YOU'RE AT COLLEGE, FINALLY. You don't live in your parents' house, finally. You can stay out late, finally; you can have sex in your own bed, finally; and you can get stoned at any goddamn hour of the day. FUCKING FINALLY. Maybe you've never seen weed before. Or maybe you've been getting high every day since the seventh grade. Either way, you're on your own—and you're going to be doing a lot more drugs now than at any other point in your life. There are plenty of ways to do drugs that lead to inevitable regret. But there are ways to do drugs that minimize that possibility—and a few guidelines that we wish we'd followed during our hazy, stony college years.

You've probably already discovered that it's way, way easier to get marijuana than it is to procure alcohol—especially if you live in a dorm. Why subject yourself to the hassle of pestering your one friend with the fake ID until he makes a liquor run for you? It's easier to just walk down the hall and score a dub from that sketchy guy who listens to Zero 7 all day.

First guideline: Buy from that guy, but don't be that guy. Dealing is risky, and the rewards aren't all that great. You will get high on your own supply. You will find yourself buying totally sketchy drugs from totally sketchy people in totally sketchy places at totally sketchy times of night. People will use you, talk shit about you, and bang on your door at all hours of the night. They will tell you they can pay you later. They will not do this. And you will not make very much money, unless you go career, and why are you going to school if you are just going to be a career drug dealer?

Okay, another guideline (we hesitate to call them rules): Don't get high until after class. Waking and baking is no good except on weekends. If you go to class stoned, you're going to flunk out. EXCEPTIONS: If you are taking any of the following courses, by all means attend class zooted out of your gourd: (1) Any survey of jazz course. You won't understand Coltrane without a little bit of the smoke train, dig? Eh? Eh? Eh... ahem. (2) Modernist art. You think Dali painted that shit after going to church and drinking lemonade? The guy was high, and in ways you or I can't even imagine. (3) Any film class, particularly one that focuses on film noir, the French new wave, or the American cinematic renaissance of the 1970s. Movies are better stoned. Period. This is an indisputable fact, and is true for the remainder of your life, not just at college.

A third guideline: Be careful how much you eat. When you cook weed in brownies or cookies or cornbread or flapjacks, it becomes a lot harder to tell how much you're taking. When someone gives you brownies or cookies or cornbread or flapjacks, it becomes impossible. Eating marijuana takes awhile to work—often longer than an hour. Don't be impatient and guzzle a bunch more in the hopes that it'll kickstart your high. More likely, you'll have eaten three-quarters of a pan of Duncan Hines before you realize you've forgotten where you live and that you have gone temporarily blind. Seriously: This has happened. Trust us.

Guidelines for other drugs: acid—do it no more than twice. If both times were ohmygodsofuckingamazing, and you didn't freak out or punch a mailbox or jump out of a window or tell your girlfriend she's the devil, then you can do it again. Don't do it more than five times. Seriously. Ecstasy—again, no more than five times, ever, and don't do it more than once a month. Ecstasy is fun, fun, fun, but it really does make you stupider. Also, do it if at all possible with someone who will let you fuck them. But again, no more than five times. Shit's expensive, anyway. On the other hand, mushrooms—do as often as you like. If you eat too much, you'll simply puke 'em out, and unlike acid, it's a lot harder to permanently fuck yourself up on fungus. If you like 'em, do 'em. You will get bored with mushrooms eventually when you discover they stop working the way they used to, and that they just give you a headache. Opium—this doesn't get you high. Anyone trying to sell you opium is full of shit. Cocaine—wait until your junior year to do coke. You'll be older, wiser. You'll have gotten fully acclimated to your academic workload and will know exactly whom you can and cannot trust. Cocaine turns some people into jackals. Don't be one of them. And blow stops being fun after about the 10th or so time you do it, so if you find yourself continuing to do it beyond that point: Congratulations! You're a coke addict. Hope you like giving blowjobs to score eightballs, because that's your future. Heroin—you're kidding, right? Stay away from it, don't be friends with people who do it, period. End of story.

Finally, last guideline: Don't fucking grow dreadlocks. Jesus. We shouldn't even need to tell you this.

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