You have total free will. You can choose to follow or break the laws, you can go do drugs or be a hobo somewhere if that's the life you want to live.
Life is just your will to do something. And if you lose the freedom and will to do anything, you're, in my mind, already dead.
Debians testing branch might be a good shout. Packages stay pretty up-to-date and usually stuff doesn't break. Worst case you can pull a package from unstable when needed.