Well, the cop who took me home wasn't that lenient.He told me parent's that I'd been caught with a "partially smoked marijuana cigarette", and that he was sorry, but he had had to write me a ticket." He went on to explain how if I took a class the arrest would be expunged from my record, and suggested my parents should probably be more concerned about the cigarettes than the pot.
Like you, if I had been caught with any of the other stuff I was doing at that age, I'd have gone to juvie if I'd have been lucky enough to not be tried as an adult. I was a bit of a wild child in the mid-late 70s, though oddly, despite using fairly heavily, I never dealt. I worked at least one job throughout that entire time period and used drugs recreationally. Paid for them with a portion of my earnings.
Never became hooked on anything until an idiot of a shrink got me dependent on benzos in my late 40s, which I still am, much to my and my current psychiatrist's disgust.
Problem is that benzo withdrawal is so bad and so dangerous, even in the low doses in which I take them, that at this point, my psychiatrist feels I'm better off staying on them than trying to do even a slow taper.
Other than that. The year after I married, my husband and I decided that he would go on delayed enlistment to the Army, and we both quit all drug use while husband tried desperately to put on the 20lbs the Army insisted he gain before they'd let him in.
