How to Plan a Bitchin' Intervention

I'm planning an intervention for a friend.

She has a problem: gambling. I was there with her at the track the first time she placed a bet on a horse. And now it's gone from betting a couple of bucks to joining the track's club and blowing her paycheck over the course of a single day. Right now, she's only gambling on horses, but she's been venting her frustration at cock fighting being legal in only two states (and California is not one of them).

She tells me, "Ryan, horses are very hard to gamble on. I know I could do it with cockfighting. Smoking is legal; why isn't cockfighting?!" That makes no sense, but she claims it makes perfect sense.

So I've been organizing the logistics of getting her family and friends out here to do an intervention. I went behind her back and talked to her roommate, who got me her parents' and brother's phone numbers. They're all the way across the country, so it takes a lot of organizing. Also, I've been trying to discuss the whole ordeal with her friends here in Southern California.

Perhaps I should have stepped back earlier to focus on the important issues, but I got caught in an argument over what to serve. Some of her friends wanted vegetarian food ONLY at the intervention. I refused, since I eat meat and need the protein. Their argument was that a balanced vegetable diet will give you more than enough protein. I said it wasn't the same.

So the vegetarian group split off and they're having their own intervention. They even invited a God damn addiction therapy specialist to moderate their intervention (and might I add, that bitch accepted the invitation). To one-up them, I invited three top psychiatrists who studied and all wrote papers on overcoming addiction (and they accepted my invitation). Those vegetarians heard about the psychiatrists, and somehow talked the Beverly Hills Country Club into letting them hold their intervention there free of charge. Not to be outdone, I got Dr. Phil. Those bitches won't know what hit them when my friend chooses MY intervention over theirs. Dr. Phil will even be shooting his show on location (my living room) so we can publicly air out my friend's gambling addiction. However, the contract states that my friend has to cry at least twice and attempt to walk out at least once. I'll have to explain intervention procedures before the intervention; perhaps we'll have an intervention rehearsal. I'm working this out with her parents (her brother went off and joined the vegetarians).

Meanwhile, tickets to fly her family in are downright expensive. I found that flying us all out (NBC will be paying for Dr. Phil's and his entourage's flights and accomodations) will be cheaper. Unfortunately, my friend will have to stay here, because we just can't ruin that element of surprise when she walks through the door and sees all her friends and family standing there waiting to offer hope, help, and support.

So the problem was this: How do we do the intervention from across the country? This question somehow made it to a team of researchers at MIT working on that exact problem (the World Remote Intervention Research Team, or WRIST). WRIST will be contributing a lot of technology to make this work.

There's some very advanced technology going on here: there are heat sensors that will be able to give an exact indication of where she is in her apartment, how fast her pulse is, and even how high her blood pressure is. On top of that, there will be Robotic Human Compassion Simulators. These will gather around her and hug her in a supportive gesture of oneness--to signify that everyone is there to help her. The researchers indicated, though, that a lot of people think the robots are attacking, rather than hugging, so each of the robots will have name tags that exactly correspond to her family and friends' names.

Dr. Phil says it's important that the person undergoing the intervention not run--they must stay there to truly benefit from the experience. Therefore, once she enters her apartment, the door will shut and automatically lock. The MIT guys installed a special unlockable door--once she enters the room, the door slams shuts and these huge bolts shoot out from inside the door into the door frame. There will be no way to get out--she will be forced to confront her gambling addiction, and her family and friends (represented by the Robotic Human Compassion Simulators of course).

I'm very excited about this. There's no way it can't succeed: Those vegetarian assholes will be so fucking jealous. Oh, and hopefully my friend's gambling thing can be resolved.