friends. I don’t know what to make of that, either. Other friends have simply said they don’t know my quality of work, despite having me help them with assignments in college and beyond.
I appreciate the advice, however. Oddly enough, I’ve been rejected by companies due to my interviewers’ disbelief that I had actually accomplished what was on my resume. Maybe lying will convince them lol
He mentions Preston Thorpe as inspiration, but I'd argue his story is even harder. The juvenile prison at 14 stuff is a different level.
Shoutout to the author. I don't think I've met you, but I'm proud of you. What you've done is not easy. Neither is talking about it.
I've not had nearly the adversity of the author, but I do know a little bit about what it's like to have an alternative background that makes companies not want to take a chance on you. It motivates you to take advantage of the chances you're given. The first time someone gave me a job, I felt so utterly grateful that I worked twice as hard as most and complained half as much. You could cynically call that exploitation, but I didn't see it that way.
When I came into a position to make my own hiring calls, I tried paying that forward, and I got some great employees from it. Arguably a couple duds as well, but I never regretted giving the chance.
Shout out to Hasura as well, btw. I've encountered their leadership team a couple times and everything about them has screamed integrity. It did not surprise me to hear that they are part of this story.
Thanks. At this point, I believe it's what I will look back on as my legacy. Software is ephemeral, but the people you build it with are what shape how you reflect on it.
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Is a success story line this still possible with coding assistants, or do they basically pull up the ladder that this guy climbed? I don't have enough insight into the job market right now to know.
I'll be honest -- if the pace of AI improvement continues at the current rate, I'm not sure I'll have a job in a few years' time.
Right now, the reason why you need humans in the loop is because you need someone with deep domain expertise and understanding of the particular nuances and architectural history behind a software product.
The reasons LLM's can't do this job currently is not an INHERENT limitation -- it's a technical one around context window limits and documentation.
There will always be people who don't want entirely autonomous development (who do you blame/fire when things go wrong) though.
I realize that it's not PRACTICAL advice, but I really do think if building software is what you're INTERESTED in, you should still give it your best try.
You spend the majority of your experienced life at work. Doing something you don't want to do, or find uninteresting, for most of your life (even though for many people this is the case) is a depressing and bleak prospect.
You may as well spend your time and energy trying to do something you like, because you're sort of stuck with it.
I appreciate you for the absolute honesty and having the brave heart to share your entire life story without holding anything to the entire internet. Oh man, this really got my tears out: > she told me that it made more sense for me to quit my job while she worked, so that I could spend all of my free time trying to get another tech job. So she alone carried us for several months.
That reflects how many people's experiences, especially in this job market.
>>> I cut the article out and put it in a documents folder.
Had to read this a couple of times, to let it sink in that he is cutting with scissors and placing this paper document in a manilla folder.
I’m curious (as a recovered alcoholic myself) how you got sober.
I'll be honest, a lot of it was my wife. And also hitting my lowest bottom after becoming homeless and penniless.
So a combination of looking at what I had done to myself + everyone around me and going "what the fuck." and my ever-vigilant wife who knew I had the capacity and desire to get better.
For me it really took literally losing everything.
Recovered opiate addict and for me it was a mix of everything: Some advice I had gotten from NA meetings, finally doing something about the other mental health issues I was dealing with, and most importantly: medications that prevented me from using (methadone/suboxone).
It was definitely a process (that included multiple jail stints and only god knows how many treatment centers), but 10 years later life is pretty awesome.
I think the stigma around methadone is causing a ton of harm. Having a program where you quite literally have to show up every day, take drug tests, and get counseling was really important.
Hell yeah, congrats on 10 years of living actual life.
Thank you!!! I commented too much on my account and have to use my alt-account, but I appreciate that.
I’ve been > 20 years sober. For me it was just music. I’m obsessed with a band who preaches sobriety in their lyrics and lifestyle.
the secret is to hate drinking and never drink
That would make sense, wouldn't it?
"Just say no"?
Sadly, it doesn't work. If you're an addict, you'll end up manifesting in one way, or many ways. Drugs aren't the only way that it expresses itself.
