My mum is all anti-drug so as a kid I bought into the whole "all drugs are cut with rat poison and will kill you" propaganda until I was about 16 and actually begun to research things myself and realised most of what I'd been told was hugely overblown, although obviously drug use does have risks and is potentially harmful, it's still much less harmful than what I was told and alcohol is worse than most illicit substances.
When I was 18 and got to uni I started experimenting. First drug I used was actually etizolam to self-medicate anxiety. Then weed, then aMT, LSD, and some other psychedelics, then diazepam and a few other benzos, then codeine, tramadol, DHC, morphine, and oxy, then phenibut and kratom, then speed and MDMA and so on.
Nowadays I'm more like this...