Insanity
Once there was a man who went to the doctor because both of his ears were badly burned. When the doctor asked him what happened, he replied that he liked to have a drink or 10 when he got home from work. Last night he was sitting his easy chair watching TV, sipping his drink, while his wife ironed his shirts nearby. The phone rang and he picked up the iron, thinking it was the phone. The doctor then asked why his other ear was burned. The man responded, “The son-of-a-bitch called back!”
The mind of the adolescent addict is amazing. The compulsion to engage in addictive behavior is so great that they will risk injury, jail, emotional torment, and even death. All rationality flies out the door, until what was down is up, what’s wrong is right, and what’s bad is good. We’re all a bit insane, living in an insane world, but such thinking is PURE INSANITY. Einstein was onto something when he said that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.” It seems that for the adolescent addict, living in a mad world provides a convenient reason to be insane. So how do you switch your thinking pattern if you are in the throws of addiction? The answer is simple: You have to do the opposite of what you were doing. Though it sounds simple, it’s a hard thing to change your behavior when you’ve been doing the same thing for a long time. When you wake up in the morning and don’t want to go to work or school, you go anyway. When you want to lie to someone, you tell the truth. When you want to steal something, you pay for it instead. After a while, this “contrary action” becomes a natural reaction, and insanity dissolves into serenity for the adolescent addict.