I hate alcohol. I always have. The taste makes me sick. The best way to ruin a dessert, is to pour expensive booze on it.
That didn't stop me from becoming a prize-winning lush, though.
The thing about addiction, is that it just doesn't make sense. It can't be understood, when looked at, through a rational lens.
That's a big reason that Recovery is difficult. It's also often badly supported by family members, who don't understand the mechanisms.
But that's a long story, for other venues. I am happy to read his story, and sincerely wish him luck.
I am recovering alcoholic and almost have two years sober but I can only imagine how hard it would be to quit if you loved alcohol, I hated it but was just physically addicted or something, just could not stop it was too fun, I have to use thc only now which has its own issues but will not affect my health in same way as alcohol did. Alcohol is too fun for me and hurts my family a lot
> The beginning of the end: The day I bought an Adderall from a classmate. When that amphetamine feeling kicked-in, it was as if life was perfect for the first time. I was happy, confident, felt I could do anything.
You know, I had a similar experience, but in my case I got an appointment with a psychiatrist afterwards, described the experience in detail, was given a computer test, diagnosed with ADHD, and then given a prescription. (Also in my case, I learned Adderall doesn’t actually feel great or help you if you take too much).
Take care of your kids. The war on drugs is stupid. Etc.
Poor kid just had ADHD and his whole life got ruined tha is to backwards prohibition
I'm going to be a bit insensitive, sorry.
I've read many similar stories, in nearly all of them a couple of helpful friends always show up to save the day. I find it absurd that some people consider this zero.
I too was bullied during all my childhood, I haven't had a single friend in my life, I can barely imagine the possibility of being able to ask a favor from someone and even receive something.
Having someone to rely on sounds luxurious to me. My life has been a series of rejections. Apart from that I was always healthy, able to provide for myself, but I don't have a story. Somehow I feel like that if I could start a new life, I would choose one like this guy's rather than relive mine.
I'm going to say this, and I mean it genuinely, so please do not find this insensitive:
What if you went to lunch with someone, and the first things they said to you were those 3 quotes at the top?
You'd probably much rather hear something like:
Even if we don't say things out loud, our mental states and attitudes are clear as day to others around us. You can tell when someone is upset, or having a bad day, without ever speaking to them.One of the most impactful things a mentor once told me is:
Look at the story you tell yourself today, in those quotes above.I want to genuinely ask you, to give "telling yourself a different story" a try. You might be surprised at how well you can "fake it 'til you make it!"
Sorry to hear that life has been a struggle for you and that you've not had a good support system to aid you.
But it doesn't have to stay that way -- every day you live & breathe is an opportunity to start the first chapter of a very different story...
I appreciate your comment.
Again, I'm sorry for venting. I was triggered, but didn't mean to downplay your experience.
I found that opening up to people about deep personal issues makes them steer clear even faster.
You don't have to apologize! Your feelings are yours, and if it's not hateful, no shame in expressing them
I really do think if you put your mind to shifting the framing/perspective of your feelings though, that you can have a much different future than past
Hoping things start to go your way, mate
(And yeah, definitely don't dump personal issues on new friends. I find that making friends is much easier if you ask thoughtful questions after listening to them and letting other people do most of the talking at first.)
(reviving an account this once to just say...) I've been lucky to work closely with Gavin at Hasura for years, and he is really a brilliant and versatile engineer, and is just a pleasure to work with. Great energy, down-to-earth, hilarious. If I had to assemble a "dream team" he would be on it for sure.
Thanks for sharing this part of your story dude!
Thank you Brandon, you're a good bit more talented than me in my $0.02 but it's been awesome to work with you, too =)
You are very brave in sharing all of this and you, as anybody else in your position, absolutely deserve a promising second chance. Keep rocking!
Open source has changed the life of so many, from so many situations. We should be proud of our industry. Together we built something beautiful
Good on him and shout out for Hasura as well, probably the most pleasant dev experience I had in past 10 years. It was so good, the startup I was at dropped it because CTO got scared that there was no work for the backend devs, ha.
