SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY
Skip Haynes on Smashwords
How To Straighten Up Your Act In One Week
& Keep The Money In The Country
or How to get out from behind the 8-ball
Copyright 2011 Skip Haynes
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
“You can’t sell bananas with a monkey on your back"
The first time I ever heard this phrase was twenty years ago at four o’clock in the morning, snorting cocaine across the table from my dealer — to whom I had just paid several hundred dollars for the cocaine that was deviating my septum (technical talk for a hole in your head where all the money goes). Yet again, I was the only one snorting. He never indulged. I asked him why. He said, (and I quote) “’cause you can’t sell bananas with a monkey on your back.” It took me years to figure this out. This book is the result.
I’ve been happily living a clean banana-selling lifestyle since 1985 using the principles outlined in this book. I now count on feeling good when I wake up in the morning. That’s all.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Getting Out From Behind The 8-Ball
• • • THE END • • •
jerk n. (jurk) (14c):
anyone who consciously and purposely, ruins their
health,
relationships, job, sanity and outlook on life while
they’re supposed to be having fun
but aren’t — and pays for
and defends the right to do so!
• • • INTRODUCTION • • •
YOU ARE A JERK!
That’s right. Read it again!
You are a jerk!
You’re not a jerk because you’re not a nice person, you are a jerk because you’ve got a problem you want to do something about and you’re not doing it.
You snort too much!
You drink too much!
You smoke too much!
You take pills too much – or any of the other wonderful things you are doing to your head, your body and life.
You think you’re having a good time. You’re not! Keep this up much longer and you’re going to die. That’s right, party animal. You’re dead meat.
This is why you’re a jerk. Pretty soon you’ll be a dead jerk.
You don’t have to be a jerk. You probably don’t even want to be. You’re just a little confused as to how to go about changing your status.
All you need is some decent support and a push in the right direction – your compass being on the blink. An outline that isn’t too difficult that will help you have fun while you’re having a good time again – a weekly workout as it were.
This is a small, easy to read book about how to stop being a jerk and stay alive as long as you are supposed to — and enjoy doing it! The print is real big so the words don’t cross, even if you’re zonked out of your gourd, so being too high is no excuse for not being able to read it. Depending on the intensity and reasons for your particular jones this book will show you how to repair the damage done or, at the very least, straighten up your act long enough to get some outside help if that’s what you need because doing it at home is beyond your scope at the present time.
It All Starts With You.
You screwed up your life. Now you’ve got to unscrew it. You, yourself. Period.
You never paid anyone to get high for you, did you? It works the same the other way around. You can’t pay anyone to get straight for you either. That’s why this is an undo-it-yourself book. That’s the only way it works.
The reason I know you can do it yourself, is because I did it myself.
If a marginally psychopathic rock n’ roll singer who didn’t know out that baggies were made for sandwiches and used to put acid on his Quaaludes and wash them down with Green Russians (half a shot of Vodka and a half a shot of NyQuil) straightened up his act, so can you. It may seem difficult or even impossible at the moment, but it’s not. It’s simple once you know how to do it.
This little book is aimed primarily at cocaine self abuse but may be applied equally as well to any other nasty habits that are self-defeating and just not fun anymore. They never were fun. Unfortunately it takes a long time to find this out. Some people never find this out until the beeps on their life-support system in the ICU change to a steady tone.
I was a class A jerk. It takes one to know one. I totally trashed my life 24/7 by living in a maintenance level drug stupor. I considered it a “passing thing” – for over twenty years!
It was like walking around with a fishbowl full of rubber cement over my head.
The straw that broke my camel’s back was opening my desk drawer one day.
It rattled and clinked!
Apparently I‘d been dropping my empty one-gram vials in there – like a piggy bank full of wishful thinking. I knew I couldn’t have been putting them in there that long and I wasn’t into cocaine that heavily, so there shouldn’t have been too many of them.
There were forty-five!
