Mamacita says: I am basically a kind person. I would lie down in the road if I thought that would help some people. I work overtime to help students. I still do my children’s laundry, and I feed them whenever they visit. I would do the same for you. If ever they (or their friends) (or you) need a helping hand, I’ve got one at the end of each arm. I have worked really hard all my life. The thing is, I think everyone should work hard. All their lives. I think everyone should look out for everyone else. I think everyone should use their own hands to support themselves and help others. I have little patience with lazy people, or people who choose not to work. If you need me, all you have to do is ask. I’ll bring you food. I’ll do your laundry. I’ll shingle your roof. (Yes, I can do that!) But if you’re just lying around waiting to be waited on, or feel in any way, shape, or form that the world owes you a living,  I will tell you exactly what I think of you.

That being said.

Look, I’m no Goody Two Shoes. I can be really snarky. Nobody can out-horrify me in Cards Against Humanity. I have little patience with adults who consistently make poor decisions, but I also think some people get far more sympathy than they deserve.

Here’s the thing. I am feeling a little bit guilty because I can’t seem to conjure up much sympathy for all these celebrity addicts who seem to be dropping like flies – by their own hands..

When I have students who can’t go fifteen minutes without dashing out to the parking lot for a smoke, and when I have coworkers who NEED a break every half hour or even sooner because they NEED a break. . . well, I can’t help but wonder where the “fair” factor is. Those who work through other people’s frequent breaks are the good students and good workers and the people I would trust with important things. Those who allow their desire for a ______(insert drug of choice here) to interfere with their responsibilities make me kind of, well, disgusted.

Hoarders. Methies. Smokers. Drunks. Hormonal wonders.  Life is full of so many choices; why do so many people take the gutter route? And please don’t lecture me about poverty and illness. So many people pick themselves up and rise up out of the ashes of other people’s messes and make a success of their own lives; why can’t more people? So they might have to walk eight miles uphill to get an education – do it! So they’re madly in love and their hormones are nuts and that guy with the good job at Taco Bell is getting more and more insistent that “if you really love me. . . .” hey. To do it or not to do it is a choice, too.

Honestly, people with no self control puzzle me. I just don’t get it. Horndogs, gluttons, people who feel they have a right to stink up a building because they WANT to, people who are better drivers after a couple of beers. . . What the hell, people?

“I can’t help it” is the feeblest excuse in the world. Yes, you CAN help it. You can choose not to. It’s your CHOICE. Nobody is forcing you. Whether you do it or not is entirely up to YOU.

If you are so weak that even knowing what might happen if you continue to choose the nutjob path, you still choose it, you are committing suicide and I think you know it.

“But I can’t help it.” “I can’t control myself.”

Why not. Others can.

“I don’t think I can give up the huge pile of my own human shit on the bathroom floor or the 4,000 almost-empty bottles of shampoo in the shed. As long as there’s a quarter inch of liquid in each bottle, it would be wasteful to discard them. Besides, I NEED them.”

No, you don’t. There is something horribly wrong with you.

You are committing slow suicide with your extremely wrong choices. This or that. And you choose that. And you are simultaneously choosing your personal preferences over everything and everyone else in your life.  You are harming the innocent because you are completely absorbed in yourself.

People make these awful inhuman choices all the time. Boyfriends over children. Alcohol over relationships. Nicotine over cleanliness. Big pile of bloody underpants in the kitchen sink over normalcy. Girlfriend over family. Meth over decency.

All because these choices make a person feel, personally, better for a little while.

The worst and most disgusting choices of all? Any of these things over life, and the others who love and need you even though you’ve put them absolutely last and yourself absolutely first.

Me me me me me.

For shame.

I fully understand how addiction can grip someone and be really hard to pry off. I also believe that if a person really wanted to be free of said addiction, that person would move heaven and earth to rid him/herself of it, which does not include cooking it in the front yard, buying 50 pounds of it and storing it under the bed, walking out the door and getting in a lover’s car, stepping in poop to get to the sink, dropping your drawers for every cute Taco Bell guy (but he’s got a steady job and he loves me!). Sometimes when I hear about the awful things people with no self control do to themselves and to those who trusted and loved them, I fear for the human race.

Feel sorry for these people, yes. Of course. They’re sick.

But if they continue to do nothing whatsoever except demand sympathy, exceptions, and breaks because of their negative choices, then they’ve gone way past deserving sympathy or breaks or exceptions of any kind.

If they’re not actively working really hard to rid themselves of the demons that have been invited to possess them, then the time will come when the locks must be changed and the abandoned loved ones must move on to someone else, preferably someone who cares more for a spouse and a child than someone who chooses himself/herself every time.

In the old days, such people were locked in a room and required to dry out, cold turkey. Perhaps, in the old days, the right things were done.

It hurts? I’m sweating? Oh the AGONY?

Ask these people’s friends, families, and employers if they’ve ever hurt, sweated, or been in agony over this guy’s choices.

That’s what I thought.

Bring it on.

Remember, I’m sorry for these people. But I’m a lot sorrier for their abandoned, used, lied-to not-very-loved ones.

Grow up.  Make good choices.  FORCE yourself to do the right thing.  (the fact that some people must be forced to do the right thing is pretty sad, too.)

I know that those of you who believe addiction is 100% beyond any one person’s control will consider me a monster with no heart.

I’ve dealt with victims of other people’s addictions for over thirty years.  Maybe if you’d seen what I see regularly, you’d have less sympathy for the addict and more sympathy for his/her innocent victims.