How sober should a writer be?

conception

Intoxication is basically the “temperature“ setting on a writer.

garbagewoman

Reductive

speedgoose

If you get a watch that measures heart rate variability (HRV), you will notice that alcohol is significantly reducing it, which is associated with a lot of things you don’t wish to yourself. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of alcohol.

So how sober has a simple answer if you care about your health : fully sober.

golson_kindmind

A perfectly valid comment, no critique.

The way I see it / choose to live my life, not that it’s the “right” way: I enjoy certain things, like wine, in moderation that may have some detrimental health effects. However, a glass of wine and a nice sunset is something that brings me a lot of joy. I’d argue that a certain degree of “ah, fuck it” is psychologically healthy which can improve overall health.

I also have a bourbon and cigar on Sunday nights, usually paired some Jazz or an old movie. Sometimes I put butter on my bread even though it’s “bad” for my arteries. Let the chips fall where they may.

herodoturtle

HN poetry right here.

Thanks for sharing.

loeg

I don't think alcohol-lowered HRV is particularly meaningful for health outcomes. HRV is lower when you're sick; the causality probably goes the other way.

colechristensen

I've had several relatives live to quite advanced age drinking more than a person should so I'm not particularly interested in theories about how my heath demands teetotalism. Great if it works for you or you personally need to do it, not everybody does.

I have a watch that measures HRV and have seen nothing that seems a signal linked to behavior.

vasco

> if you care about your health : fully

If you care ONLY about your health

yohannesk

But is that even true? If you get enjoyment out of a drink in moderation, that affects your mental health which in turn affects your physiological health no? So maybe it's not healthy for all individuals to abstain completely. I don't drink except on holidays/events with friends or family where I can get the effects in 1 or 2 beers haha

zer00eyz

A surprising number of my colleagues over the years have been know to dabble in all sorts of things to "enhance performance".

Adderall: at one point in time I think half the engineers in the bay were popping these. They were practically free and available everywhere during the dot com bubble recovery.

Weed: A good number of JS engineers I know are just miserable people to work with till they smoke a joint.

Drinking: From casual to alcoholics, drinking culture used to be huge in many bay area offices. This has died down... still there but more discrete.

LSD: there is a shocking amount of this, your average dev team likely has someone who micro-doses if not more...

Cocaine and MDMA have gone the way of the dodo: fent made them mostly non starters.

b_e_n_t_o_n

Not sober at all

I write my best code a little tipsy

chao-

Hmm... I do a decent job at new, exploratory library code with a glass of wine. Not business logic, not exacting data invariants, nothing I would ever ship to production, but exploring interfaces for a library? Yeah. Asking "What does this really need to do? How do I really wish that I could write the calling/collaborating code?"

I wouldn't trust logic I wrote with alcohol in my system, or any tests that I wrote with alcohol, but getting at the heart of "Why does this library need to exist? What should it actually allow?" is enhanced a tiny bit by a mildly-altered mental state.

Over time, I've decided that it is because I get chatty with wine, and designing a library interface feels like a conversation between me and future engineers who might use said library. And then I stash it away to read and reconsider while sober.

colechristensen

A touch of alcohol turns the overthinking volume down which often leads to more productivity and better code. A not so uncommon ADHD experience. In university of course also sometimes I would do my programming drunk and the result would regularly be that it worked but the solutions would be very odd.

Standard ADHD meds often lead to playing Factorio for 17 hours in a row and forgetting to eat.

chao-

>Standard ADHD meds often lead playing Factorio for 17 hours in a row and forgetting to eat.

Ain't that the truth.

zer00eyz

The entirety of the dot com bubble recovery was powered by adderall, weed and booze.

free_bip

So the Ballmer peak is real?

user_7832

I thought that he was associated more with coke?

Though both of them can combine for a very interesting experience, or so I've heard...

(Nerd snipe: cocethelyne is uniquely cardiotoxic, and is somehow even worse than cocaine. Even amphetamine salts are "healthier".)

chatmasta

> cocethelyne is uniquely cardiotoxic, and is somehow even worse than cocaine

Cocethelyne is the result of mixing cocaine with alcohol… should I be surprised that cocaine plus another substance is worse than cocaine?

estimator7292

It's an xkcd reference

estimator7292

It really is

laptopdev

Well, I know how sober a driver should be...

freetime2

I have very little desire to read a novel centered around drinking or drug use in 2025. That subject has been covered pretty extensively - and the writers who explored it have mostly either found moderation in their later years or paid a significant price.

A lot of us are drinking less, but I’m not sure we’ve really come up with a suitable replacement yet - socially speaking. I would be more interested to explore that.

pjerem

> A lot of us are drinking less, but I’m not sure we’ve really come up with a suitable replacement yet - socially speaking.

I have had interesting experiences with low (but not micro) doses of LSD. It felt way more interesting than alcohol and way more safe and you can be much more functional than with alcohol while having a great time.

But the effects are way too long (~8 to 10 hours at low doses) to be a good alcohol replacement at social settings.

mysecretaccount

What is "low but not micro"? 80ug?