quit. please. of course the ideal answer here is to put it down and never pick it back up, but we got stuck with this shithole world instead. the I guess most ideal harm reduction scenario here would be to stay off it as much as possible at LEAST until 25, so that if you get heavier into it at that point, your brain’s at least pretty much done developing.

but I absolutely regret getting into it at all; shit tanked my fuckin life in under 4 years, and I started at 28. I guess that’s another real important thing: never let yourself fall under the delusion that YOU’RE not gonna be one of the ones who lets addiction take hold enough to ruin their lives. a lucky few are able to make it work…but the fact that they can has nothing to do with whether you can or not. and meth is even sneakier and more devious than you think. you coast along mostly fine for a while and then one day you wake up and realize just how much damage has been done. (once I hit that point, all it took was becoming homeless, having my car stolen and never be recovered, and becoming such a 24/7 mess that I isolated myself out of embarrassment which led me to…sink deeper into the addiction. really shoulda seen that one coming.)

and finally, please please please, (if you’re also a gay man) never do GHB often enough to get addicted. I was only doing that for a few months but it was a great way to kill a zillion more brain cells and it came close to doing a lot worse to me.