My first reaction was to check and see if there were any leftovers.
What do you think?
I began arranging them on my desktop like little toy soldiers. There were enough of the little rascals to recreate the Battle of Bunker Hill.
It was getting to be late in the afternoon so my hangover had abated enough for me to try thinking a little. I counted the vials again. Then, I multiplied the number of vials (45) by the cost per vial ($100.00).
Next, I multiplied the number of vials by $50.00, the average minimum amount I calculated I had spent on the drinks and pills I needed to “relax” after over-amping on a gram or so of bad cocaine cut with Arm & Hammer, Comet or worse.
Then, I added the two figures together.
They came to a staggering $6,750.00!! – SIX THOUSAND, SEVEN
HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS!!! I hadn’t even earned that much during the time I had the desk, but there they were!
Two miniature armies of sparking clean glass bottles with black helmets winking at me from the top of my desk.
This made me stop and think — or at least as close as I could come to having a coherent thought at the time.
Yo! I could have bought a whole lot of coke for that much money! Then I realized I had bought a whole lot of coke for that much money. I also hadn’t bought too much of anything else. I could’ve bought a car for that kind of money. I needed a car. I sold mine to buy coke. I was caught up in the cocaine/alcohol/anything else I can cram into my nose/mouth/whatever syndrome. I’d just been too high to notice.
One thing I did know. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t having fun having fun anymore and that was the whole idea in the first place.
IF YOU’RE NOT HAVING FUN WHEN YOU’RE HAVING A GOOD TIME,
YOU ARE A JERK!
I can’t stand being a jerk. Then I’d be just like all the other jerks I was always putting down while I was sitting at the bar getting loaded being a jerk.
There was only one thing to do — change my direction. So I did. It was that simple once I made up my mind to do it.
I was a world class derelict. If I fixed it, so can you. You just don’t know you can. You can fix it. You’ve got to fix it. If you don’t you’re going to die. Over and out good buddy. Forever.
Here are a few pointers you can use to help you straighten up your act long enough to see your “problem” and how to fix it from a somewhat sane point of view. They’ll give you fighting chance to clean up your act by yourself or, at the least, show you the kind of outside help you feel might work for you – emotional, physical, mental, spiritual or otherwise so you can start waking up in the morning feeling good again.
It’s going to take some discipline – something you are totally lacking at the moment. You can’t be a wimp about this.
It’s only one week.
If you think you won’t finish you won’t.
If you don’t go all the way with this one you are history. A.M.F.
If you feel that bad about what you’ve done to yourself and the people around you and you can’t take one lousy week to try to turn your life around, you aren’t worth the price of the condom your daddy didn’t buy to conceive you.
So let’s get started.
• • • COCAINE • • •
If you do coke you already know all about it. I’m certainly not going to be telling you anything new. I'd just like to refresh your memory about a few of the downside aspects of the toots. Being a believer in the rose-colored glasses theory, I would’ve started with the good points but since there aren’t any I’ll right down to the bad news.
I’ll just jot down a few of my impressions of the delights of partying in the snow, then some light thoughts on the karma that follows the powder as it comes vibrating through your front door demolishing your nose, life and good times — some of the things that made me decide to eliminate coke from my small circle of friends making me a far better place to live and the same time stopping me from being a jerk.
• • • A DAY IN THE LIFE • • •
(With Mr. Jones)
Your connection is home, awake and not too high to answer the phone.
He has, at this moment the very best dope ever seen on Earth. Original Mother Lode but this doesn’t matter to you. As far as you are concerned the main thing it’s got going for it is geography. It’s here – now.
You drop by the automatic teller and pick up a couple of hundred bucks to cover the evening’s entertainment. You’re late because twenty other jerks are standing in line in front of you doing exactly the same thing. Most of them are in such a hurry, they leave their cars in the middle of the street with the doors open and the engines running.
You’re lucky. No one steals your car so he can sell it to buy coke.
