Sometimes, being bad is a good thing

Self-help is overrated. Look around you. Lurking in every corner are 12-Step Programs , low-carb diets, self-enhancement testimonials, marriage-counseling workshops, pamphlets that harp on the DANGERS OF SMOKING , warnings about the approaching disasters caused by global warming, finding-your-inner-child weekends, experts who preach the need to give your kids lots and lots and lots of love … blah-blah-blah.

Hey, we get the point. Self-improvement is a good thing, but it’s become just another kind of big business. And that’s why it’s so refreshing to stumble, cigarette and ice-cold Corona in hand, across “The Self-Destruction Handbook,” a Web site based on the book by Adam Wasson – who, by the way, is from Pullman – and Jessica Stamen. Subtitled “8 Simple Steps to an Unhealthier You,” the book is a cry for sanity in a world insane with the desperate need to grab at mental, emotional and physical health.

My favorite quote from the book comes as a disclaimer to all of those with a death wish, the people who even after their meds have kicked in, can’t quite get it that the book is a stab (pardon the, uh, pun) at humor: “If you are suicidal,” Wasson wrote, “then you have probably lost all sense of irony and should look elsewhere for help.”

If you are one of those who don’t get it, then you need to click here .