Is there such thing as an addictive personality? Up until the age of about seventeen I was totally against taking any kind of drug, including legal ones, until the point that life started to get me down though I don't touch them now. First of all, as with most teenagers, I started going out and drinking regularly. Of course, when you're that age you don't really know how much you can handle because you've never really been through the experience before and you end up getting into all sorts of horrible states and don't remember anything the next morning. After a few years of drunken teenage behaviour my experiences in life had brought me down and depressed me even more and the alcohol just wasn't doing the trick any more. One night I was offered a joint or a spliff or a reefer or whatever you want to call it and I was already drunk so I just thought yeah why not, as you tend to do under the influence of alcohol. That was it, it became a regular habit that ended up lasting about twelve years. Through those twelve years I dabbled a little bit in other drugs and at one point starting getting quite heavily into the hard stuff until I went through the agony of bringing myself back to normal. Depression is something often associated with drugs though I've always believed that the depression that I suffered with as a youngster, before I'd even tried drugs, was a lot worse back then and I've managed to learn to live with it. Anyway, here's a list of the drugs that I have tried and my views on them and how the affect you.

cannabis / marijuana - probably the mildest and most widely used drugs in both the u.s. and the u.k. I once heard somebody say 'if you're going to do drugs then stick to the weed' and I think a lot of people have followed that advice. There was a point when I was smoking heavily, using bongs and pipes and paraphernalia to smoke the drug in large volumes. This is the only experience of marijuana that really led me into the well known symptoms such as anxiety, depression and paranoia and it was very mild. I also found, even as a user for twelves years, that all the known side effects are relatively short term and soon disappear after you stop using it. It causes less damage than alcohol to the organs long term and even causes less brain damage. It seems to chill people out and people that use it are generally very laid back and focused people with strong beliefs. I believe that alcohol costs governments a lot more and there are a lot more people hospitalized every week because of it.

amphetamine / speed / base - This drug is a lot more dangerous than most people believe. It is almost as widely available as marijuana and is getting much much stronger in potency. Whereas a few years back in the u.k. you could buy speed on the streets, which is basically amphetamine that has been cut with other chemicals, you can now easily buy bass on the streets which is of a much higher purity and is often claimed to be pure. Several batches going around the u.k. have been known to put people in hospital the first time they tried it. I have had some nasty experiences with this drug especially after not sleeping and a lot of people know, of course, sleep deprivation does have nasty side effects. I feel that this is one of the main mental problems associated with the drug. Users become so overtired from not getting any sleep that their mind begins to go into dream mode in order to process information in the way that we do when we sleep. This can cause extremely vivid, realistic hallucinations that can be very scary in nature. I remember once driving home on the motorway after a few weeks on base and when I looked up to the sky there was a huge green eye looking down on me which I believed, at the time, to belong to god.

lsd / acid / trips / tabs - This drug provides an extremely intense and very long lived buzz. It is also lethal. I have heard literally hundreds of stories of how people believed that they could fly or swim (when they couldn't) on this drug and it seems like it has caused the agony of many people. It also works by altering the human brains natural thinking patterns which is a pretty fierce thing to be messing around with in the first place. It seems that some people are more susceptible to it than others because one friend of mine tried it once while I was with him and he was seeing all sorts of crazy stuff like flying cheese sandwiches coming towards him and never ending stairs as I took himself downstairs to go outside. I ended up putting him in a taxi and telling the driver to take him straight home. Yet, when I took the same amount of the same specific tab I didn't get much visual stimulation at all. It did make me giggle for twelve hours solid though. This drug is only safe in large groups of friends who all completely trust each other and will look after each other safely.

crack cocaine - I never liked the idea of even trying hard drugs but for some reason, at one point in my life, I decided to try this evil stuff. In fact, I had a habit for about three months which was extremely difficult to kick and was probably the most agonizing and hardest thing that I have ever achieved. The first taste of the first pipe you try of this stuff will get you addicted. Be warned, stay away! The first time I tried it, it was a very intense buzz similar to ecstacy but much stronger. As soon as I tasted the stuff it seemed weird that the taste of air wasn't like that and I felt like I should be breathing the stuff and started craving for it again straight away. As soon as the addiction took over I knew I had to get rid of it so I spent the next three months teetotal with the worst splitting migraine you could ever imagine. It did the trick though.

heroin / smack / gear - I only tried this stuff once and I didn't like it at all. It made me spin out slightly, similar to alcohol, then just made me feel really dirty and left a nasty taste in my mouth that I couldn't get rid of. A friend of mine is a regular user unfortunately and when he's obviously been using his eyes become very dark and baggy like he hasn't had any sleep and he starts to look very unhealthy, white and dirty skinned. This is also a lethal drug and is known to be mixed with brick dust amongst many other chemicals that are going to clog your bloodstream up if you decide to inject them.

That is more or less my overview of recreational drugs from a first person perspective and I hope it provides a little insight for users or people considering taking them or family and friends that have concerns about someone who might be taking them. I hope you found it informative.