In order to consider this intelligently with a clear mind about this issue you would need to either do it on a day when you are not using drugs, or 

you would have to have a clear mind because, either you have quit using drugs or you haven't ever used them. In the first case, from my own personal experience, I don't believe this happens often. People who use drugs generally aren't in the habit of taking a day off.  The euphoric feelings of a "good high" are such that they make the experience very much desirable and habit forming!  Having a clear mind isn't normally to be  something serious drug users are seeking with any intensity.  Like I said, the euphoria and the numbness of mind are too 

pleasant to want to give up for the time it would take to write on this subject. As for the person who has never tried drugs, the article would be 

an aberration at best because they could not write from personal experience which always produces the most valid arguments on any subject. 

I have both experience and a clear mind dealing with this issue, and furthermore, I have no bias or prejudice to keep me from being objective.

Then, of course, there are the researchers who investigate the experiences of voluntary subjects who agree to be tested while doing drugs.  

Even then their reports are unbalanced and not very reliable because they only deal with the scientific aspects of what happens and don't experience the actual impact the drugs have on the person using them.  In addition, the question and answer sessions with the people while 

they are high are ridiculous because their ability to clearly think through what they are experiencing is extremely limited while under the influence 

of the drugs they are using. Clear thinking is impossible during a high, and so, much of what is called research in this instance can easily be considered nonsense, and can be invalidated and virtually useless in producing realistic evidence for any argument for or against drug use.

My personal experience with drugs covers approximately six years. Someone I was closely related to was heavily into the drug culture and was continuously approaching me with the offer to join in on the "fun." He couldn't persuade me, but in time two lovely young women came to our 

town, and after I helped them move into their hotel room they broke out a couple of marijuana joints and asked me whether or not I would join them. One of the two was very attractive to me so, abandoning my former reasoning, I took my first "toke." We smoked until all their dope was gone, and they asked me if I knew where they could get more. Obviously my previous contact gave me the ability to answer yes, so we went 

over to the house that person lived in and knocked on the door. That person happened to be my brother, and when he opened the door I noticed people in various stages of intoxication or euphoria all over the room and a strong odor permeating the room. I said to my brother, "Hey, I just 

tried marijuana for the first time and it didn't work, but these two girls want to get more, so I came over to see if you had some." My brother was elated and yelled out, "Hey, everyone, my brother just tried dope for the first time! Let's have a party!" The house suddenly came to life as bowls 

of dope, bongs and booze became the order of the day. We drank and smoked until about one o'clock the next morning before the dope and 

booze hit me, and when it did hit me it was all at once and I had one of the most amazing highs I had ever experienced in my life. The party 

began then for me and being high became a daily necessity. It just felt and seemed too good to quit!

I take issue with those who say that marijuana isn't the gateway to using more addictive drugs. While there are always exceptions to the rule, 

and perhaps in this generation, there could be more exceptions because of the heavy proliferation of drugs including the strong push to legalize 

so-called medical marijuana, my experience repudiates the notion that marijuana is not that gateway. In the six years that I was involved partying and dealing drugs there were few people who didn't start out first with marijuana before going on to more addictive drugs. Most people were less fearful concerning smoking a joint or a pipe or bong than they were of shooting drugs through their veins or snorting drugs through their nose. I fully remember my own hesitation at even taking uppers and downers in pill form and my reluctance in trying anything having to do with needles. 

I also remember strongly opposing anything that had to do with tripping. I was very content to smoke marijuana, hash and kief to get high. Hash came in blocks and was a solid form of marijuana which produced a stronger high. Kief, likewise was a thin powder like form of marijuana and 

was more powerful than hash. I swore that nothing would ever induce me to shoot up, take pills or acid or snort anything.  That all changed on 

my thirty-first birthday.

On my thirty-first birthday the girl I was going with urged me to "just try" some acid and speed. Along with her, my brother and party pals also 

kept on pushing me to try those things as well. That day I took eight diet pills, about a half hit of acid, drank nearly a full case of beer and smoked about thirty pipes of dope. The diet pills were actually speed, although I didn't understand that at the time. The speed kicked me off and I was up and running for 4 days without any sleep.  At the end of that time I crashed for 17 hours, and then speed became my thing. I continued on with speed for most of the last part of those six years, and my favorite way of taking speed was snorting. I still would not in any way use a needle. Through my whole drug experience I never did.

I watched different members of our group shooting up, and most of them were doing heroin or cocaine. I watched as they strapped their arms 

with anything available to cause the veins to stand out more so they could more easily insert the needle. I listened as they tried to express what they were seeing and how they were feeling, but none of it convinced me to want to go there.  I saw what happened when my brother took seven Quaaludes, a sedative-hypnotic drug, and heard about his arrest after demolishing two parked cars during his high on them. I also remember going to the scene of the crime, and finding a set of works on the ground that the city police missed during their investigation. If they 

had found those my brother would have been facing a stiff prison sentence. The term works basically refers to the needle used to shoot drugs 

into a user's veins.

