I’ve Taken Illegal Drugs For Years — Here’s What I Learned

“Hey, let’s trip on LSD for a week straight!”

Disclaimer: The aim of this article isn’t to glorify my behavior but to share the lessons I learned. If you think you’re cool because you do drugs, you don’t understand them.

I’ve taken illegal drugs for years — and I regret nothing.

The number of substances I’ve experimented with is in the double digits and over time, I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve felt sky-high with pupils the size of saucers but also watched people overdose and shit themselves on the dance floor. On rare occasions, I’ve watched myself die, met god, and bawled my eyes out for hours straight on psychedelics.

It was a wild time.

If your knowledge about drugs comes from what your parents, the media, or the police told you, forget about it. They spew more bullshit than a steam cleaner in a cattle barn. Not everyone who tries drugs becomes an addict with a needle in his arm. I run a business, have a tight-knit social circle, am on good terms with my family, and work out four times a week. That’s more than most people have going.

Drugs have enriched my life in many ways. They made me more social, improved my emotional intelligence, and challenged my ways of thinking. Not bad for something I swore to never touch when I was young.

How Do You Get into Drugs?

Just like you’d get into cooking or working out — slowly, but surely, and with the help of others.

Until I was 22, I had only touched alcohol. Growing up in a small village where most people’s family tree looks like the Audi logo means you’ll drink a lot — there’s not much else to do. I first blacked out when I was 12, had a wild summer with throwing up twice a weekend around 16, then quit soon after starting university.

My first experiments with weed were fun but short-lived. Then, I moved to California for a semester, where THC was legal and people smoked bongs while munching on cannabis butter. My first time Ecstasy was an incredible experience with dilated pupils that made me look like an owl, minus the feathers. But the fun had merely started.

After I tried psychedelics and broke up with my girlfriend, things got excessive. I smoked weed daily, took chemicals twice a weekend, and tripped on acid for seven days in a row at a hippie festival — arguably the best week of my life. The most I’ve ever taken was seven different drugs in a single day and it felt exactly what you’d imagine it to be like.

Nowadays, I’ve slowed down quite a bit. I use psychedelics like magic mushrooms, LSD, or DMT as a tool for my personal growth. On the weekends, I smoke the occasional joint.

My experience with drugs has been a wild ride and broadened my horizon like a pressured air bottle a balloon, sometimes making it explode and forcing me to put reality back together from the pieces. Here are the five most lifechanging lessons I learned.

Lesson #1 — Question Everything, Including Yourself

Isn’t it funny how everyone says drugs are bad, yet billions of people do them every weekend?

When I was in eighth grade, two policemen showed up at our school for drug “education.” What they told us was utter bullshit and the nosy student I was could smell it from a mile away. Their presentation basically said “drugs will destroy your life, don’t ever do them.” 14-year-old me started to wonder because if this were true, there wouldn’t be so many people having a damn good time with them.

After my first joint, I realized questioning their words was a good idea. After my first LSD trip, I realized questioning everything was a good idea. It’s hard to put into words, but your first time on acid does to your reality what a hearty shake does to a snow globe. You realize the false beliefs you grew up with and the lies you tell yourself. It’s like a spiritual awakening, forcing you into the core of your soul. You’re a different, arguably better human after that.

Questioning yourself and what other people tell you will improve your life like nothing else, yet you rarely do it.

Instead, you sleepwalk — you blindly believe what people and society tell you. Go to university so you don’t have to flip burgers. Follow your passion to work your dream job. Save money for retirement. A few weeks off every year is a good deal. You need a good job, money, and status to be happy. Some of these might be true, some might not — but how do you know what’s right?

You don’t — unless you question yourself and what people say regularly.

Lesson #2 — Moderation Is Key, Excess Is Death

The year is 1538 and the Swiss physician Paracelsus writes down words that while only a quick scribble before dinner for him, carry a profound lesson applicable to this day.

“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.”

For someone who thought feeding mercury to a patient was going to make things better, he had surprisingly wise moments.

I’ve always been an excessive, all-or-nothing guy. When I got into gaming, I spent ten hours a day in front of my computer screen every day. No wonder I went hard at drugs as well. After a three-day bender fueled by amphetamines and weed, I found myself in the backyard of a frat house between two dumpsters. My head was spinning like a ballerina, my empty stomach danced the macarena, and my heart raced like Usain Bolt on the way to another world record. “This would be an ugly place to die,” I thought.

On this day, I learned an important lesson — moderation.

Most people think smoking a joint one week will make you inject heroin and sell your ass for another hit the next. They fail to account for the most important ingredient in anything you do in life — the dosage.

One beer doesn’t make you an alcoholic. One joint doesn’t make you a lethargic stoner. One hit of 5-MeO-DMT, however, is enough to have your ego shattered into a million tiny pieces, question your existence, and see god. But in high enough doses, even water and oxygen are toxic.

Life is about balance — without moderation, you fall off the seesaw.

The same principle applies to everything you do. Working out makes you fit but running for years does to your knees what the Taliban did to the Hazara. Being ambitious can make you successful but putting in 100-hour-weeks at an investment bank will burn you out and destroy your mental health. Holding yourself to a high standard is great but obsessing over it leads to toxic perfectionism.

