Often the only chance one gets to exit the road to hell is the very last exit.  God knows I’ve been there innumerable times in my life.  Only self-realization and deep introspection have been able to save me from my own worst enemy – myself.   Whether it was drowning in oceans of liquor or skirting the law and society with my antisocial ways, I have come close to my own self-destruction many times in life.  And, you know what?  I had to reach the last possible exit in both cases in order to hop off the train to hell.

Throughout college and my marriage, I spent my days closer to the bottle than my spouse.  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t particularly care about the company of others, but the addiction was grave.  Countless nights I woke up in my own shit and piss or on the floor of the bathroom next to the toilet.  I should have died more than once.  Eventually my spouse left me and I realized that I could not hone my parasitic ways if I was drunk all the time.  There was a magnificent brain behind the bottle and it needed clarity to function, not inebriation.  Had I gone on much longer, I probably would be dead.

My antisocial ways that became accented after giving up the bottle however could have proved much more destructive.  I should have landed in jail many times.  I should have lost my job.  I lost many friends due to my parasitic and manipulative ways.  Staring down the barrel, there was only ruin to be had if I did not change my ways.

This, dear readers, is the key to restraint for the antisocial.  For some, when things become their worst, eyes can finally be opened to see the ruin that lies ahead if ways are not changed.  I should have lost it all, including my life.  Only by reaching the depths of self-destruction could I see that my behaviors needed to change even if my thoughts would never change.  I am in control of my actions, but it took that last exit before me to see that a course correction was truly needed.