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Detection
Know the Rules of the Game
Bad Habits
Handling your Vampires

So how do you know if you have a vampire on your lines? 

A usual scene with life is to feel OK physically and at peace with those around you. The old adage is if you feel upset consistently by what you read or watch on the news, then try not reading or watching for a few days and see if you don't feel better. 

You can look back over a day and with some practice start pinpointing when you started feeling "stressed". Who said what just before that? What set you off? There's your vampire. 

Some are more sly - by getting you to agree to several smaller decisions or assumptions they force on you, you eventually will agree to some real whoppers and give years of your life away and feel quite good about it. Some organizations are quite good at it. But one of the telling points is if they prohibit you from reading or viewing materials about them which are critical and if they keep discussions of alternative opinions suppressed in the area. 

It seems to be a truth that if a person or organization has done nothing that is immoral or at odds with agreed upon local behavior, then anyone writing or saying anything about them can't have much of an effect, even if it is a lie. And that is the point that vampires miss. Integrity. 

If one lives within the moral limits set by his religion or his society and follows some version of the Golden Rule - treating others the way he would like to be treated - then he really has nothing to fear. Vampires often set the press loose with some wild story. But having the truth documented, your credentials to hand, then charges can't readily gain any momentum. But doing nothing lends tacit consent to the lies. One could hire a PR if you didn't wan't to get into it yourself - or a lawyer. 

Another point is knowing the rules of the game you are playing. Trying to work as a fireman without learning how to fight fires is a sure route to tragedy for yourself and others. Even farming has certain rules for coping with the weather and a person can make a profit from it if he has his integrity, works hard and learns the ins and outs of farming for real. 

Even in politics, which has strange bedfellows, you can't really be put at effect if you know the rules of the game. Try a book called "Hardball" by Chris Matthews. There's the rules. If these are executed by someone with an honest heart, then you shouldn't come to harm - supposing that it is your decision to work in politics, not someone else's. 

If you know the way things are supposed to be done, you can't easily be fooled or effected by someone who is doing something that is oddball or bizarre or stupid. If may take real study and practice to know the rules, but it pays off. 
 

Bad habits can be vampires' legacy. Abuse of illicit drugs (why do you think they were made illegal?), tobacco industry products, pornography - all these are pushed by vampires for theeir personal gain. They result in the enslavement of people to their dirty little-minded schemes. Smoking itself doesn't have to be harmful. For certain American Indian tribes, it was reserved as a religious ceremony. Certain organizations got this made so easy that you could smoke several pre-packaged "pipes" in an hour and build up the toxins and chemicals in the body such that cancer resulted. Some drugs, as many painkillers, are beneficial in small amounts to offset pain that distracts the person from healing his body. But where they have the potential for abuse, they have been removed from common consumption (like cocaine was originally in Coke.) Sex is useful in reproduction and this is the basis for the pleasure that it brings. True degradation of any person is simply brought about by constant stimulation through pictures, sounds and practices which abuse these natural acts 

Bad habits can be cured with abstinence, but also by taking stigma off being a victim. This is the basis of various support groups. Also, you can simply use the trick of deciding to do something and doing it for a set period of time, then deciding not to do that thing and not doing it for a particular period of time. You basically get your own power of choice back. It helps withdrawal and assists cure of any bad habit. 

Also, get out of the area where you are surrounded by the temptation. Los Angeles, for instance, has legalized pornography "newspapers" for sale on most street corners. And free papers located right next to these are loaded with suggestive and blatant ads for sex and deviant behavior. Some may want to move to another area where these are profligated so blatantly. Such as some of the more affuent suburbs nearby. An alternative is to move to a rural area, where a great deal of the intimidating aspects of city life melt away - with a lower cost of living to boot. 

But first you have to know you have a problem and be willing to do something about it. 
 

But how to handle if you spot your vampires? Stay off a person's lines if you feel they are purposely or inadvertantly making you feel bad. In your job, see if you can't find an intermediary to go as an inbetween for the two of you. If you feel better with that person off your lines, then there's your proof of vampirism. You might even consider changing to another department or even another job. 

If you feel courageous, you can confront them with evidence of their lies. That really ticks them off if it is true. If you have been used by some other character and the evidence is actually false, then they should be able to produce the validation of what is true, be it evidence or a document or an eyewitness. And you should be able to have the humility to accept it, if the person accused did indeed prove the contrary - not just leading you off into some other line of attack. 

Another point is to ask yourself honestly - what are you interested in doing in life, what do you want to get done with your life? Many have found that working in a factory or as someone else's white-collar worker wasn't what they ever wanted to get done. Maybe it was some career in art or helping people as a teacher or nurse and some vampire (or his/her dark minions) who put up enough slows and stops that the whole scene became unreal. 

You may have felt that whatever you were trying to accomplish wasn't worth it. Well, you can either find something else to do that helps you achieve happiness, or you can retrench and work out how to achieve what you want to do anyway. Sometimes a person can have several careers in one lifetime. Now days, it is simpler to retrain for another career with a lot more varieties of funding and tax credits for it. In many places, there are more options for training locally through community colleges and on-line training so that one doesn't have to "move away to college" with the additional expenses. And there are books available where one can train on your own to acquire that new skill. 

But below this wanting or having the courage to try to do what you've wanted to do all along. And that is where you simply have to figure out what you want to do, all the steps from here to there (or at least enough to get started and later working out the rest) and then just doing these steps in order. 

You won't get anywhere with a vampire on your neck. 

So chuck these guys off your lines and then get on with your life. 

Robert C. Worstell

March 20, 2001