I feel like US is ridiculously hard on even low grade drugs. Half of my high school would have gone to prison in the US.
Sending a 14 year old convicted of drug crimes anywhere but a location that will help them is bizarre. Sending them to a max security anything leaves me speechless.
Yeah I feel like there's less discussion than I expected of how many different things had to be done utterly ass backwards wrong by society for this guy to have his downward spiral in the first place.
Nice story, I don't personally agree with your choices but you are now back on the straight and narrow, big kudos to you and your wife.
This was a great story. Thanks for sharing it. I'm glad you found a way out; most people don't.
I created this account to convey my sincere gratitude. I needed to see this today and you've given me inspiration.
Thank you for sharing your story! I wish you continued success. Hope you keep building and keep inspiring
Is programming underrated art form when it comes to helping people come out of such situations? Addiction or depression.
It easier to get paid, you can be in a flow state for hours. Enough to forget about other addictions. and less likely to be high always while programming
It will even get to the point where you feel dependent on them to focus and "get things done", like being sober is a handicap.
Not really.
I'm a recovering addict, felon, and have depression (lucky me). And though there were times where I could work an entire weekend without stopping, it was always followed by 2-3 days of doing absolutely nothing because I was so dope sick/depressed. The worse my addiction got, the shorter the "flow" period and the longer the recovery period took.
I do think AI will eliminate software as a life path for folks like this.
wtf xd
This is a great story, thanks for sharing.
I have to know: how is your (now wife) doing?
Thank you for asking. I didn't want to disclose it publicly, but when we met she was in a very bad place in life and actually had a planned suicide date.
It wasn't until years later she told me this.
We were able to send her back to university a second time to study something she is passionate about; she has a great support network of friends and (my) family. (Her family are drug addicts and gang members, so my family has sort of adopted her. It's a bit sad but none of her family were invited to our wedding.)
She's unemployed, but she's trying, and she says she never imagined that she could be so lucky in life.
these are my favorite stories from HN.
similarly, i loved the story of the guy who got busted for running an illegal sports streaming site and was able to build himself back up.
hats off to you for your sobriety
I feel happiness reading stories like this. You proved to the world that you can become something great even when all the cards are stacked against you. I often feel despair when I think about where our society is heading, but there will always be people like you who are there to push back against all the wrongs in the world and make the best out of it.
I'm glad! It sounds really corny, but someone once told me "The only thing you can choose in life is your attitude."
Sometimes it felt like I'd never get a break, things wouldn't get better. But I tried to tell myself "Every occurrence in life is a numbers game. Against tiny odds, eventually enough attempts statistically OUGHT to pay off."
And the alternative is bleak, sort of sulking in this pit of despair without hope for tomorrow.
This was really encouraging to read. Appreciate the honesty and vulnerability. Keeo going, keep sober, and I hope your future stays bright.
thanks for sharing, Gavin. I'm sure this alone will help open doors for many others.
How can someone get up in such a difficult situation? That's impressive
Survivorship bias... many people don't, the stories of the few that do are impressive and worthy of hearing.
This is true. It requires a combination of luck, support, and persistence.
You can help cultivate "luck" to a degree by increasing your number of experiences. Every person you happen across could be the one to change your life, and every job application could be the one that calls you back. You never know who is standing next to you in line.
And "support" you can tilt in your favor by trying to be a genuinely good person and being pleasant to be around + making others feel good. Humans gravitate towards people that they like being around.
As others have said, thank you for sharing.
Every time I read stories like this my heart hurts. And I feel like I've been punched in the gut.
Every single time I read stories like this all my shit comes to the surface. Thank goodness for mental health professionals and prescription drugs.
No matter how I feel about your experiences, I want to know more. I want others to feel like they can share with people who are ready to listen and be supportive however we can.
