Launching and managing your own startup is undeniably stressful with all the comprehensive studies, feasibility studies, marketing planning, and funding involved in maintaining a startups success and profitability. Eventually, it takes a toll on your physical, emotional, and mental health. It gives the founders the ‘valid’ reasons for them to resort to drug use; some use drugs for recreational purposes only and the others are actually convinced that it will contribute a lot to effective management tactics.
To shed light on this topic, we have listed down how drugs can affect your mind when it comes to managing your startup:
1. The speculation on how drugs supposedly contribute more to one’s creativity
Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Kurt Cobain, and Heath Ledger: these are all household names of people who are masters of their own unique craft but they all have one thing in common substance abuse. It is quite general knowledge that the geniuses and icons of the past have been linked to drug use and consequently, it helped to contribute a lot to their works which have been celebrated to this day and for the generations to come.
With almost all the information available on the Internet, you’d think that a topic would have hundreds of references to the effects of drugs and its connection to creativity. The truth is, however, there are only 14 empirical studies and 5 case studies on this subject matter and all of which are proving that the speculation is false.
So how can drugs really help you in terms of the creative side of managing your startup? No one really knows, but this artist surely has expounded on that by trying different drugs and painting a self-portrait during each trip to further illustrate how it alters your own perception of reality.
2. It heightens your focus
If there’s a certain group of people who are smothered with responsibilities such as keeping one’s own social life afloat while making sure they stay active in their respective organizations and at the same time, always being ready to study during the wee hours of the morning for that 9 am exam it’s the college students.
It is no secret that being in college is a doorway to experimentation and with the long pile of materials to study for, these young adults resort to what we can call as “study drugs.” The purpose? They heighten your focus to quickly breeze through different tasks without being distracted, which sounds like it’s something you would need in managing your startup.
But that study drug is just a collegiate term for the drug prescribed to those who are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), one called Adderall. It is supposed to lengthen attention span, provide impulse control and self-discipline, and manage hyperactivity. While the benefits surely sound tantalizing to the founders of their own startup, the side effects can be risky on one’s own long-term health:
- Increased blood pressure
- Irregular heartbeat
- Anxiety
- Paranoia
- Insomnia
- Headache
- Dizziness
- Suppressed appetite
- Impotence
When taken during regular use and suddenly discontinued, the person will most likely to suffer from withdrawal effects such as depression which can affect how you manage your startup and the decisions you will be making.
3. It influences your rational thinking
Drug use increases the levels of your “feel-good” hormone called dopamine in your brain. It offers such a euphoric experience in your brain that you will keep on wanting more and more of it. If not controlled, your whole system will begin to associate the use of drugs as necessity, just like it does for food and water, and this becomes a hallmark of a substance addiction.
Once you are addicted, feeding your own cravings to drugs won’t sound like an absurd idea to you so you will keep on feeding it is further leading to the abandonment of your responsibilities such as family, friends, financial management, and your own startup.
If you notice the signs of addiction in yourself or someone you love, contact a Largo treatment center to get guidance and help that you may need.
From a potential money-making machine, your startup can easily flop if you begin to surrender to the persuasion power of drugs. Not before long, you will begin to lose clients, lose your money, lose your employees, and lose your company. This is a real disaster compared to what could have been a pivotal period of your own life.
4. Loss of productivity
Since your brain has been rewired with your innate reward system, it will constantly seek drug relief. When this happens, attending summits, conventions, and meetings which are vital to the progress of your startup and for you to expand your network of contacts, it will start to seem like an ordeal unless such occasions will allow you to have drugs in between. This will inevitably equate to poor performance in your workplace and difficulty in micromanaging your employees. It will ultimately take you on a downward spiral of being a slave to substance addiction instead of taking control over your life and managing the different aspects of it that matter to you including your social life, friends, family, and work.
The biggest open secret in life is to enjoy everything in moderation. If you want your startup to succeed, you should become a great example of being a victor in any circumstance that you will face. A great company is led by a great leader, and without allowing drug use to get the best of you, you will always have that power to be one. If you find you’ve been involved in drug possession charges it’s best to seek help from a professional attorney like the ones here.
April Sears
April Sears has been a law writer for more than two decades, and she is currently working on her next piece. She also writes pieces on law topics for the common reader. April is family woman, and she loves spending her free time with her family.