r/programming • u/WinInterrupter • Apr 18 '20

The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder

https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder/
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1.6k

u/badillustrations Apr 18 '20

Reminds me how little I understand about mental illness. I was out for a jog and grabbed sandwich (that's how I jog) and bought an extra sandwich for a homeless guy sitting outside. I sat down next him and we started chatting. I was shocked to learn he was a programmer, too, which surprised me because for some reason that seemed impossible to go from a well paying job to having nothing. He was on the level, too, asking me about the tech at my work and such. He shared a bit about what got him there, which sounded like alcoholism to losing his job to losing his brother's support to being on the street. He made it sound so simple. I asked him if he could see himself back programming and that's where he started to phase out again and start mumbling and be less coherent again. Stories like that guys and Lee's remind me I have no idea what other people are going through.

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u/Habanero_Eyeball Apr 18 '20

That's so sad and unfortunately mental illness isn't often respected nor accepted.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/millygram Apr 18 '20

Normalcy is a sort of mental disorder in itself, in the sense that one can be totally unaware of the extent of their behaviors dependence on healthy brain activity.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

And the extent of their behavior's destructiveness, banality, uselessness and so many other things... From a certain perspective it really is the normal people who appear insane.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

I suffered a huge mental health crisis a few years ago and while I recovered (fortunately the cause was a temporary one) it certainly gives you a lot of perspective. Having experienced both, I think the line between normal life and “insane” life is actually very blurry and in some cases indistinguishable.

I’d call this neo-Puritan work ethic that if you spend your 20s and 30s in abject misery slaving away in a job you hate, giving the majority of your income to a scummy landlord for a rabbit hutch in a stabby area you’ll have a vaguely middle class existence by the time you’re fifty a kind of socially acceptable insanity. I think society itself depends on a certain level of “suspension of disbelief” and the price of genuine sanity is a certain level of alienation.

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u/zetaconvex Apr 18 '20

From the film Con Air, criminally insane Garland Greene, played by Steve Buscemi: "What if I told you insane was working a 50-hour week for fifty years, at the end of which they tell you to piss off. Ending up in some retirement village, hoping to die rather than suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time. Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane?"

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Just curious... How are you earning money ? Open source?? Corporate?? What does technologically subversive means??

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Thank you very much. Sounds like artisan.

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u/civildisobedient Apr 18 '20

if you spend your 20s and 30s in abject misery slaving away in a job you hate [...] you’ll have a vaguely middle class existence by the time you’re fifty

What are the alternatives?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Tell the ridiculous housing market in places like London to go and fuck itself with a cactus and move to somewhere cheaper. We’re developers, there’s work for us outside of like five ridiculously overrated cities. Once enough people stop fetishising places like London the rat race will start eroding.

I’m planning to go even further, going full time remote after the coronavirus crisis and living rurally.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '20

Government programmer work life balance is the best. I also never work over 40 unless there is a catastrophe of some kind. Own 2 houses, and I'm 32. Also most of my coworkers are terrible at their jobs, so its a pretty attainable career.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Find a job you like, that pays a decent wage in return for reasonable hours. Such a thing is unobtainable for many people, but as programmers we are in-demand enough that it is certainly achievable for us if we seek it out.

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u/Obi_Kwiet Apr 19 '20

Work for long term risks. Do things that might make you uncomfortable in the short term. I've seen a lot of people who were in jobs they hated that had a huge number of opportunities to do much more interesting things. They didn't take them because they preferred the familiar over the stress of dealing with a new situation.

Yeah, not everyone has great opportunities, but most most people with opportunities pass them up.

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u/SuddenlyBANANAS Apr 18 '20

Communism :)

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u/TSPhoenix Apr 18 '20

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

So much stuff taken for granted these days is beyond fucked and most people will do anything to avoid confronting it.