Amazing sorry — thanks for sharing
Congratulations on your sobriety!!
have you been able to reconcile with your parents? thank you for sharing
I love this question! Because yes, this one has a happy ending =)
I had estranged my mother, didn't really talk to my adoptive father, and purposefully kept my maternal grandparents (who I am closest with) in the dark because I didn't want them to see me like this.
I also have 3 much younger sisters, who I didn't talk to for the same reasons as the grandparents.
I've made a HUGE effort to reconnect and make amends with my family. I'm on good terms with my parents and talk to both of them regularly, I explained to my grandparents after I got sober and visit them at least once a year, and I reconnected with my siblings who I now text regularly and we host a "sibling trip" where we get together over a weekend once each year.
I am very grateful that they saw my efforts and gave me a second chance. My oldest sister in particular was very wary.
As a libertarian right leaning guy I opened your story with pessimism but I really enjoyed it and greatly appreciated the personal responsibility you took in your situation. People should be inspired by this - it’s precisely because of personal responsibility that you are so successful.
> it’s precisely because of personal responsibility that you are so successful.
No it's not. It's absolutely not personal responsibility that gets people through addiction.
And if you read the entire article, this should stand out:
> I don't tell this story because I think it is clean, heroic, or universally applicable -- It isn't. I made TERRIBLE choices. I hurt people who loved me. I wasted chances that other people would have killed for. And even when I finally started doing the right things, I still needed luck, help, timing, forgiveness, and people willing to judge me by what I could do next instead of only by what I had done before.
That doesn't sound like personal responsibility that sounds like having people around you that stick around even after you mess up.
I've been an addict for over 20 years (and spent the last 10 clean). I've been in close to a dozen treatment centers. What set me apart from the others (and why I technically "made" it) had very little to do with me. What set me apart was having an insane support system and grace from people who loved me.
I think it's a bit of a mix of both.
I could not have climbed out of the hole I dug on my own, that I am almost CERTAIN of.
At the same time, if I had felt as though I were owed "more", and indignant about being "wronged", I think it would have made me slightly vindictive and less-positive.
To me, "Libertarianism" is about the power of personal-effort and opportunity. Not everything will pan out if you "just try hard and long enough", but at least THINKING it will (even if you know it's unlikely) feels like a better mindset to me than the alternative.
I was commenting too much, and thus can't reply with the same account, but I wanted to say I do agree with the fact that while you can't control what happened to you in the past (and maybe even what led you to drugs in the first place), your addiction is yours and having a victim-complex (warranted or not) is pretty detrimental to getting clean.
I was pretty fortunate in that while I may not have had the picture perfect childhood, my family was always there for me and in no way shaped my decisions to use. So even if I wanted to feel like a victim, I'd get snapped out of it pretty quickly.
When I look back at what set me apart from most others (I've been in numerous treatment centers, jails, and hundreds of NA meetings), the one thing that stood out to me the most was my support system. Others probably had a greater desire or more to lose, but because desire alone isn't enough, didn't always make it through. One example, my mom would drive hours each weekend to come visit me in treatment. That just didn't exist for the others I was there with.
I was fortunate to have the help of others ("No man is an island unto himself") but I do think that having the mindset of not being owed anything helped me keep a positive perspective when things were their worst.
I'm not political, but I would consider myself left-leaning Libertarian.
My mother is an Ayn Rand-loving die-hard Libertarian that was very active in politics. She gave me a lot of her books that I read in my youth.
I was raised in a very "The world owes you nothing, you only deserve what you earn." and "by your bootstraps" capitalist family.
(Family did not pay for my first car, my community college, etc. "Go get a job, you bum!")
The original libertarians were anarchists, which is as far to the left as you can get. They adoption of the term on the right seems to date from the 1970s. Anarchists would typically see this version as rule by the rich, privatized tyranny.
See how easy it was to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"
Well done, mate.
Good idea
So this guy was buying fake MDMA and reselling it as actual MDMA? What a scum bag
No, try reading it again.
"a legal "Research Chemical" with effects similar to MDMA (Methylone/bk-MDMA)"
Someone that is quick to assume without reading could easily make this mistake.. there are my research chemicals that are not technically categorized and not MDMA.
