How to Avoid Winning the Lottery

The Mega Millions lottery prize has reached about $400,000,000. After taxes, your lump sum payout would come to well over $200,000,000. The odds are approximately 278 bajillion to one. Seems fair to me, so I took the plunge.
 I've read of people who won big lottery jackpots and promptly ruined their lives. They stopped hanging out with their real friends, because no one could afford to keep up with them. It's called an embarrassment of riches. If you walk into the local pub, everyone knows who you are, and there's a palpable expectation in the smelly, urine-tainted air that you will set up the bar all around for folks who never gave you the time of day. If you buy a Mercedes, they'll ask why you didn't buy a Ferrari.
 You can't live in your old neighborhood, because everyone will resent your wealth, and assume that you're only staying there to flaunt your good fortune, to rub their noses in it. So you move away to the most expensive place you can find, where nobody talks to you because you are nouveau-riche, and obviously lack the type of class required for acceptance in the Country Club. You never liked golf anyway, but still.
 What to do? You could buy an island and sit under a coconut tree all day. You could buy a yacht and sail around the seven seas, a man without a country. You've become a prisoner of your wealth, and worry all night long about kidnappers plotting to steal your loved ones and kill them unless you  give the scoundrels all your money. It would serve them right if you gave them all of it. Then they could suffer just like you!
 One poor guy actually committed suicide because he couldn't handle the burden of wealth. Others have spent the money so recklessly that they wound up with nothing, and even went bankrupt. I'm telling you all this out of a feeling of concern. It's easy to see how money can ruin your life, leaving you a poor, lonely wretch, a pathetic shell of what you once were.
 Fortunately, (no pun intended), there's a surefire way to avoid the many pitfalls that go with extraordinary luck. Don't buy a ticket. I'm willing to bear the cross myself, in my own humble way. I'll let you know if it happens, as soon as I stop screaming with joy.