Unknown Would any researcher or data analyst be interested in over 6 years of day-to-day data about drug use, mental health and more?

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pernikar

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When I was first starting with drugs, I downloaded this iOS app, that's for tracking your habits daily with yes/no entries to see how you do over time. So I took it to another level and started tracking several categories, like:
  • Drug use - have I used this drug today (includes meth, heroin, weed, cocaine and more.) For meth, there are even daily entries for every single RoA I used on any given day.
  • Productivity - various categories tracking things around work, finances, creativity and productivity in general
  • Health - tracks sleeping habits, proper diet and hydration, vitamins/supplements and more
  • Mental Health - Tracks depression, suicidal ideation, and such
There's couple of other tracked entries, like Socialize, which tracks if I met with other people or not on that day and some other things I can't remember right now. I also can label certain dates where major life changes happened to explain for some sudden pattern changes (like when I finally found a proper day-to-day job, or when I was in rehab.)

I've been using this app consistently every day since I downloaded it, that even the developer had to make some adjustments to it to fit my needs :D So there's like over 5-6 years worth of data with an entry on each day for all of the categories listed above. I already found some patterns just by looking at the entries in app, like that days without meth are days without productivity and work and that the day with meth right after a shorter period of not using always leads to few days without proper sleep. I know, those are kinda obvious even without the app, but I'm curious to see what more can be found. I've been doing this for so long now, that I'm thinking it must be at least a little useful for researchers or analysts, right? I mean common, I'm probably the only junkie with 6 years of my life recorded day-by-day and sorted by categories. 😅

Anyone want them, reply here or send me a DM, I'll post tomorrow.

Mods: If this doesn't belong here, sorry and please move but don't delete.



EDIT: And as an extra bonus, I can also provide my 5-6 years long diary to add extra context to the entries from above. I don't write there very often, but it has couple of hundred entries and could be an interesting/valuable addition to anyone considering seriously looking into this for a research.
 
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I would love to have that data, although fair warning I may not get to it for years or not at all.... but I would love to have it in the event I someday do have a use for it, if that's okay with you!
 
Hello,

I would similarly be interested in looking at this "someday" as an interested drug auto ethnographer. Would that be ok? Also what app did you use?
 
Okay, so in-before I have the time to export the latest data, here's a link to a Google Spreadsheet that contains entries from 2015 to mid 2019:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LfK7zbpNC95RzFTp0wP-tA1-VZkHKcqJjoUUyUjTQjo/edit?usp=sharing

Red means that the thing I did or didn't do was bad for me and Green mean it was good. It could also be read simply as Yes (Green) and No (Red).

Unclear (blue) is a bit more complicated. It means that I couldn't decide how to mark it and it could've go either way. So for example if a day is marked as Unclear under Sleep 5h+, it could mean that I slept like 4 hours and 52 minutes or something close like that. So technically it would count as a No (Red) because it wasn't 5 full hours, but because it was so close to 5, I marked it as Unclear instead.

However in most columns in the Hobbies / Creativity category, Unclear has the same meaning as Red. The reason it's Unclear and not Red is because these categories weren't really that important to me and I didn't do those things as often so they would be marked Red a lot and I didn't want that to distort my overall Red:Green ratio in the app because of it.

Lastly, - is "no data" and it means that I didn't fill in that category on that day. It's also used where the category didn't exist yet at the time. So you'll see it a lot near the start, because a lot of the categories were added couple of days/weeks after I had already been tracking.
 
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i would be interested in looking at this but i can't promise i'll get any profound insights as it is quite far outisde my area of expertise. i am a researcher in bioinformatics so i spend my days trying to glean conclusions from bunches of A/C/T/Gs and my experience with categorical data is quite limited.

i imagine that one thing that would be easy to track would be changes in trends over time, you can probably plot several variables together and see how they vary over time and whether they look to depend on each other. that would then probably throw up more questions for a closer look.

do you have any specific questions? these tasks are much easier when you have specific questions over time. also that might help to guide me cos i can quite often go on hugely time consuming tangents trying to figure out minutiae....
 
i would be interested in looking at this but i can't promise i'll get any profound insights as it is quite far outisde my area of expertise. i am a researcher in bioinformatics so i spend my days trying to glean conclusions from bunches of A/C/T/Gs and my experience with categorical data is quite limited.

i imagine that one thing that would be easy to track would be changes in trends over time, you can probably plot several variables together and see how they vary over time and whether they look to depend on each other. that would then probably throw up more questions for a closer look.
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No worries, I don't even know how to do pretty much anything in your second paragraph, so you already have me beat there - area of expertise or not ;) 😁

do you have any specific questions? these tasks are much easier when you have specific questions over time. also that might help to guide me cos i can quite often go on hugely time consuming tangents trying to figure out minutiae....
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Hmm, that's a very good question indeed, I haven't really thought much about what specifically do I want to look for or find out. I guess, maybe see if my productivity (columns Waste Time, Work on Money and the Hobbies / Creativity group) has decreased, increased or remained about the same over time. I mean, I know that I have more red days in these areas when I'm without meth and/or other drugs, but it would be interesting to see if my drug use in general has any implications on my overall long-term productivity.

In the most recent version (still only on my phone unfortunately), there are a few new columns that among other things track stuff related to my depression and suicidal ideation, so it'd be interesting to see if there is any correlation with my drug use as well. But I still have to export and format that data, so dog knows when I'll get my lazy ass to do that 😅

Anyways, hope that gave you at least some semblance of direction. Sorry I couldn't do better, I just can't come up with much right now, but if something else comes to mind in the future, I'll make sure to post an update.

Please do let me know about your findings and thank you for taking an interest! :)
 
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