• Start drinking alcohol as a teenager. Have a series of dead end jobs, frequently getting fired for bad attitude, poor attendance or drunkenness. Experience a string of failed relationships. Die young from drunk driving or middle-aged from alcoholism’s physical effects.
• Start using drugs. Steal or cheat others to pay for the habit. Die of a drug overdose, though this may happen after several stints in drug rehab. Any relationships are with other drug addicts. Children born to these relationships are taken away for foster care, adopted by relatives or live in horrific neglect.
• Start partying hard without concern for the consequences. Educational attainment stops. Jobs are held only to earn money to pay for partying. Relationships are fleeting and superficial. Drugs and alcohol may be involved, but promiscuity is likely. Assuming the drug addiction or alcohol addiction scripts are not the end result, illegitimate children and a life of single parenthood with juggling multiple part time jobs is likely.
• Begin stealing things for fun as a child, with shoplifting in elementary or middle school. Graduate to stealing cars or robbing houses when a teenager. Get sent to juvenile hall as a teenager with some attempts at reform, such as being sent to reform school or boot camp. Those who reform can move to a winning life script such as joining the military or going to college.
Those who do not reform continue committing crimes of increasing severity and greater financial reward. Once they hit 18, the criminal acts result in the individual going to adult jail. A criminal record prevents someone from getting a good job per a winning life script. At best, they working in manual labor or low paying retail and service jobs, unable to accomplish more. At worst, they spend the majority of their adult lives in jail. Any children are raised by family members on winner scripts, taken into foster care or raised by single mothers on a loser script.
