June 17, 1995

June 17, 1995 was the last time I used mind or mood altering drugs. I'd started 33 years before then, at age 6, with little sips of beer from the adults around me. We all thought it was cute and harmless. When, at age 12, I started to smoke marijuana, no one seemed to notice -- after all, I was a straight A student, was active in church, and (with the exception of smoking pot) was generally perceived as a "goody two-shoes."

The journey was just pot for a couple of decades; once in a while I'd do some mushrooms or try a hit of acid, but it usually didn't get me off, and I had no steady supplier for those things, so I stuck with pot. Which I loved. It was only after I moved to NYC in the late 80s, was introduced to cocaine and later, to crack, that my love affair with marijuana ended and the descent into hell began.

But it's 2008, and everyone's heard a middle-aged-former-druggie-now-clean story.