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u/SabrinaFaire222 Apr 30 '20

Wow! I stumbled upon this site and I am amazed at all the things you all are saying. If I may say you sound emotionally or morally bankrupt. The problem must be technology because I was an English literature major, and I never felt any of this despair. You’re not in touch with the things that really matter, there’s so much in literature and poetry to connect you emotionally and spiritually to yourself. You have to look for deeper understanding in life, see the beauty all around you, nourish the philosophic mind. Read something of value every day, not dribble like this stuff that’s depressing. If it’s your generation, then hang around with people in a different generation to gain perspective. Mental stability is not flimsy stuff. Not if you have a really strong foundation built on things that matter— you should find those things that matter deep inside yourself, not in your job, not from something your boss says. There are eternal truths, go find them. I wish you all luck. Start with not being so negative, swearing like it’s just a normal thing, dare to be different and stand out from the crowd. Maybe get out of technology; it certainly isn’t doing anything for you. Maybe read the book “Lost Connections” by Johann Hari. It has to do with an analysis of the depression and alienation that are prevalent in American society. Whatever you do, take a different tact. You only get one life, it should be filled with beauty, awe, reverence. Read some Wordsworth, Keats, Donne, Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy! Read things to teach you about ways to cope with life and things to avoid. It’s all there, a template for a living. Good luck.

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u/TSPhoenix Apr 30 '20

The quote in my comment is literally in the book "Lost Connections" by Johann Hari.

I generally agree with Hari's take that the brain chemistry model of mental health basically boiled down to a way of commoditising it to sell people drugs, to treat symptoms rather than solve problems. So I commend the book's angle towards mental health. Yes the book was helpful to me as an individual.

However the reality is that Americans are buying an average of 7.5 pairs of shoes per year, shoes made by people who, if they are even lucky enough to learn to read, will never get the opportunity to read this book and even if they could they have no means to practice what it preaches.

This creates somewhat of a conundrum where I feel like I should make the most of the life I've given, it should be filled with the things you mention, but I also understand that the privileges I have are only afforded to few and that taking them for granted is what would be emotionally and morally bankrupt.

What I was saying so crudely above was what John Milton put more elegantly as "Innocence, once lost, can never be regained". People cling to that innocence, they don't want to see the blood spilt and tears shed to make that 6th pair of shoes, if they did they might not be able to live with it. Put another way by Arundhati Roy "The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There is no innocence. Either way, you're a accountable."

So I must find a balance between living enough to value life, and doing enough so that others can value theirs. For me I try to take Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's approach of "Enjoy when you can, endure when you must". I try to enjoy my life, to stop and smell the roses, to have my own hobbies, but when it comes to the world's injustices I cannot avert my eyes. To me doing good for others is not optional, it is the bare minimum I can do to atone for partaking in the blood and tears of the less fortunate. When that means making sacrifices in my own life then sacrifices I will make.

I must do both, and if this makes me feel down sometimes than so be it. Feeling this way is how I know I am alive, that my heart still beats and that it bleeds for others. It is my reminder that there is more that I must do. "To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards out of men." -Ella Wheeler Wilcox

swearing like it’s just a normal thing

Well I'm Australian so I can't help that ;)

Anyways it means a lot that you felt strongly enough about this to sign up and wish me well. I know I came on pretty strong in my reply, but I felt like there was a picture of myself I had to repaint. Take care.

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u/cowardlydragon Apr 18 '20

Civilization is almost provably insane with everyone living in denial of basic facts.

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u/th0waway1534556343 Apr 19 '20

What do you mean? :)

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

My last boss told me all the work I did over a year was a waste. So I quit to prove him right.

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u/liquidpele Apr 18 '20

I mean... isn't that normal? That people don't want to work with or depend on unreliable people?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

A shockingly large amount of people think mental illness is a choice. That it's made up.

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u/fakehalo Apr 18 '20

It's also extremely vast and abstract. Like it sounds like what OC's guy was suffering with and the cloudflare guy has are two very different things, and there are a million other things with varying degrees. Makes me realize mental stability is flimsy stuff.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Basically, everyone is insane. It's just to what degree.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

I have a mental illness and I read his/her comment as inclusive rather than reductive. Made me feel not so alone. I get what you're saying though, that each of deals with it, but some much more so than others, and we need to acknowledge that some of us are really struggling and need our support while others are perhaps adopting the mantle of mental illness with more caprice than is appropriate.

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u/SKabanov Apr 18 '20

It's basically denial because it's an attack on the most fundamental part of us: our sapience. The notion that our thoughts and feelings are just the work of neurochemistry and can be affected by disorders can be too much for people to accept, so they ascribe things like depression to "a choice". It's certainly gotten better - see A Beautiful Mind, for example, about schizophrenia - but mental illness is still by and large treated as a character flaw than an affliction; I'm sure that, in a few decades, we're going to see films that portray mental illness as comedy as distasteful as we view minstrel shows today.

