Solving the Opioid Crisis with Reality TV

Leigh Anne Jasheway
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Donald Trump is not an idea person. One of the main reasons he watches television every waking hour while pooping, tweeting about nuclear war, and thinking about having sex with Ivanka in a fallout shelter is so that he can steal thoughts from reality shows. It’s surprising he hasn’t already implemented a rose ceremony among White House staffers or insisted that instead of press conferences, his spokesperson du jour give confessionals from a broom closet in the East Wing.

Lack of original ideas presents itself regularly, including when Trump was pressed for suggestions for ending the opioid crisis and the best he could come up with was to give kids a good talking to and tell them that drugs are, “No good, really bad for you in every way.” It’s Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” all over again, but without the pithy bumper sticker phrasing.

In an attempt to help a chief executive out while we all wait for the big one to take us out, I have exposed myself to hours of reality programming (new and old) to put together a list of ideas for solving the drug problem in this country. I’m hoping that one of his staffers can stuff these ideas into SCROTUS’s file of “wonderful things about YOU!” that he peruses twice a day to maintain his delusions of, well, delusion.

I don’t even want any credit! He can use my suggestions and claim them as his own. Now that’s a bargain, right?

If we follow the lead of reality programming, perhaps we can stop the opioid crisis by requiring addicts to:

· Share a tiny house (and its composting toilet and couch that converts into the world’s most uncomfortable bed) with a 16-year-old pregnant girl until the baby is 2 years-old

· Watch 48 hours of Antiques Roadshow and The Great British Baking Show without being allowed to nod off, even during sponsorship breaks

· Run an impossible obstacle course while wearing a Spandex bodysuit until all the drugs sweat out of their system

· Answer pop culture questions in the back of a cab on the trip to a rehab facility

· Whip a dozen 6-year-olds and their overbearing mothers into shape for a kids’ beauty contest

· Marry a stranger who has been scientifically chosen for them (probably also a drug user) and have cameras follow them on their honeymoon to New Jersey

· Survive the Australian outback naked with only an emery board and bottle of Children’s Tylenol as their weapons

· Get yelled at once an hour by Gordon Ramsey as he tosses dishes on the floor and tells him how disappointed he is in them at a decibel level easily picked up by orbiting satellites

· Be paired with former politicians or their daughters on Dancing with the Stars as the judges barely hold in their laughter

· Submit to training by Casar Millan who will use a short leash to take them on several long walks every day so that they don’t have the energy to misbehave when left home alone

· Survive on daily rations of two celery sticks and a raisin while sharing a house with 12 supermodel wannabes who yell about who’s too fat to be there while upchucking into the toilet.

· Learn to walk in stilettos while tucked

If none of these ideas work, at the very least, the White House should change the new drug abuse prevention motto from “No good, really bad for you in every way” to Tim Gunn’s, “Make it work!” or RuPaul’s, “Now, don’t f#*k it up!”

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