"I believe my experience with illegal drugs is by far the most common. I had friends who were artists, grad students, lawyers and waitresses. Together we'd spend what little disposable income we had to buy ecstasy, coke, special K and more."
"I can remember giggling for hours and dancing until dawn. Sometimes my friends and I would sit for hours nursing drinks at a bar while we got the courage to make a deal in some other bar or on the street. Most nights we'd just go home a little drunk, our window of opportunity closed for that evening."
"The drug culture crept into my life in predictable ways. My ads started to look a lot like the flyers I saw for raves. My circle of friends got tighter and tighter until we excluded anyone who wasn't cool enough to understand the thrill of losing one's mind."
"Drugs aren't nearly as easy to obtain as the media and lawmakers want you to believe. Drugs are easy to get only if you are willing to do just about anything to get them. If you're doing it just for fun, it's harder to score. The more barriers there are -- be they cops, or the hassle, or the fear of dying -- the less likely you are to get addicted."
"I felt like I was in danger of getting arrested, and that was enough. According to the anti-drug pamphlets I've read, I went from being a 'recreational' drug user to an occasional one: I used illegal hardcore drugs during half of my twenties and then quit before I hit rock bottom. Noone I knew was really willing to get arrested. In this sense, we are winning the war on drugs just by fighting them."