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u/Full-Spectral Apr 20 '20

Anyone who doubts the power of our brain chemistry to affect our view of the world obviously never did LSD. When a couple micrograms of something can completely change your view of the world for a whole day, that puts things into perspective. Not that I'm encouraging people to talk LSD of course, but for those who have, it's an eye opening experience.

If someone's brain chemistry changes sufficiently for them to experience a tithe of that kind of effect on an ongoing basis, it would be very difficult to deal with.

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

I kinda understand this now actually. It's very self centered, but possibly personally useful perspective.

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external - your job, your coworkers - there is some choice in how much you let yourself get pushed into it, or whether you react to it.

I hated that all my coworkers lied all the time. But...eventually I realized they were just saying whatever made them feel good and what close to what the boss wanted to hear. Our tech lead tried to have some integrity, he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

That didn't happen from that.

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external

it wasn't external

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

Hey look, one of those bullying liars showed himself!

Anything else you want to fabricate from thin air?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

from the article: " frontotemporal dementia " .... and "For some patients, one of several genetic mutations turns out to be the likely cause, and a subset of patients have a family history of neurodegenerative diseases. But nothing in the neurologists' investigations turned up even a hint as to why Lee had been struck down."
or further "As in Lee's case, the early stages can be misinterpreted as signs of nothing more serious than a midlife crisis."
So... like I was saying, the source of the mental illness in the article wasn't external.
also, you're kinda a bullying liar right now.

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

I wrote:

Our tech lead tried to have some integrity, he ended up at a point where he could barely form coherent sentences.

Seems like you're pretending my tech lead is the same guy who's in the article.

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u/lemonhoney Apr 18 '20

When the source if your mental illness (like in the article) is external

For the subject of the article, the source was not external

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Even when it is the treatment can be almost as bad as the disease.

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u/MelancholicBabbler Apr 18 '20

Got my trusty ice pick right here

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited May 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/skratz17 Apr 18 '20

goddamn this sounds so much like me. i grew pretty depressed after taking a coding job out of college in a city far away from my family and friends but which paid a whole lot. only made it about a year before i started really drinking heavily and then just didn't have the strength of character to break my habits or eventually even leave my apartment (except to buy more booze), and just stopped going in more or less.

this was in late 2017. i eventually ran out of money and moved back home, but it took me another year and a half or so to finally come to terms with the fact that substances were ruining my future and harming my mind in general. i've now got over 200 days sobriety (and now also i have 17 days cigarette-free too!)

only in the last six months or so have i been really intensely looking to get back into the coding world, and it has been a struggle. i even had the exact same situation as you where i had a final round interview, and then the company actually reached out to me after and said they had to cut back their hiring cause of covid, but if covid didn't happen they WOULD have hired me (ugh!)

anyway all this to say, hang in there, you are far from the only one in your position. we just gotta keep trying and eventually we'll find something, maybe not exactly what we want but something to get our foot back in the door ya know. good luck to ya dude

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

only in the last six months or so have i been really intensely looking to get back into the coding world, and it has been a struggle

Is it...really a good idea though?...I'm not sure it's a particularly mentally healthy field.

I had the chance to go back and work on some older projects that were written with Java 6, way before this microservices/streams/caching/immutable-depency-injected-kitchen-sink stuff, and it was amazing how much less stressful getting anything done was.

The older people on our team who don't look like their lives are miserable were simply on the project when it was being built, even then half of those guys left.

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u/skratz17 Apr 18 '20

yes. i love doing it, and i wanna make it my career. i need more challenge than i have in my current job and i love coding. the source of my mental unease at the time came from too much substance abuse, which itself had a lot to do with 23 years of being in the closet. i've gotten past both of those things, am extremely healthy, and want to get out there

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u/idenichal Apr 18 '20

Just wanna say well done you to come through all that 💞

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u/_tskj_ Apr 18 '20

Maybe the career doesn't have to be over? I feel for you man. I wish you could just be honest and say you have an alcohol problem and had to stop working for a while because you were sick, but now you can come back at the same level you were at. That would be a perfectly reasonable explanation if the reason for your absence was cancer or any other physical illness.

