How 2 Youtubers Drugged Me With a Reading Addiction
It all started with a love note: “Thicker than peanut butter, and stronger than glue, is the love that my heart has for you.” It was the second time that a woman kissed me that wasn’t my mother. The creative writing assignment that I turned in to my third grade teacher resulted in an unforgettable kiss.
The red lipstick on my cheek was confirmation that words had a seductive effect. Coincidentally, I went home and watched the movie “Matilda”, a movie about a young girl whose reading hobbies allowed her to get special powers. In an attempt to summon the powers known to Matilda, I rented a few books from my local library. But unfortunately, my reading habit was abandoned until a high school test revealed that I had the reading level of a third grader.
Sixteen year old Larenzo was embarrassed and didn’t question the accuracy of that test. As I returned home, teary-eyed, it was apparent that my bookless room needed an intellectual upgrade. In order to redeem myself from a lackluster performance, I ghosted my friends at lunch and arrived at the school-library for a book hunt. Despite the library’s huge book collection, not one author was able to capture the attention of my reading-eye.
It wasn’t until three years later that I set my sights on Youtuber Dre Baldwin. This guy was smart, articulate, and had the social skills of god. But how?
In admiration of Dre’s superior qualities, I hung onto every word of his youtube videos. Dre would later reveal that he was an avid reader, and that he’d written a book himself: The Mental Handbook; the book that reignited my desire to read. With my new found knowledge of Dre’s self-help information, my life began to change. Reading Dre’s books assisted me in getting a promotion at work and purchasing my dream car.
It was around the same time that I purchased one of my all-time favorite books, “The Super You” by Dre Baldwin. The things that happened after I read this book would forever change the course of my life. “The Super You” multiplied my confidence as though it was injected by steroids. The book’s creation of my most confident-self had a compound effect in my life. As my confidence amplified, my female options multiplied. A slight glance through the tinted windows of my Mustang Gt would often reveal a different woman every other weekend. In addition to that, I played in a college basketball showcase that I proceeded to dominate. Unfortunately, I fractured my left knee at the event. After surgery, I remember laying in the hospital bed and thinking “man, look what I was able to do with all this extra confidence.”
Immobilized by my broken knee, I spent most of the next three months in bed. However, my current misfortune turned out to be an opportunity. If reading only a few books offered significant improvement in my life, what would happen if I read many? Before the thought could leave my mind, I went to Dre’s website and viewed his recommended reading list.
When I wasn’t in therapy, my days were spent in between the covers of books. Before my return to work, I became a different man. I was equipped with the “48 Laws of Power”, a student of “The Art of War”, and essentially Dale Carnegie’s apprentice. Within those three months, I read over thirty books. My articulation skills were at a plus ten and my psychological awareness a plus fifteen. I returned to my feet twice the seducer and with an overdose of confidence.
To me, reading a book became the equivalent of a junky hitting the crack pipe. The self-improvement that came with every page gave me the ultimate high. But then curiosity struck.
Dre Baldwin did a collaboration with a guy named “Big Brandon Carter.” Brandon would recommend a book that gave me a hard slap to the face. Not only did this book physically abuse me, but it insulted my previous beliefs. It was the first time in months that I refused to turn another page of a book. I put the book down for a week or so, and returned to Brandon’s Youtube channel. He made a comment that would change the course of my reading journey. He said “if you don’t read anything that you disagree with, then how are you going to grow.” This was the first time that I realized that I was closed minded.
However, opening this book would do the opposite. By the end of the book, my once cherished beliefs were subject to questioning. I realized that my beliefs weren’t independently discovered, but rather given to by my environment. I believe Brandon knew this all along. Fueled by my curiosity, I spent the next four months reading everything that was published by this author. What was previously fun, became scary. My beliefs were dying off and my traditional mindset began to decay.
For the first time in my life, I became nobody. Instead of returning to who I was, my next journey was figuring out who I wanted to become. Despite all of the psychological information that I previously consumed, I struggled to get along with people. I began to wonder if they were as foreign to themselves as I am to me. Do they know themselves? Or do they only know who they were created to be?
Eventually, I went full introvert mode and would only talk to the voice in my head. With fewer people to communicate with, I became good friends with Robert Greene, Osho, and Mark Manson. I paid attention to every one of their written words like they were actually speaking next to me. It was now clear that although the books would provide information, they couldn’t introduce me to myself. Although my body was present, my mind was somewhere in the “lost and found” department.
Book addiction status?
After years of looking inward, I finally found myself. As of today, I have yet to put any books down. I’m currently over the five hundred book mark.
I’m still an addict. And my closed mind will never recover. Stay open. Follow me on Medium to be entertained by more of my personal stories.
