Diving is pure and healthy, but it is a lot of work. Someone can sit on their couch and blast themselves into another reality for a short while. I'm not condoning drugs / alcohol at all, but having experienced my fair share of just about anything you can imagine under the sun and then some, I can tell you that's why people start. It's an escape. You think it's an easy escape, but in the end it's all fake.
Now being in my later 30's none of that stuff is even a thought, and if given a choice any day of the week I would choose camping, hanging with my kids or my new granddaughter, diving or any of the other real meaningful life experiences I can share with my family. It might be more work, but it's real. I love my life today, I don't need "beer googles" to "enhance" anything.
And you're not old
@Eric Sedletzky, I've seen the stuff you post. The adventures you have would run circles around these video game playing kids out there these days!!
I thought I read Jerry switch drugs out for diving, if I remember correctly he detoxed on heroin while diving in the Carribean somewhere? That sounds awful to me, but at least he got off of it.