One thing I think is important is that people have such a wide array of backgrounds, I think it's a mistake to simply categorize them as white-collar, without examing how they got to where they were.

I've been in IT for years, but before that I was in the military, saw combat, and developed PTSD. IT is just one of the things I'm good at that pays the bills, but that alone wouldn't tell you my story of drugs.

I got out and immediately used my GI bill to go to uni. I was drinking a lot at the time though. I got up to about a fifth every two days. This was for a lot of reasons. The transition from infantry to civilian life so quickly was rough. I was the oldest person in most of my classes of smartass 18 year old rich kids who mommy and daddy paid their way to college and bought them vehicles etc. I became bitter about the war and started researching it further and fell further into disgust because I realized how much of it was a lie. I made some ROTC cadets cry because I snapped when I saw them doing a "patrol" on campus with poor dispersion and yelled at them. I failed out of a math class... things were generally not headed in a good direction.

Then the tables turned, and it was all thanks to cannabis. See, I was always brought up anti-drug, so I was one of the few outliers who literally never did drugs in high-school of any sort other than alcohol and caffeine. As part of my military goals of getting and maintain clearance I also was very strict with myself about drugs, always feeling contempt and disgust for those who particpated in them. (not realizing the hypocricy and double-standard when it came to tobacco and alcohol).

So it wasn't until after two semesters of this downward spiral that a friend pulled me into his room, and said he wanted to talk to me about cannabis. He said he knew my position, but that being scientific minded I should read up on the scientific facts known about it and then read some first hand experience articles from a place called erowid. After a few weeks of reading every scientific paper I could get my hands on, and reading a few erowid posts from other PTSD military types, I finally decided I was a civilian now, I could give it a shot.

Cannabis literally saved me from becoming (or staying) an alcoholic. It was an almost instant turn around. I found being drunk disgusting. I stopped smoking tobacco completely. (Smoked a pack of cigs a day in-country, quit cold turkey when I left Iraq for the last time, but continued to smoke cigars/pipe tobacco every once in a while.) I found myself able to process things better. I was getting sleep I had before had to be drunk to get (hypervigilance is a bitch). I was being nicer to other students and not as standoffish, and started making friends.

I eventually quit college to do a startup that I left a few years later but that is still going strong. I stayed in the industry and have been in IT since. This sounds like a success story right? That's not all.

What I didn't tell you was I lived in the bible belt, in a state where it was/is illegal. I started having issues with the demographic... that is to say the people. I started having issues despite fairly regularly smoking cannabis, and started drinking again at the same time (cross-fading). I eventually got so fed up with the area I was in I jumped ship and moved to the east coast, where I had a support structure, to try to finally get help from the VA.

The VA was horrible. They put me on shit that made me feel like a zombie (trazodone in particular, but all of it did it.) Finally I realized the VA was not helping, (the most help I got was from learning how CBT and CBET worked from an independent org), stopped all their bullshit drugs which I think are a major health problem, stopped drinking, and came back to my state. I didn't mean to stay. I just wanted to catch up with family and friends, and was intending to go to Seattle because cannabis had just been legalized, and then I met a that woman I fell in love with.

I ended up staying in my state, but my SO had a druggie brother and an alcohol dad, and many concerns about the illegality of it, so my usage of cannabis, no matter when or in what amounts, became a fighting issue. So I tried to quit (because love is more important than anything right?). What ended up happening though is that I fell into this vicious cycle where I would have a particularly rough time for a while and would give in, toke up furiously for a week or two, cause a fight, and then quit only to find myself drinking instead (even once started dipping for a few months as my vice to replace the others, and let me tell you dipping is nasty as hell). Then I'd be "good" for a while until I had another hard time (like a week of super bad hypervigilance at night causing very little sleep), and the cycle would repeat. Obviously this eventually ended the relationship.

I tried very hard to keep this all in my personal life though, and protect my professional life from those troubles. This whole time I was performing fairly well in my job(s). I could have been doing so much better, but I was surviving given the double life I was leading. Eventually the stress leaked though, and I ended up quitting my job with very little notice because of an unrelated unhappiness there (being underpayed).

So now I am now using the rest of my GI bill to go to an online school and finish my degree while I job search in legalized states so I don't have to deal with the paranoia surrounding it's legality. I determined it was my medicine and I deserve to have my medicine without feeling guilt or ashamed or being scared of being arrested.

That said, I wanted to test myself to see how bad things are as a baseline, so I am now two months drug free (minus caffeine) and despite the ol PTSD rearing it's head a bit, it's better than it ever has been and I intend to stay drug free until I make it to a legal state.

Right now my main internal discussion is if I am willing to be on a list of patients in a medical only state or if I find anonymity important enough to only go to a recreationally legal state.

That's my story. I hope it's useful to you in some way or interesting to others.