I used to be a nurse (and am male). When people asked me what I did, and I replied that I was a nurse, they would often say "a male nurse?". I couldn't resist saying "no, I'm just a bit butch".
After a half-pint my coding goes to crap, so I never code drunk. But stoned is a different matter, the focus, the attention to detail, I think I code better stoned.
Maths. Yeah it's a while but I was having fun; at the end of each 2-3 year contract someone would say "would you be interested ..." and I'd take it up. While my work was pretty solid, it wasn't stellar and I didn't really publish enough to warrant a lecturer post, I realised that early on. I once met a woman who'd been doing non-standard analysis (which is both left-field and old-school) as a postdoc for years and I asked her if she saw a future in it, "not really, but while the music plays, I will dance".
My experience, PhD, 10 years postdoc, 10 years in startups (all in UK).
I actually didn't get any hassle as a PhD student, possibly since I was a mature student and wouldn't take any shit, I didn't need to get into any fights but I was willing to and I guess that comes out as confidence.
As a postdoc I experienced several attempts at bullying, all worked out in my favour as I was sensible enough to join the union on my first day at work. I'd say that 90-95% of tenured academics are reasonable and often pleasant people, but high-achievement does also tend to attract a proportion of arseholes, and it's pretty random as to whether you come in to contact with them. How you handle it is up to you of course, I always fight back. The union is your friend.
I find that startups are much more mellow places to work, finding an aggressive and unpleasant manager seems to be really quite exceptional; businesses tend to have "processes" in place in a way that academia just doesn't. An aggressive manager is quickly identified as a bad manager and then an ex-manager, they can't just claim "I'm really clever so suck it up" in the same way as in academe.
I don't regret being a postdoc at all, I met a load of interesting people and worked on a lot of interesting projects. But it's not the whole of the world. I'd recommend exploration of the rest.