I started drinking and smoking at around 15. In my early twenties I drank a lot, drove drunk, smoked weed and did a lot of speed (some cocaine, but mostly prescription stuff like Aderrall). Then there were the party drugs, whatever someone was selling. I never messed with crack, meth or needle drugs, that just seemed too hardcore even for me. But basically anything else was fair game.
I had a friend, Dan, who loved to drink wine. He would buy it in actual jugs. I'm not even sure where he would get it in jugs. Every night there would be a party at the house he lived in, and Dan had his turntables set up, spinning all kinds of electronic music and drinking out of his jug while we played Tony Hawk or whatever game was on, then we'd all pass out until morning. One morning we all woke up to the sound of Dan's girlfriend screaming at the top of her lungs. Someone ran upstairs to see what was going on. Turns out that Dan had snorted an 80mg oxycontin the night before in addition to his jug of wine. He overdosed and his girlfriend woke up to find him lying dead next to her. As soon as I heard someone upstairs say, "he's dead," I got up and left right away, figuring cops would be coming there soon and not wanting to be around for that. It was a super selfish decision on my part, but one that characterized the kind of person I was back then. I never showed my face at that house again.
That night pretty much ended my run with hard drugs, but I continued on drinking occasionally, just trying to keep it in moderation. I started directing my energies towards more respectable activities, started a small business (auto detailing), and then I met a girl with whom things got serious pretty quickly. But even as I was trying to clean up my act, this girl was heading in the opposite direction, and I knew it was a self-destructive path so I broke up with her, which was about the hardest thing I ever made myself do. The next day I went to work at my part-time night job and it was a really slow night. Basically I had 8 hours to sit there and second-guess my decision to break up with her. By the time my shift ended I was ready to turn off my brain. So I called up my old party buddies and met up with them. As soon as I walked in the door of my buddy's apartment I downed a half a bottle of JD like an athlete downs a gatorade. The night got crazier from there and I ended up blacking out, falling off a rooftop (don't ask), and waking up all scratched up from the fall, at someone else's house with no memory of how I got there, other than the fact that my car was there so apparently I drove myself. I checked my cell phone call log, and sure enough I had drunk-dialed that girl about 5 times the night before. I was mortified. I had been doing so well, and in one night I felt like I had ruined it all.
Not long after that night I gave up drinking altogether. I haven't touched a drink since then (some time in 2003). Some people seem to be able to handle it in moderation, I'm just not one of them. I quit smoking about a year later.
So anyway, yeah it's possible, but for me I just had to learn the hard way.
