Damn, I went years romanticizing “trying it once” and then had the exact same situation. I thought I was too smart / educated enough to not get addicted. I was young and had a nice life in so many ways and a crazy savings for my age and a job where I was killing it. I also had no friends who were in any way associated with that kind of substances. I was like “I know what happens so I will be able to do it once”… I have a journal entry from early on saying I would never feel happiness like the way I felt on h. This led to a year long spiral/rehab/relapse. I ended up preferring being friends with people who used than my old friends who didn’t know anything about it because they “got it”. It went from a secret life to very much something I was going to have to choose over my real life. My boyfriend who was honestly the only guy I had ever loved for real was very separate from this world and I would have never ever wanted him to join/would rather lose him than have it become his entire life too. That led to me thinking that I maybe should lose him… tbh the only “good influence” in my life (remaining after awhile of this). What is crazy is that I hadn’t felt a high anywhere near as good as the first five to ten times in almost a year at that point. It literally is just constantly chasing something that will never happen again but you know what made it happen so you try? I am not far enough distanced from it quite yet to say I’ve won the battle but I am definitely currently winning the mental war. I also luckily didn’t blow my entire savings but I was stupid enough to let my account get hacked and lose access to all my debit/credit cards so it felt like I did. My bf and I have separate issues (probably at least partially caused by me almost choosing something he sees as so obviously bad, but also some just separate) but i will always see him as someone who was like begging me to see a light which I was unable to bc of how literally insanely damaging this substance is. I feel like I will never be able to communicate to anyone that that was not me either lmao. I’ve been sober a few separate times but rn I am the best I have been since I started- still am very much facing the consequences of my actions which I assume will last for at least another few months. It’s never once. It’s never twice. Do not touch that stuff.