In this newsgroup i find a lot of personal stories that amuse me or 
sometimes gives me an 'aha-erlebnis'. So here's my own.

I started doing drugs on highschool, some 15 years ago, where we smoked 
some pot and 'nederweed'. At that time almost everybody who smoked 
cigarettes smoked pot at least once; in Holland it's almost a tradition. 
The culture of handrolled cigarettes is debit on that. At that time it 
was part of the highschool, alternative scene. After highschool i went to 
the graphic technical school in Amsterdam, where smoking and smoking pot 
was not unusual. We could smoke in our breaks and even the principal 
smoked with us sometimes, just to know about. For some, it might prove 
the Sodom and Gommorra in Holland, but all of it took place in a natural 
way, there were no excesses and nobody was stoned all the time. From some 
of the people at that time i still hear sometimes and none of them had a 
problem with addiction. For myself: when i noticed that it was just a 
habit like normal smoking i quit, and i had no problems whatsoever.

A few years later, when i was working as a designer in the advertising 
world i got in contact with coke. My boss left me a line or two on the 
glass-plate of the reproduction camera to keep going long after nomal 
office-hours. Not too long after that i spend a great deal of my money on 
coke, just to keep going. I arrived in the standard circle of using to 
keep awake after 24-hour days. After a few months i looked like hell, and 
felt the same, but watching myself in the mirror only mae me feel good 
because i looked worn-out like all my movie heroes. My nose started 
bleeding regulary and one day at work my heart started to hurt like i 
never felt before. The only thing i could do was just sit and wait. After 
a few hours, the pain started to get less and i felt i escaped from a 
heart-failure. Still, half an hour later i snorred my next line in the 
bathroom, and felt better. At that time i knew i had gone far enough, 
called myself sick the next day at work and went to bed. I slept over 48 
hours, snorred my last remains of coke and started to work again. Not 
that it was easy, but after several weeks the need for coke was gone, 
only the desire kept. So i didn't visit places where there was a lot of 
temptation and it kept me clean, although a smal piece of desire will be 
with me the rest of my life.

I told my wife freely about my former habits, and although even she had 
smoked marihuana and weed, at first she was shocked. To my own belief, 
using drugs, even hard-drugs, at least once in your life, is a worthy 
experience. For that reason i kept in the back of my mind, that my wife 
should do cocaîne once; just to know what it is, the media rave about. It 
wasn't coke she started on, but XTC. We took the pils one evening with a 
friend. I myself only had a weary kind of feeling, but my wife went back 
to her childhood and started to crawl around, wondering how big the world 
was. For all of us it was a nice experience, and several weeks later, in 
the safety of our own house we took XTC again. Those were beautiful 
weekends, were we explored each other and ourselves. Faboulous new 
feelings and knowledge was discovered. Using Internet as a guide and 
source of information was vital on what we could expect and where the 
dangers were. We went on, on some LSD, but the bloths we took were not 
stabil, so once we took LSD, and when that didn't had any effect we took 
some XTC. That night was unforgetable. I myself, couldn't make the 
difference between real and unreal, and one of my basic fears of going 
crazy started to run me. My wife kept by herself but was unable to get me 
out because of the resistance i had just experiencing what i felt. Of 
course, after a few hours it simply went away. At first that scared me of 
LSD, but days later i experienced it as a wonderfull way of learning. My 
fear of losing my mind once just went away. After that, we used acid once 
awhile but without the XTC and we had some nice evenings watching all we 
could see. Somehow it is a search for new experiences so we started to 
use some speed after the XTC. Again, we had 48-hour talks about all kind 
of things; from global enlightment to our own relation. We also had 
highly spiritual thoughts, like often read in these newsgroups, but don't 
take things too serious; what at one time seems enlightened, another time 
seems absurd, but that don't take the fun away and your thoughts then can 
be of positive influence later.
All that time we used drugs in our home and only once we went shopping on 
XTC. 
Other then in the US, XTC here, is strongly related to the dance-scene 
and since i was more of a thinker then a dancer we never visited 
houseparties 'till one day we got tired of using at home, and we explored 
all we could think of and went to a danceclub. As a rock 'n roll lover, 
housemusic never had any effect on me, and for me it was for kids who 
later on in their life would learn to like the 3/4 rithme of 'real' 
music. But after half an hour i was on the dancefloor and found myself in 
complete harmony with the technoritme. Other then my younger years, when 
dancing on soul and disco was about conquering girls, for the first time 
in my life i danced for myself, with closed eyes and i didn't even wonder 
if i looked silly and i discovered a way to express myself in dance; not 
for others, but only to myself. This was an amazing discovery for me 
which is even greater then all of the spiritual ones mentioned above. I 
also discovered that with drugs more don't mean better. Even if i take 
four pills an evening, the feeling don't become better or more intense. 
One pill is nice to get in the mood and loose the thoughts about everyday 
life and the speed will keep you going.

Of course, i have no long time experience on the usage of drugs, and 
maybe it will shorten my life a bit, but it can also make your life (and 
your relation) more intense. I'm glad the Internet gives all neccesary 
information to make well-thought choices and sure: too much is always 
harmfull and dangerous, as i myself experienced once, but good 
information is vital and can save peoples lives!

Mark