Another part of the drug culture was narcs. Narcs are people who are paid to infiltrate drug user's circles in order to find out who the 

main supplier is. It became very dangerous for the narc because if they were found out they would be severely beaten or in some cases killed. Our group never did any killings, but stories were told about narcs being beaten up, and I know they were true even though I never participated 

in any of those beatings. I was more the peace and love kind of hippie and never wanted to harm anyone. I just knew at least one person in our group who was feared because of his violent ways, and believing that he would beat up a narc wasn't a problem.

I also remember the foolish actions of myself and other members of our group. Standing in the park and mocking the police as they drove by 

while standing close to the curb and blowing smoke at them. Growing marijuana in open fields close to home that we knew could be easily 

spotted by police in helicopters. Bringing pot into our homes to dry in the oven, package and sell. Blasting our music and taking a chance on drawing the local police to our apartment while having a party. Having smoking sessions in the back of the store of one of our group knowing 

that the smell of dope must surely be floating out into the front room of the store.  And my two personal actions, one of which was just plain 

stupid, and another that could have sent me screaming into Hell.

The stupid one was meeting a girl, and falling in love with her while high. It is interesting that we thought we were in love, and because we 

believed that, we married fourteen days after we met. After we married I found out that it wasn't love at all but rather a tragedy instead. While I 

was working to get our marriage off on the right foot, my wife was working in a bar and taking the customers up into our apartment and having 

sex with them. After we were married I found out that she was schizophrenic with suicidal tendencies. That became very evident one night when she took a whole bottle of sleeping pills in an attempt to overdose and end her life. I got her to the hospital, they pumped her stomach, 

I walked her up and down the halls of the hospital for seventeen hours and she wound up in a nearby mental hospital.  When I would visit her she would act glad to see me, and then during my visit she would suddenly turn on me and want to kill me.

The second, event that could have sent me to Hell, actually came before the one above.I was head-over-heels in what I thought was love 

with a beautiful young woman who everyone in town wanted to have, but I had her and was proud of it.  We had a fantasy relationship that 

transcended reality as we did dope and tripped through the fields and woods getting off on nature and thinking we were in love. One night I was 

at a party without her, and another girl tried to seduce me. I determined in my heart to never be unfaithful to this girl I was "in love" with, so I refused to get involved with the other girl. I thought that if I didn't tell my girl about the incident first that someone would tell her and distort it, so 

I walked miles out to the entrance to her driveway and waited for her to come out. When she came, I got in her vehicle and told her everything. 

She wouldn't believe me, and told me that she was breaking up with me right then. I had built my whole life around her, and I felt devastated, 

and told her I was going to kill myself. We went to the river in my hometown and talked but nothing I could say would change her mind. With 

that I turned and started walking toward the river fully intending to keep going until the current took me and drowned me. She was  yelling for me to come back but I ignored her and she ran off. Obviously something happened to stop me in my foolishness or I would not be  writing this. As I was walking out into the river I had a flashback memory of a time I almost drowned when I was eleven and it frightened me so   bad that I left the river and returned home. The rest of that story can be found here.

I finally ended up in Broward County Prison in Ft. Lauderdale after being arrested on drug possession charges. Because I had no record (I never got caught), and because I didn't give the arresting officers any flack when I was arrested. I was given a misdemeanor and 18 days in prison. The rest of that story can be readhere.

I shared all this because I know that being in the mindset that nothing can be harmful about just using marijuana is a lie. It is indeed the doorway 

to using heavily addictive drugs that can destroy your health, your mind, and can lead anyone to foolish acts they would never do if they were thinking clearly. Once again I leave the reader to do as he or she wishes with this particular issue. If you still think that marijuana is harmless, then 

I have failed to impress you in spite of all that I have gone through, or you are obstinate and unwilling to take into serious consideration what has been said to your own detriment. Perhaps you are considering what has been said, but you just aren't willing to change yet because there are so many nice parties to go to or something else still holds you captive to the drug culture that you are unwilling to let go of. Habits are easy to form 

and often very difficult to break! Drugs, as a habit, are impossible to break without outside help and/or disciplined determination. I acknowledge that there will always be the exception to the outside help rule, but not the issue of our personal determination. My help came from the Lord Jesus Christ who took away five major habits from me in on moment of time when I prayed and asked him for help. I was instantly delivered from the six years of drugs, seventeen years of cigarettes, a very foul mouth that I used to curse the name of Christ many times every day,  twelve years of alcohol which included many, many drunken nights including drinking myself sober once, and a lust for women that  was incredibly strong in me because years of reading books with explicit stories of sexual activity of every kind, and the many pictures in my mind created through the reading of Playboy, Penthouse, and many other vile magazines that Satan uses to make women look cheap and create extremely lustful thoughts in men. One awesome thing about the whole experience was never having to deal with withdrawals from cigarettes, alcohol or drugs. Any person who has ever tried to quit those things knows what I mean. It was what I believe to be a major miracle, and my whole life has never been the same.