You scoot over to your “man’s” house. If you’re late, he might be out of nose candy, although he never is. (If by some chance he actually does run out, he’ll call you immediately to inform you of this fact and tell you he’ll have some more real soon.
This is the only time he will call you unless you owe him money — which you do).
Finally it’s your turn. You shoot the breeze while you’re eyeballing the scale to make sure you’re getting a good count which doesn’t matter because the scale’s set for 7/8s.
You grab your little package of fun, take one more hit for the road, thank your connection profusely for helping you ruin your life, ask him if he’s going to be home later – just in case and take off.
When you get home late the little lady’s madder than a wet hen until she finds out where you’ve been. You’re already higher than the Space Shuttle so you have to turn her on so she’ll be able to understand you because you’re moving at the speed of light and sound like Alvin The Chipmunk.
You’re now ready to go out and have a good time. As you sprint out the door you grab some Afrin and a half a box of Kleenex for later on in the evening when your nose starts dripping in the soup. Then you head out to pick up your friends for the evening’s entertainment.
On the way to the restaurant you turn them on, they turn you on, you turn them on ad nauseum. By the time you get to the restaurant everyone’s snorting, sniffing and gagging so much it sounds like a walking flu epidemic.
As soon as you’re seated, or before if possible, you order drinks – triples, just to take the edge off. Next it’s an expensive gourmet meal which everyone sits there watching rot between running back and forth to the rest room to powder your collective nose.
You can always tell who’s snorting and who’s peeing.
People who snort immediately head for the handicapped stall even if you’re the only other person there and you’re washing your hands. They try to pee loudly and snort softly which doesn’t work. If you don’t get enough suction going it falls out of your nose onto the toilet seat. If you snort off of toilet seats…
After your after dinner drinks – three or four of them – you generously tip your waiter and ask him to put your $200 worth of untouched gourmet leftovers into doggie bags — which you promptly forget to take with you because you’re so high you’re doing the dipsy-doodle even though it’s only nine-thirty.
On the way to the club where you’re going to have an even better time everyone gets headaches. All of you have developed magnum motor-mouth and are screaming at each other like traders on the floor of the stock exchange. Everyone is yelling at the same time but not about the same thing, This works out beautifully because you’re all too high to understand what’s being said anyway.
The club is only ten minutes away but it takes you 45 to get there because you drive past it five times while you’re snorting, yelling and gagging.
When you finally get there you immediately order two or three more drinks just to stay in the ballpark. You cash a check at the bar because you’ve already spent enough to cover your car insurance for six months.
If you snort, you drink. That’s how it works. Besides, when you’re having a good time what’s a little money?
Then you discover you’re running out of powder! You have to make a call to see if you can get more. If you can’t you’re screwed – or that’s what you think.
No Cocaine. No fun.
You’ve now been with your significant other for six hours. You don’t even know or care what has happened in their life that day. You can only get it together to talk about how good the dope was (with cocaine it’s always past tense) and, of course, how high you are – or aren’t. This topic of conversation runs out just about the same time your bottle does so the rest of the conversation is spent on talking about how to get some more.
You are now so high you’re numb and you’re drunk as a skunk to boot. You shouldn’t be allowed to tie your shoelaces without adult supervision much less drive a three thousand pound weapon through the streets – but you’re off!
So your connection’s only thirty miles away.
So the worst thunderstorm on record is happening at this very moment.
So your car’s got only one headlight and no windshield wipers.
You’re on a mission from God.
People are counting on you.
You are counting on you.
Your nose is counting on you.
You’ve got to make it.
You don’t have to worry about not being able to drive. You didn’t even take the Soma some psychopath offered while you were in the handicapped stall. You might have fallen asleep before the coke got there.
Back in the jungle the rest of your party hangs on the edges of their barstools frantically waiting for you to bring the medicine.
Every time someone walks through the door they get whiplash from snapping their heads around 360 degrees to see if it’s you.