Whether something is healthy or not is just as much about the behavior as it is about the dosage.

Lesson #3 — Stay Away from What Isn’t Meant for You

I have two essential rules when it comes to taking drugs.

First, don’t get caught.

Second, if you can’t stomach ’em, don’t take ‘em.

I’ve seen people fall into depression after using MDMA. Others became paranoid and panicked after too much weed. One guy shit himself then rolled around on the floor of the club. Not a pretty sight.

It wasn’t the first time they had a bad experience. But why do people crave something that clearly isn’t good for them?

For the same reason it took me three motorbike crashes to understand riding wasn’t for me. It’s also the reason you hold on to a toxic relationship, chase a pipe dream, or break your back trying to lift a 200kg barbell.

Because your ego wants it all, even if it isn’t for you. Letting go can be hard, but it makes space for what is.

How many of your friends have you seen become miserable with toxic partners? Grind themselves to the bone in a high-status job? Hang out with the wrong people in a desperate attempt to become someone they weren’t meant to be? They’re too focused on their path to realize it’s the wrong one.

If something isn’t for you, swallow your ego and let go.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

— Unknown

Lesson #4 — What Everyone Else Does Often Isn’t the Smartest Thing to Do

The majority of the world’s population regularly ingests a deadly neurotoxin, causing damage to their liver, kidney, and brain.

I am, of course, talking about alcohol.

Every year, almost 100,000 people die from excessive alcohol use in the United States alone, a death toll almost three times as high as the one from traffic accidents, claiming more victims than all other drugs combined. Cheers!

For a majority of the population, alcohol is their drug of choice. A mix of politics, laws, social pressure, and money to be made keeps it that way.

Almost everyone drinks, but that doesn’t mean it’s a smart move. When I was 16, I downed beers and shots to prove myself, just like everyone around me. Waking up in a sleeping bag full of vomit didn’t do much to stop me because again, so was everyone around me.

Then I started smoking weed and realized the drawbacks of alcohol. The hangover. The drunk fights. The slurred speech, loose manners, and next-morning regrets. Sure, it’s fun, but there are so many other ways to have a good time without the negative side effects.

Do whatever floats your boat, I don’t judge. But understand that just because the majority of people do something doesn’t mean you should, too. Often, it’s the opposite.

A large part of the population sells their soul in a meaningless 9–5, eats junk food, and is stuck on the hedonic treadmill, chasing happiness through consumption and spending their hard-earned cash.

When you do what everyone else does, you feel like you’re on the right track — but are you?

Think for yourself instead of blindly following along.

“Stupidity isn’t punishable by death. If it was, there would be a hell of a population drop.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton

Lesson #5 — Never Underestimate the Power of Your Environment

Everything you thought you knew about addiction is wrong.

This isn’t just a great opening sentence but also the title of Johan Hari’s TED talk. The author of two New York Times bestsellers explains why it’s not just the drug itself, but more the environment that facilitates addiction.

In most early experiments, researchers took a rat, placed it in a cage, and gave it two water bottles — one with pure water, the other laced with either cocaine or heroin. Almost all rats overdosed and died.

But in the 1970s, Bruce Alexander, a Professor of Psychology at Vancouver University, decided to try something different. Instead of placing a single rat in a lonely and boring cage, he built a rat fun park — with colorful balls, cheese cubes, and a network of tunnels to explore. Most important, he put many rats together, so they could play, have sex, and talk about their favorite books and stock investments.

When prompted with the two water bottles again, the number of overdoses went from 100% to 0% — the rats cared about the drugs as much as Nestlé about saving the environment.

This is contrary to what most of us think we know about addiction, but it aligns with what I’ve seen. The people who go down the drug spiral are the ones who use them to escape from their shitty job, their breakup, and their feelings of loneliness and inferiority. Stigmatization and criminalization of drug users only add to their alienation.

Your environment holds massive power, so use this fact to your advantage. I’ve learned the hard way that if you hold on to the wrong people for too long, they’ll keep you stuck or pull you down to their level. Whether you hang out with five junkies, five complainers, or five successful people — you’ll become number six.

It’s hard to let go of a decade-long friendship or cut contact with someone you shared so much with. But if they don’t lift you up, they pull you down.

Your environment influences you much more than you realize, so take care of it.

Wrap-up So You Learn Something for Life

Over the last few years, drugs have opened my eyes and broadened my horizon in unprecedented ways. If that’s positive or negative is up to your judgment, but I’ve learned a few hearty lessons:

1. Question everything, including yourself.
2. Moderation is key and life is about balance.
3. Not everything’s meant for you, so stay away from what isn’t.
4. What everyone else does often isn’t the smartest thing to do.
5. Never underestimate the power of your environment.

You should neither glorify nor villainize drugs. Most of them are simple tools prone to use and abuse. I’m incredibly grateful for the experiences they facilitated and the lessons they taught me. If this article made you see a highly stigmatized subject with different eyes, I’m happy with the work I’ve done.

Because this is still life’s biggest lesson — to approach everything with an open mind.

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