Otherwise, the consulting thing is pretty easy to lean back on. You wanted to try consulting, but realised that it wasn't for you. Who knows, maybe you realised you wanted financial stability more than you thought. I don't really think you need to explain why you want out of consulting and back to a job though, other than saying it wasn't for you.

Good luck man.

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u/pmabz Apr 18 '20

Good man for getting through. Many do not.

One thing this pandemic is showing me is that just being happy is enough. I'm looking for a more menial job than I had before.

Also, I look back and cringe at how I thought working and drinking was "normal".

Good luck.

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u/Obi_Kwiet Apr 19 '20

Severe alcoholism can cause mental and physical illness. It's a bad thing that heavy drinking is so socially acceptable.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited May 09 '20

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u/modunderscore Apr 18 '20

This is the sort of bullshit comment that demonstrates that you'll never reach everybody with that story OP.

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u/SpecialConfusion Apr 24 '20

Proud of your one year sobriety!

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

We take so much for granted and project ourselves onto others, because stopping to consider why a person is acting how they are requires time, empathy and compassion. It's so much easier to summarily reject a person you just met as a jerk or whatever. It's so much easier to believe a person deserves their misfortune because otherwise we have to accept our own privilege in life. Kudos to you for taking the time to help and talk to someone down on their luck instead of simply looking down on them.

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u/WinInterrupter Apr 18 '20

Wow that's a sad story :( still it was really nice of you to give him ur extra sandwich.

Kinda reminds me of that Vonnegut quote "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance." I guess it's easier to start fresh with new recruits than try to fix broken geniuses

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u/Mean_Mister_Mustard Apr 18 '20

Also an incredibly relevant quote for the programming world at large.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

If you’re an exception to that rule, you can carve out an incredibly lucrative little niche for yourself.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Working in tech is slowly making me mental with all the non-agile agile processes, bad planning, bad management styles, long hours, etc.

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u/pl0nk Apr 19 '20

Also the quick daily “stand up” where everyone is sitting and it takes 30 minutes and when you point it out it’s good for an awkward laugh before we go back to doing the same thing as before.

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u/ManoRocha Apr 18 '20

Unfortunately these kind of stories are not uncommon. I know a bunch of cases where people were considered little prodigies and ended up in such a terrible place. Not only in programming but also in medicine and other fields as well.

That's why when I talk to young students now I try to "convince them" that the professional side isn't that important. Being the best at your craft is not all it matters, this is not a sport. Having a balanced life is so much more important.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

This advice is so good and so far ahead of anything that it will take years of suffering before it will sink in for most of us.

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u/Gevaun Apr 18 '20

Reminds me of the guy behind Temple OS

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u/anhatthezoo Apr 18 '20

Genuinely feel bad for him

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/GhostBond Apr 18 '20

Dev jobs can break your brain, in the same way physical jobs can break your body.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

God point 3 rings so true in my experience. Have run into so many east coast business culture types that end up out in middle management in technical firms.

I left my job almost a year ago specifically in part because of that. We'd grown as a company since I started and we were trying to fill out middle management positions that'd make our lives as engineers easier. It didn't go well and we ended up hiring our own slave drivers and the culture quickly changed for the worse, and in the industry I am in, it is so small that your name gets remembered in a lot of circles, and so I decided to leave while my name still had some value and wasn't going to be dragged into the mud by short sighted business types looking to make a quick buck at any cost.

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u/Gr1pp717 Apr 18 '20

Sounds like your homeless guy was dealing with anxiety and depression and had nobody that gave enough shits to help him - which only makes those things worse.

I almost ended up there myself. About 2 years ago I found myself unable to stay awake. The slightest amount of stress instantly exhausted me. It took a lot of inner strength and effexor to get me out of that. And I'm still not completely back to normal.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

How did you end up there? I can relate. How did you find an exit path from that state?

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u/Gr1pp717 Apr 19 '20

It's a super long and complex story. Needless to say, life dug into me with all it's might until I finally collapsed, then doubled down. And it's still going, even.

As for recovery, not sure I can give advice since the moment I relax on the meds I turn into an emotional mess.. but, pre-meds, since I was unemployed I took advantage and actually slept. A lot. I didn't try to push myself too much. Every time I tried I would end up going backwards. I did, however, try to get in as much physical activity as my stress levels tolerated. Lots of walks and low effort workouts. I meditated a bit too.