Read about Sasha to start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin
Yes, it was Methylone (and advertised as such, nobody cared as long as it worked). NBOMe was really popular in my town during my late teens as well for the same reasons.
RIP Sasha, PiHKaL and TiHKaL were, stereotypically, staple books on my shelf during adolescence.
Yes but if I’m buying MDMA, I don’t want to actually be consuming Methylone. Not sure why that’s hard to understand.
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I know a guy who bankrupted multiple businesses and is 34 time convicted felon and adjudicated rapist and he’s gone on to become president … don’t let your past control your future! /s
Sure, if you are in the same situation with access to loads of money and good connections, the sky's the limit.
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The ironic thing is, I work for one of those "AI Companies" ;^)
Claude Code and Codex have done most of my work for the last year, and with the pace of AI improvement, I'm not sure that you'd need (or even want) me in the mix.
From a business perspective, it makes a lot of financial sense, too.
I'm sure it's a limited amount of time before I'm dead weight, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, and I'll figure something out if/when it happens =)
My lived experience doesn’t care what the downvotes say (many here are privileged, after all), and it is only a matter of time imo unless something is done about the industry to change course.
> unless something is done about the industry to change course
There will be no change of course, sadly.
I see karma as form of a currency to afford getting downvoted. I actually don't mind the downvotes especially when it's followed by a comment on why. Helps me see parts I've missed.
I wouldn't internalize that idea too much. In a lot of countries traffic fines are a fixed amount, so some people feel like they don't have to respect traffic rules since they can afford to just pay the fine.
It's one way to process the negative feeling of being fined. But it doesn't really make the roads safer.
Goes both ways, if you're afraid of getting downvoted you might never find out that people actually agree with you, same goes with traffic tickets sometimes they don't make sense especially related to parking in crowded cities and ebikes, as long as you're not an asshole about it it's fine.
I find the downvotes excessive for this kind of thing. They are basically a censorship mechanism, enough downvotes and a comment will basically disappear. I've used it about twice since I got the ability several years ago, and both times it was somebody promoting a Trump-related conspiracy theory.
bad takes usually cap at around ~2-3, horrible takes or spam go all the way to -5 and die.
Maybe in some cases it stalemates at this 2-3 point, people downvoting because they disagree and people seeing it turn grey and upvoting.
Have an upvote. Sobriety is an expectation. I will say though that people I’ve known who went through the journey are some of the smarter people I’ve met. Not all of them, but the whole numbing yourself because your brain can’t quite understand all the thoughts it has, that’s a real thing. Probably sounds insane, but it’s real.
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By your own logic the man you 'commend' for turning his life around would be dead at 19 - every good thing he's done since, including the post you're replying to, exists only because nobody took your advice.
No, you are projecting your own opinion here. I've commended him for turning away from his wrong path while condemning him for his actions individually that have destroyed lives through the same exact suffering he experienced. I offered no advice.
The worldwide death penalty you're endorsing still kills him at 19, so you're commending a redemption your own proposal would have prevented.
You dont care that a drug traffiker kills/destroys countless lives?
Why not apply the same empathy for terrorists? Maybe they can turn their life around too.
A 14-year-old addict reselling Adderall to classmates to feed his own habit isn't a 'trafficker' who 'destroyed countless lives'
IF you read the full story that was his gate way drug and he graduated into selling hard drugs so he could use harder drugs.
It's incredibly sad to see people not realize that drugs can do enormous harm just as a terrorist would inflict upon the population.
The fact that people here are upset that other countries recognize the enormity of going easy on drug pushers but show no empathy for victims of drug use is quite telling.
the drugs he describes selling are prescription pills and a research chemical that was legal when he sold it, and his conviction was a 'low-grade felony'
Sorry I'm not dead (yet), maybe next go-round of the universe?
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I went to his profile and it's a pattern with him, low effort comments mixed with general rudeness
Got flagged for pointing this out.
He’s essentially telling this guy that he wishes he had been executed.
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Just the kind of victim the system loves.
lol what?