There are several topics here that are related in this community.
1) Hacking your mind/body through the use of physical/mechanical environment changes: meditation, exercise, diet, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this.
2) Hacking your mind/body through the use of Over-The-Counter chemicals: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, roots, nootropics, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this.
3) Hacking your mind/body through the use of prescription drugs: adderall, opiates, etc. Some hackers do this, many have probably experimented at one time or another and walked away. (They are hackers, after all)
4) Classic drug addiction, which is where all the drama is. I've been in the business a long time and haven't seen a lot of junkies -- but I've seen many folks who looked unstable one way or another and drugs may have been the cause. Don't know.
My point is this: the hacking community screws around with stuff, including their own bodies, all the time. It's the mindset. There are HNers right now that can tell you to the gram how much protein, carbohydrates, and fiber they've consumed in the last month, along with providing you a chemical analysis of their stool. We're an odd bunch.
This entire thread is probably being massively selection biased by one crowd that wants to costly signal their purity by talking about how no one they know does things in that nebulous 'drugs' category and they would never consider it. And then it's being selection biased by another set that wants to countersignal their insight by talking about how actually, everyone secretly does drugs, how do you think people manage those all nighters, clearly they sit on a throne of stimulants.
I suspect the reality is less dramatic. ADHD is one of the most common adult mental disorders, just on this basis alone we should expect a lot of basically non-abusive stimulant use (and some basically abusive stimulant use, it is an addictive drug after all). My informal impression is that ADD is more common than base rate in programmers, I don't have any formal proof of this but the LessWrong Community survey indicates a rate far above normal.
Of course, that almost certainly has other selection biases involved than just being a computer programmer.
Beyond that you have a large number of people who are higher on Big Five Openness than normal, and are probably willing to take substances in a cautious way for benefit. The entire 'nootropics' strain is testimony to this particular brand of cultural oddity. I suspect these people are distinct from the sort of people you normally think of as meth junkies.
And then of course, nobody wants to talk about this but even just reading hacker news you'll get people occasionally come onto anon accounts to discuss their struggle with heroin or ridiculously unhealthy doses of stimulant drugs. These people are often invisible because their sort of drug use is not fashionable, and so it's often assumed that they simply don't exist in polite society. They of course do, and I suspect their mindset and lifestyle look different from the groups mentioned above.
1) Hacking your mind/body through the use of physical/mechanical environment changes: meditation, exercise, diet, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this.
2) Hacking your mind/body through the use of Over-The-Counter chemicals: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, roots, nootropics, and so forth. A lot of hackers do this.
3) Hacking your mind/body through the use of prescription drugs: adderall, opiates, etc. Some hackers do this, many have probably experimented at one time or another and walked away. (They are hackers, after all)
4) Classic drug addiction, which is where all the drama is. I've been in the business a long time and haven't seen a lot of junkies -- but I've seen many folks who looked unstable one way or another and drugs may have been the cause. Don't know.
My point is this: the hacking community screws around with stuff, including their own bodies, all the time. It's the mindset. There are HNers right now that can tell you to the gram how much protein, carbohydrates, and fiber they've consumed in the last month, along with providing you a chemical analysis of their stool. We're an odd bunch.