Why He Needed to Be Someone Other Than Himself – John A.
About This Speaker Tape
Salt Lake City, high altitude and thin blood. For John A., the world was a series of binaries: he was either the best or he was out. He didn't do "C's" or sit on the bench. He spent his twenties as an insurance agent terrified of his own telephone, fleeing to bars to be "somebody else." He lied to women about producing Broadway plays because it was a safe fiction—nobody had actually been to Broadway to check.
He describes his descent as a fast-track to oblivion, moving from "tutti fruiti" drinks with umbrellas to guzzling "Cadillac stuff" while sipping water. He treated his life like a geography problem, moving to Seattle and Reno to "thicken his blood" and play poker, convinced that alcohol wasn't the problem—it was the only thing that made the world tolerable. After a series of warrants and a "bargain sale" treatment center, he encountered the description of an alcoholic. He stopped arguing with definitions and faced the wreckage. He found a Higher Power not through a textbook, ...
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