The Stranger - Seattle's infamous alternative weekly - is running a back to school guide for college kids in its recent issue, and included within is a primer for collegiate drug experimentation.
While it's unlikely you got through high school without some exposure to drugs, college is when you're practically required to try them.
Don't be scared: Drugs can smell fear.
More than anything, drugs want to be your friend. Some drugs are good friends—the kind that encourage you, help you relax and celebrate, and escort you to fascinating new places. Others are bad friends—the kind that are nice until you refuse to lend them money and then they torch your house.
The primer takes a very brief look at the major players: marijuana, meth, cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, mushrooms, and heroin (curiously omitted from the list is ketamine). Even abstinence appears on the list (aww). Not surprisingly for regular readers of that paper, the primer is slightly biased overall in favor of very limited experimentation, and heavily biased against the hard drugs ("Like crystal meth, heroin is one of the rare drugs that's not worth fucking with even once") - but I don't suppose this is terrible advice for college kids, really. After all, these kids have their whole lives ahead of them to build up the raw level of bitterness and disappointment they're going to need to truly appreciate the soothing call of heroin.
At any rate, it was worth reading just to learn that some people apparently refer to marijuana as "coughy ha-ha." I really, honestly, truly learn something new every single day of my prison sentence on this rock.
