Wallace had depression and anxiety since adolescence (i.e. well before any reported psychedelic use). Pretty inappropriate and irresponsible framing you've picked here!
Depression often can lead to poor choices or life paths that would be better navigated if not depressed.
"Engaged with drugs" could be substituted with "compulsively gambled" or even "collected and obsessively arranged bottlecaps" in some cases. These are behaviours that can be used to avoid deeper issues behind depression which can persist and lead to bad outcomes regardless of the behaviour.
