Professional Drug Addict

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>My final mugshot is on the book cover. Now no one can use it to shame me. I own it.</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> Arnel Castro Leyva</span></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>What happens when a tech executive trades corporate meetings for meth-fueled street survival?</strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Arnel Castro Leyva built a globe-trotting career working for Microsoft T-Mobile Adobe Yahoo and a handful of startups. But his life was perpetually on the verge of ruin because his real job was a professional drug addict.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>In the shadows of the Pacific Northwest Arnel loses everything and his double life collapses into a midlife crisis of pandemic proportions. He descends into the lawless streets of the COVID lockdown and enters The Life: drug dealing financial scams grand theft auto living with prostitutes and organized retail theft. Along the way he meets a cast of kindred spirits narcissistic codependent people-pleasers hell bent on exploiting the system each other and themselves.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>With prison looming Arnel is given a chance at redemption through a strict yet therapeutic criminal justice program. He finds the startup idea of his life-helping other formerly incarcerated people with substance use disorders to create a life worth living-and realizes he was on the path to answer his calling all along.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>A brutally honest memoir equal parts </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Leaving Las Vegas Trainspotting Breakfast at Sally's</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> and </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>Breaking Bad</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(34 34 34 1)> ultimately redeemed by a Brené Brown / Gabor Maté / 12-Step moral to the story.</span></p>