Marijuana isn't for everyone. That's the thing about alcohol -- anybody can drink alcohol and it always has the same effects (both good and bad). Some people like weed and others don't -- You have to be stronger mentally to use marijuana, and unlike alcohol marijuana doesn't directly alter dopamine levels to make you "happy." It's not a "feel-good drug" like crack or alcohol, it's purely psychedelic in nature and your trips are what you make them to be.

To be honest I don't do drugs very often (though for a while I was smoking weed almost everyday and drinking every weekend -- which is a very bad idea). Alcohol is good for having a good time but for some reason I like marijuana better. Marijuana will teach you things about yourself. It's kind of hard to explain, it's different than a lot of drugs, you just have to do it yourself. I guess the proper term is "psychonaut." It teaches you to think differently because it impairs your cognitive abilities -- kind of like an artificial way to exercise your mind (like a cross-word puzzle or something) and this carries over to when your sober. Like I never stopped to appreciate everything in life until I started noticing how enjoyable the small things are when you toke. And I used to have really bad clinical anxiety -- my doctor was pretty much begging me to take his meds but I'm not a fan of the side-effects of anti-anxiety medications (I was on benzo for a little while though).

It's different for everyone. Psychedelic drugs are definitely eye-opening even if the initial purpose of the drug is recreational. I know people who have done shrooms and they swear that if you just do it once you'll be a much happier person. Shrooms scare the shit out of me though, I don't like drugs that impair you to that great of an extent. I never was a fan of smoking an entire joint by myself, that can be really scary. Alcohol and salvia don't matter though cause the way the drugs work they make you happy and relaxed so no matter how fucked up you get you don't freak out about it (where w/ shrooms you're 100% guaranteed to have at least one panic attack during your trip).

I was surprised when I first started learning that a lot of drugs aren't as bad as school teachers and the media make them out to be. Alcohol is a lot worse than many illicit drugs. And to the extent that some drugs are bad if you don't do them a lot nothing bad will happen (this doesn't work with heroin or meth though -- doing these drugs only once is a very bad idea). The great thing about weed is that there are no real statistically noticeable long-term effects. So some people (though rare) generate severe psychosis from smoking weed -- these side-effects go away upon secession of the drug. IMO it's kind of like the perfect drug for that reason (plus you can eat, vaporize, or water filter weed which gets rid of any effect on your lungs). Light up once if you have a bad reaction to it you can just quite toking and you havn't done any permanent harm to yourself. If you do LSD once however and have the bad tracers/flashbacks those will stay with you for months, sometimes your entire life. If you do meth you'll do permanent brain damage and probably be addicted for life. Etc. Plus weed is a lot milder than most drugs but if you so chose you can easily put yourself on cloud 9.