To ask the truth about your drug use?

I smoked as a teenager, which was probably the worst thing I ever tried in terms of my health! I did stop at 19 though. Started because all my friends tried it and I wanted to join in and look cool, I suppose.

Drugs - well, I smoked weed occasionally as a teenager. Again, friends tried it and it was enjoyable with fewer side effects than alcohol the day after (I drank a fair bit as a teenager too!) I stopped at uni as I found it made me really paranoid - no point doing it if it wasn't fun. I also tried speed a couple of times aged 17/18 out of curiosity and wanted to be able to stay up all night at gigs/parties/clubs. Didn't like it, so never bothered again. Same with cocaine, didn't like it, didn;t see the point.

Never tried heroin but I've tried strong opiate painkillers of various types - absolute heaven feeling all warm, happy and calm. I can see how people get very addicted, so I was always very careful not to take them too often as I could see myself developing an addiction if not careful. These days a LOT of kids take prescription drugs they've managed to nick from parents/grandparents or buy, and get into difficulty with addiction and overdose. I would warn any DC about the dangers of prescription drugs just as much as I would warn them off illegal drugs. I lost a couple of friends from uni to overdoses and in both cases very few people had any clue they were taking heroin/other opiates. Both were highly intelligent and educated so thought they knew exactly what they were doing, they were in control of it etc. Sadly they were very wrong.

I tried most things.

Cocaine in my late teens. I got a bit more hooked than I intended.

Extacy pills but not the MDMA powder, which I understand is far stronger. E was ok but I felt like shit afterwards.

Speed, but it made me paranoid so didn’t do it much.

Weed, lots and lots of weed, which is the thing I can never quite kick. I’m off it again now because it fucks up my MH. It’s way stronger than what we had back in the day and I kinda find myself getting used to it, which is bad news. That and it’s about twice the price now.

Tbf I was referring to people using heroin, cocaine and crack etc and proporting to being able to sustain “recreational” use.

IME that is rare - not people smoking weed and using pills etc.

Smoked a lot of week in my late teens and early 20's.
Took e's and speed regularly whilst clubbing during the same time.
LSD as a young teen - hated it.
Coke a few times a year during my 20's.
I smoked crack and heroin a few times in my mid twenties. I was in a toxic relationship and mentally unwell at the time.

As a 40 something the only thing I've done in the last couple of years is coke a couple of times.

For me the weed was the worst drug out of all of them. I blame my bad mental health on the fact I smoked a lot in my youth.

MDMA/pill - loved them until started to build up a tolerance
Coke - hate it, comedowns are hell
Weed - bizarrely makes my heart race like crazy

Don't touch any of those now.

Benzos were my main thing - feel down a very deep bonzo hole for a year and had to get rehabbed out of it. I still miss them every day.

Started drinking probably around 15, some with parental consent, some without. Mostly with.

Few tokes on a joint as a teen but didn’t like it. Found I enjoyed vaping more in the last 2 years or so but can count on one hand the amount of times I have smoked weed in the last 10 years.

Recreational cocaine use between ages of 19 and 22ish maybe a couple of times a month on big nights out. We all just grew out of it. Mixture of friends who did and didn’t partake and no judgement either way from the ones who didn’t do did different to you. I just wanted to see what it was like and turned out I liked it.

LSD a handful of times, again to see what it was like and it was ok.

Ketamine twice. Hated it.

All I do now is drink.

For the very vast majority of people that use drugs the biggest impact to their life is the legal ramifications of being caught

People that progress onto full problematic use are a tiny minority. Most people smoke a bit, drop a few pills and grow out of it and that's it

There was a Shroom Service when they were legal where I lived where some guy would turn up at your door in a tux delivering shrooms anytime 24/7 😁

MDMA/pills - a LOT, aged 16-30. Loved it, helped me get over my crippling social anxiety but probably did it for too long....

Acid and shrooms - shrooms so much better - best drug I've ever had, always left me feeling really upbeat and positive for at least a week after unlike every other drug.

Ketamine - totally fucking weird.

Coke - shit

Speed - fun but terrible come down.

Then a bunch of experimental, weird pills and 'legal' highs - mostly terrible, bad experiences and short lived time in my life!

I used to smoke weed everyday for a couple of years, I'd say that and nicotine is the only thing I got addicted to. I love LSD but it's not something I would do often. Also tried Ket, and some opiates. I hate alcohol. Was never peer pressured it was my own curiosity that led me to drugs and I don't have problems with them.

Smoked cannabis and took ecstasy a few times. Once I'd finished studying and settled down into 'adult' life I stopped them, and alcohol pretty much as well.

Enjoyed them, ecstasy more than pot, but never took either on a daily, or even weekly, basis, and quitting was easy.

@PalmTree101

Thank you for the education.

I was a drug worker for 7 years.

My own anecdotal experiences as an addict and then as worker tell me a different story altogether.

Even though when doing drugs education in schools the stats were that only 3% of people using drugs recreationally became addicts. Getting stats around drug addiction is tricky because of the nature of the subjects and the funding of the research.

