My Plan To Ruin Your Life is a workbook geared to help people struggling to see how their addiction controls them. The voice of the workbook is the reader’s addiction.
ADDICTION’S INTRODUCTION
Don’t be mad, I’m here to improve your chances of staying sober. I wrote this workbook to tell you exactly how I plan to destroy your life, just to see if that would make the game a little more interesting.
Just to be really fair I’ll leave space for you to plan how you will defeat me. I’ll walk you right up to the trap, show you all the slippery spots, and let you see what I’m using for bait. You do what you can to stop me.
MARKETING MISERY:
As part of my “EVERY ADDICT LEFT ON HIS BEHIND” program, I’ve come up with a drug for everyone. I’ve even got heroin cheap enough for kids to buy with the money they made flipping burgers.
STRENGTH BASED ADDICTION
Any con man can use someone’s weaknesses. I will use your strengths against you. For example, I will convince the intellectual he’s not an alcoholic sex addict, he’s ” “caught between man’s inherent bacchanalian, yet life-affirming tendencies, and the puritanical substitution of the Biblical for the bibulous life.”
CHANGE THE WAY I LOOK
I will change my appearance to suit the market. Tomorrow I will look like a single mom’s dream man: good job, honest, considerate, and kind to her eight year old son. When I light up that first joint, she’ll forget everything they told her in rehab. Two years from now her son will be in foster care. I’ll be long gone. She’ll be kneeling behind a dumpster earning money for crack. Her self-loathing will hurt more than the gravel in her knees.
CHANGE THE WAY THE DRUG LOOKS
I will make sure people from all walks of life see me the way I want them to see me:
☺To the overworked executive/mom, I will look like a glass of sophisticated relaxation and escape.
☺To the eighteen year old intellectual, I will look like edible insight.
☺To the union worker, I will look like a can of solidarity and brotherhood.
☺To the lonely fourteen year old, I will look like a big cloud of acceptance.
☺To the lawyer who just won the big case, I will look like a powdery line of success.
BADGER YOU
“Your day sucked,” I’ll whisper. “Clearly that’s God’s way of telling you it’s time to get high.”
FIND AN INTERNET ADDICTION FOR YOU
You’ll start by downloading free soft porn and end up paying for live performances on your credit card. “OK, this time shave his head and throw in some jumper cables….”
CONVINCE YOU THAT YOU REALLY AREN’T ADDICTED
I’ll make you believe you’ve cured twenty-five years of addiction after one night in detox, or that your prescription abuse is somebody else’s fault. (Did you know that Adam claimed the snake put a piece of the apple in his mouth while he was sleeping?) I’ll tell you the way you use your drug is not that bad and other people do worse. “If I ever inject it there, I’ll know I have a problem.”
Drug testing, not drug use, is your problem. You will see your addiction as a political rather than a personal issue. “Not only should it be legalized, but also baked into school lunches.”
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Addiction ends the workbook with a challenge: Come up with a plan, then follow through to end the addiction.