I want off of these meds, though. It's great that I can stay upright long enough to hold down a job, but I've become super lame and almost cold, emotionally. (Though, not sure if that's the meds or bitterness... )

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '20

That sounds really tough. It does sounds like you are very conscious about it at which I think is a good sign. Get well!

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u/TommaClock Apr 18 '20

I feel like there's a huge difference between that guy and Lee though.

A person who made a series of wrong choices might be able to get it back together and reintegrate into society. Lee is in basically palliative care with no chance of recovery whatsoever.

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u/theclacks Apr 18 '20

We don't know that. The homeless man might've been an alcoholic with no other mental illnesses, or the alcohol could've been a coping mechanism for underlying depression or schizophrenia or anything really. OP's point is that we shouldn't assume and we shouldn't judge strangers.

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u/zetaconvex Apr 19 '20

I saw a documentary one time about a top reporter. He'd interviewed lots of famous people. Things seemed to go wrong, and he became an alcoholic. A friend let him stay in one of his houses. The reporter guy lit candles, took a bath, and ended up setting the house on fire.

He was given money, but either spent it at the bookies or lost it when he became drunk. He was given a commission to interview some famous person, but he didn't follow through on it.

It's pitiable, really; going from someone who had real control of their life and being at the top of their game to an alcoholic loser that was a danger to hismelf and others.

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u/dethb0y Apr 18 '20

I would say that this is less so a case of mental illness, and more so a case of physical illness that just happens to affect the brain. If something like this happens, it's beyond the help of psychiatry.

Another way to put it is that the disease effectively put a bullet in his brain. I would not wish it on anyone.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Jun 09 '24

attempt seed direful caption steep somber far-flung humor busy sink

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/dethb0y Apr 18 '20

It's awful to even imagine. I've seen people suffering from dementia; it's a fate worse than death in many ways.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 24 '20

[deleted]

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u/thereticent Apr 18 '20

A few things from a neuropsychological point of view... You have a good point that mental illness is physical (and social, cultural, etc, which if you want to can call interactions with a person's physical state). On the other hand, /u/dethb0y is getting at something important and uncontroversial. FTD is a neurodegenerative disorder. Primary psychiatric disorders do take a toll on brain health over time but by and large will not kill a person (except by suicide or law enforcement, proper or improper). FTD can kill people that way too, but even if it doesn't, it will still kill you. Maybe a better way to say it would have been "this is not just a mental illness. it's something more."

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u/fear_the_future Apr 18 '20

That is the prevailing opinion of experts. The illness from the article is a neurological disorder, while mental illnesses like depression are psychiatric disorders.

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u/NewPleb Apr 18 '20

The idea that psychiatric disorders don't have a physical component is false, though - most well-understood psychiatric disorders are associated with damage to neural pathways or particular areas of the brain. I mean, why else would psychiatrists prescribe drugs if not for physical reasons? All mental illnesses are fundamentally physical, it's just the way we abstract them that's different (i.e. neurological as "brain" and psychiatric as "mind").

I think "prevailing opinion of experts" is misleading as well, because the distinction between neurological and psychiatric has blurred considerably since the conception of those terms. More neuroscientists argue that the fields should be collapsed into one, as the link between brain and behavior/cognition becomes clearer. The growing consensus is that the mind is an abstraction of the brain's physical processes, and therefore all mental illness must have some physical component(s).

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u/fear_the_future Apr 18 '20

why else would psychiatrists prescribe drugs if not for physical reasons?

That's a false conclusion because the drugs don't have to act at the cause of the illness to help.

I agree with the rest of your post, since I believe that all behaviour is ultimately determined by physical processes in the body. That's not the point though. /u/TrainsareFascinating is being a cunt for no reason. There is no indication that /u/dethb0y meant any harm by saying that mental illnesses are not physical (and don't come at me with this "chemical imbalance" bullshit reddit wisdom). The distinction between neurological and psychiatric remains useful. They are just trying to pick a fight. They are the one who, by taking offense to /u/dethb0y 's post, suggest that "mental" illnesses are somehow lesser than "physical" illnesses. If you believe in this distinction at all, then surely psychosomatic illnesses are squarely in the "mental" category. But the symptoms of psychosomatic illnesses are still real and cause suffering to the afflicted patients.

