I guess I'll be the first, with a resounding yes.

With the exception of one character, all of my stories have characters that are based off of real people I had met and known throughout my life.  Naturally, their behaviors and personalities have been modified to suit the universe they live in.  For example, I'm pretty sure that most of the real women I have written about would most likely be very freaked out by the amount of strength and muscle I give them in my stories.

I've also tended to make some of the character smarter than they would normally be, for instance Marissa from Black Sheep is certainly not as overtly intelligent as her real life counter part.  Though I know deep down she had brains because she was complimented as a great writer, she was just very dumb and lacked common sense at some points.

So with the characters based off real people I also had to base how they interact in the world based on how I have experienced things.  Responses get more exaggerated as they become muscled up and start rampaging of course, but everything is grounded in the reality of things I've seen.

So of course, including real life experiences should practically be mandatory in a story, they are what makes it possible to relate to the characters and the world they live in.

I've put lots of stuff in my stories.  The Rutgers characters from The Amazon Artifact are based on a group of girls I knew there in the early 90s.  I had recently graduated from college myself, was living in the area and dated one of them - "Alex".

In hindsight she was an awful person.

I don't know who said it, but someone said that one real, live person's life should have enough experiences for 6 characters in a book.  And while I'm no Indiana Jones, I have written and retold a lot of incidents from work, life at home (why do you think many of my writings are in Small Town, Southeast USA?), people I've met (pleasant or not), and even unpleasant experiences. (A German Shepherd attack when I was 3 inspired one combat moment in "The Stray," f'rinstance.)

Writing what you know makes the whole thing more realistic and accessible to the reader.

Of course, the names of the people and places have been changed to protect the innocent.  But if Ma and Dad ever read my stuff... they're gonna automatically know who wrote it. ^^;;;;