Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

by Steven Kotler

Or consider three substances that sit squarely inside the state’s pale: caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. The coffee break, smoke break, and happy hour are the most culturally enshrined drug rituals of the modern era, even though two of the three are top-ten offenders in Nutt’s rankings. There’s hardly a single workplace in the Western world that doesn’t, at least informally, support this triad. And for good reason. An optimally tuned market economy needs alert employees who work as hard as possible for as long as possible. So dedicated time-outs for stimulant consumption (that is, the coffee break and, these days, the e-cigarette break) are institutionally sanctioned and socially reinforced. Which is where the cocktails come in. Without the soothing effects of alcohol, the cigarettes-and-coffee workforce would become jittery wrecks within a fortnight. Add in some booze from time to time and you’ve got a finely tuned cycle of stimulation-focus-decompression that dovetails with broader economic goals. “In the competitive environment of the firm,” explains Intel researcher and author Melissa Gregg in the Atlantic,25 “it is little wonder that workers resort to performance-enhancing drugs. . . . When so many jobs require social networking to maintain employability, these mood enhancers are a natural complement to the work day after 5 p.m. In an always-on world, professional credibility involves a judicious mix of just the right amount of uppers and downers to remain charming.” ...