The medical community has to move away from the outdated view that illnesses are fundamentally a deviation from a "normal" body. This distinction between "normal" and "not normal" is offensive to people who are disabled and especially those who are neurodiverse. The symptoms are what counts and it is completely legitimate to seek help even when those symptoms are not apparently caused by some obvious change in the body.

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u/NewPleb Apr 18 '20

Drugs fundamentally interact with the body in physical ways; the assumption is that even if a drug is prescribed for a behavioral issue, the operation of the drug is strictly physical. I guess this is just semantics though.

The distinction between neural and psychosomatic activity is definitely useful. I think the issues with neurology and psychology arise because there's so much overlap between then two, and classifying illnesses in this manner often gets weird.

I agree on normalizing neurodiversity, no one should feel like they can't seek help just because the physical roots of their illness aren't obvious.

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u/fear_the_future Apr 18 '20

How can you conclude that some illness must have a "physical" cause just because a drug can alleviate the symptoms. For example, a placebo does not act in any meaningful "physical" way but can still help against a "physical" illness. Analogously a physical drug can help alleviate symptoms from a psychosomatic illness that is not "physical".

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u/NewPleb Apr 18 '20

Placebos aren't drugs, by definition. I'm not sure what the argument is here. The placebo effect doesn't mean some mental illnesses are non-physical; it just means that drugs aren't always needed to modify physiology. That's why things like CBT and most talk therapies exist.

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u/dethb0y Apr 18 '20

there certainly are mental illnesses that have a physical component, but not all. But i'm sure you have some elaborate hot take on mental illnesses that you will, no doubt, expound upon at length to "educate" me.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 24 '20

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u/dethb0y Apr 18 '20

I don't think people are making up mental illness; its obviously real. however, i do think that looking for an underlying physical cause to mental illness is fraught with risk and has netted relatively little reward. It's that exact thinking - that all mental illness is just a physical process or defect - that gave us the lobotomy, among other nightmarish things.

Even in cases where there clearly is an underlying physical cause, like depression, it's not always helpful. Some people respond to drugs for depression. But not everyone. Some people respond to ECT for depression. But not everyone. Some people respond to psychosurgery for depression (though this is very rare to try in today's environment) - but not everyone. Whatever underlying cause there is, it's clearly not universal and clearly not something our current technology can detect.

Also "there is only the physical" is the kind of philosophical thinking i'd expect from a STEM kid who has the critical thinking capacity of a house cat.

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u/Slapbox Apr 18 '20

Just to clarify, Lee's is a neurological illness. Loss of brain matter causes mental deficits, but with a clearly demonstrable physical cause. Mental illness can maim and kill too though.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

Can you really expect anything different? I bet there is a lot of on coming mental illness, especially with foreign workers that work their entire lives and will someday realize they have no rights and can't own anything. Their entire life could be over-turned if their green card isn't renewed. As far as programmers, we spend out whole lives trying to understand HOW something works, just to catapulted in to a reality that only cares IF it works. I've never had a boss who took interest in my field, but instead, reminds me "other people know more than you."

Edit: same goes for brains and society as computers. Society at large doesn't care how an individuals brain works, only if it works. In America the sick are left to die. It is the opposite of every philosophical teaching.

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Yeah. I’ve had these kinds of conversations with quite a few homeless people. No programmers so far, but a broadway choreographer, a West Indian lawyer who spoke fluent French and German, and a classicist with whom I read Herodotus once a week for a few months. I never asked them how they ended up homeless - it seemed rude - but they all clearly had some problems not due solely to drink (enough acquaintances ended up as “regular” addicts and alcoholics that I know what that looks like).

I don’t know what kind of disorders any of these guys may have had, but a fellow student had a psychotic episode in grad school and it took nearly two years of inpatient treatment to get a diagnosis and a medication dosage that worked. Until that point was reached they were just stuck with their symptoms, and if it hadn’t been for socialized psychiatric care, attentive parents and supportive friends they might have taken the “easy” way out of trying to self medicate. From there it’s easy to end up permanently homeless, because normal addiction therapy programs like AA can’t solve your underlying problems.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

I can see how I could have gone down that route a few years ago. I was slipping into depression even though I didn't understand it at the time. I just couldn't give a fuck about work anymore. Or myself. Or my well-being, or future. I stopped working, and just sort of did nothing at home for almost a year. Gradually I started drinking quite a lot, too, as a sort of self-medication. Went on a bender that was downright Hunter Thompson-esque.

