At any rate, addicts as a whole are not at all stupid. Yet, when it comes to living, they are inexplicably inept. There are certain life lessons that they have never grasped—the emotional equivalents of “don’t eat waffles all day unless you want to get sick.” As time goes by, rather than learning how to do what everyone else does, the addict increasingly overcompensates by developing an entire alternative set of life skills of dubious distinction such as a masterly knack for self-deception or an instinctive ability to manipulate others.