Excessive use of MDMA has also proven to cause depression later on and most of the drugs studies do not monitor how many of those people go on to have a problem with alcohol.

The odd joint, don't like it, and coke a couple of times which did nothing for me. Made me chatty and animated for a while but don't sleep on it and gives me a snotty nose, I don't understand how it's addictive. Never anything more than that, and no desire to try

Not my bag. I don't want to lose control of myself band never have, the thought scares me.

You just munch them down then have a small drink of something afterwards to take the taste away. Nothing difficult or wired about that

I won’t be giving this a whirl thanks 👍🏻

Apart from my drug taking days being well and truly over they tasted disgusting enough in their dried form.

I smoked a lot of weed in my late teens early twenties, I preferred the effect to drinking alcohol, I don't anymore as I don't smoke at all. Plus it is a lot stronger than it was back in the early 2000's and I don't like the feeling at all. It's not the mild giggly high I remember. It just makes me paranoid and anxious.

I tried space cakes a couple of times and found them to be weird. Cotton wool head and a ravenous appetite then passing out. It lingered as well, I'd feel distinctly mellow for a couple of days afterwards.

Some people did (largely idiots) - or they'd take them home and dry them there, although after sitting on a stall in the sun for prolonged periods, they'd start to dry naturally - the stall holders would keep an eye upon the level of drying and remove them once they started looking more on the illegal side of fresh. They usually had a handprinted sign saying something like 'It is illegal to possess or sell mushrooms dried for consumption' and, if somebody was so inclined, the sellers would explain to them how exactly they would need to be treated to be regarded as illegal 'so they knew how to stay on the right side of the law'.

Not my thing, as I've said before, but they were very openly sold, sometimes along with 'legal smoking mixes' such as wild lettuce (which absolutely stunk and featured in a lot of early skunk to bulk it out, because kids didn't know the difference).

God I used to do all sorts in my teens weed, coke, speed, pills, acid, ketamine, shrooms, whatever was on offer. Smoked weed daily and used cocaine maybe fortnightly before I had my children. I often wonder how I afforded it! I did enjoy drugs I'll be honest, I enjoyed them A LOT. Don't regret any of it but wouldn't touch them now.

I have never IRL heard of anyone eating them fresh. Hence the law.

@PooleySpooley Well you live and learn then. Prepare to be educated.

It is very common to pick and eat fresh. And it was common to go buy them fresh (who remembers the shroom shop on Brick Lane?) and eat them raw and fresh.

You just munch them down then have a small drink of something afterwards to take the taste away. Nothing difficult or wired about that.

They are only dried to preserve them and make it easier to transport etc.

I don’t know if anyone can really use drugs recreationally and when you do you take the gamble of ending up with an addiction which is like being in hell.

The vast majority of people manage to maintain a recreational drug use. Most people who take drugs, take them for a period of time, have fun and then slow down and stop as they get older and/or life changes.

If most people who started taking party drugs became life long addicts, you would know about it.

Do you really think that most people off their tits on pills in Amnesia every night of the summer in Ibiza go on to be drug addicts?

Most drugs are not physically addictive (heroin is). Drugs like coke are psychologically addictive. Drugs like mushrooms are less psychologically addictive but can be habit forming.

Rhetoric like "try ket once and you'll end up a heroin addict" does young people a disservice.

However about 75% of the people who post on MN probably would end up in a bad way - all the crazy behaviors like not opening the front door, refusing to go to bed in anything other than daily washed bedding, falling out with people at the drop of a hat, not being able to use their voice to speak to people to resolve situations... Not traits that are good with drugs.

I aware of the law regarding them being dried.

I have never IRL heard of anyone eating them fresh. Hence the law.

*When were Mushrooms legal? confused

They have been illegal since 1968....*

They were only illegal if prepared in some way, such as drying and grinding for tea. The fresh ones were perfectly legal until 2005 - they'd be openly sold on stalls in Camden Market, for example.

When were Mushrooms legal?

Until around 2000, 2001ish. It was legal to grow and consume them fresh, but drying them or chopping them up turned them into a Class B drug, so we just didn't do that.

Great days.

I had wonderful 'opening the doors of perception' spiritual type experiences using lsd in my early twenties. Since then I haven't bothered with much else, apart from mdma which I found lovely but vomit-inducing, and tried coke but didn't like myself much on it. I'm in my late 40s now and I've 4 kids so I don't feel the need to take illegal drugs any more but I'm not against it.

In discussing drugs with my kids, particularly my teenager, I found using online resources like BBC 3 - their website has quite a few pretty open videos about drug use - to be really helpful. Watching them together made it easier to discuss both what people enjoy and why people take drugs seeing it from different people alongside here are the risks, this is how to make things safer, here's what to do if things go wrong.

I haven't done any recreational drugs (was even teetotal until I was 30), just surrounded by some who did like my parents and their friends, my siblings and their friends, my own friends and schoolmates, so my experience is mostly caring for others on drugs and cleaning up after it.