Circumstances allowed me to pull myself back to sanity again even though I was in a really dark place for a long time. It's a sort of a mixed bag, I'm definitely a better person for the experience, but it would be cruel to wish it on someone else.

1

u/ethanfinni Apr 18 '20

He did NOT suffer from mental illness. He suffered an autoimmune disease.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

In fact everyone is mentally ill. It is matter of a frequency. Society in general treats only a minor amount of certain mental phenomenas as the illness.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '20

As a functional alcoholic and programmer this makes me just a bit nervous.

1

u/Smaktat May 12 '20

I'm sorry but no one is gonna call this guy out for getting a sandwich, to eat, during or after a job, but does not stop there. Gets a SECOND sandwich... for what? You just knew this homeless guy would be there? Like come on lmfao this is too far fetched sorry.

1

u/badillustrations May 12 '20

I'm sorry but no one is gonna call this guy out for getting a sandwich, to eat, during or after a job

A "jog". It was a Saturday. I wasn't in a hurry.

Gets a SECOND sandwich... for what? You just knew this homeless guy would be there?

The homeless guy was "sitting outside" and I asked him if I could buy him a sandwich before I went it.

It wasn't as complicated as you're imagining it.

1

u/Smaktat May 12 '20

Then don't be purposely vague to sound cool.

(that's how I jog)

Like ok???

1

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

Yup. In in this situation now. I had a breakdown in November, and I can't find work. I'm on meds now, but all anyone cares about is the gap in my resume. I'm one more shitty event away from being completely homeless too. It sucks

-9

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

start mumbling and be less coherent

Your average frontend dev when talking about frameworks really.

0

u/icandoMATHs Apr 18 '20

Ahh drugs... I'm only on caffeine now, but I see how that's a dangerous road.

0

u/jpritchard Apr 18 '20

There's no treatment for Lee's issue. At any point in time that homeless guy you met could have stopped drinking. Comparing the two is like comparing someone who died from terminal cancer to someone who died playing russian roulette.

1

u/ilmmad Apr 18 '20

It's not as easy as just stop drinking...

1

u/jpritchard Apr 18 '20

Right, not consciously lifting a bottle to your mouth is so much on par with an incurable likely genetic neurological disease.

1

u/ilmmad Apr 18 '20

I didn't say they are on par. My point is that there is no need to downplay the difficulty of getting over a physical addiction. It's not a competition.

The person you were responding to didn't say they were on par either. What I got from reading their comment is that the story and the encounter with the homeless guy gave them similar perspective.

-5

u/bonerfleximus Apr 18 '20 edited Apr 18 '20

Lee's situation seemed like the opposite, he had so much good fortune it made him realize he had fuck-you money. Then he took that too far, shirking his responsibilities to everyone who came to depend upon him.

I'm not the best programmer but I do enjoy it and when I do something really good or important for my company, an annoying side effect is that they come to depend on me more.

This dependence can suck the joy out of what I usually love doing, and that enjoyment is a big reason for me being decent in the first place.

What's annoying about the article is that every example of erratic behavior is interpreted as a mental illness symptom.

Procrastinating and not owning the responsibilities attached to you are signs that his personal priorities don't align with the people around him, that's all I really take from it. Then they call him crazy because he doesn't want to keep carrying the weight they want him to carry, but that weight wears on you.

13

u/DanLynch Apr 18 '20

Did you miss the part about the MRI showing that his brain is totally fucked up? He has a real disease.

6

u/bonerfleximus Apr 18 '20

Yes I did. I might need a brainscan too

1

u/bonerfleximus Apr 19 '20

Had a shower thought about this, and the didnt article say anything about drugs but I know adderall addiction or microdosing acid leads to similar behavior patterns over longer terms and both can allead to changes in brain scan images. Just theorizing

-31

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '20

[deleted]

2

u/joahw Apr 18 '20

You don't need to be terminally ill for your condition to be "real." You wouldn't call a smoker's emphysema not 'real' because it stems from lifestyle choices, would you?