Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2010.

When I was 12 years old, my father sat me down to warn me of the dangers of alcohol. “Son,” he said gravely, “never make a martini with too much vermouth.”

Later in life, schools often provided me with lists of illegal substances and their negative side effects, though I noticed educators usually skipped the most obvious one, which is that drugs make people really boring to listen to.

They acted as if making it through childhood without taking on bad habits and addictions meant you were home free, when exactly the opposite i...