A Parable About Addiction

There once was a boy who had a pet rat.
He'd play with it after school and on the weekends.
Sometimes the boy would take his rat with him to the movies hiding in his hood.
Other times the rat would come with him when he rode bikes with his friends.
Once the boy tried to take the rat to school with him.
His English teacher spotted the rat in his pocket and sent him home.
The boy and the rat were friends.
They had fun together.
Time passed.
The boy and the rat became increasingly inseparable.
Over time the boy spent more and more time shut up in his room playing with the rat.
They made mazes out of toilet paper rolls and shredded kleenx for hours.
Sometimes the boy would stay up all night with the rat watching TV.
He stopped doing his homework.
He stopped hanging out with his friends.
He stopped going to school.
One day the boy locked his bedroom door and refused to come out.
After the first day the rat was very hungry.
The boy, loving the rat, offered his flesh for the rat to nibble.
Days passed and the rat ate little chunks out of the boy.
The rat got bigger.
The boy got smaller.
Eventually the rat ate the boy all up.
The rat, now large and bloated, slunk out of the house looking for another boy to be his friend.