For years my feed said first class: the flights, the hotels, the look. Behind it, I was in debt, alone, and coming apart. This is the part I didn't post.
If you look good, you must be doing good. That's the math I have run my entire life.
The morning we recorded the first chapter of my book, I moved a five-hundred-dollar Burberry bag out of the camera shot. I'd bought two of them, on a credit card, trying to fill a void. Nobody saw me move it. It might be the most honest thing I'd done in years.
John Geremia III · Alone in First Class, Chapter 1
My father was fast money: cash in his pocket, Cadillacs, no job you could put a name on. I grew up standing next to him at the track. I learned early that looking like you're winning is its own kind of currency. Food, then drugs and drinking, became how I coped.
I got clean from drugs and alcohol on 2/28/13. But the hole just found new ways out. Card after card, balance transfer after balance transfer, chasing points and first-class seats with money I didn't have. I quit a six-figure job and lived off the cards. The feed looked like freedom. It was the opposite.
My last bet was 1/21/26. I did the unglamorous work: therapy, inner child work, facing the gambling, the spending, the scroll. In September 2026 I became a certified gambling and digital addictions coach. Now I'm writing the whole story down, and I walk beside men who are where I was.
A man builds a first-class life on credit cards and camera angles while the person behind the account is quietly coming apart. It's for anyone performing a life online while feeling empty behind it.
No pitch. No judgment. One real conversation with someone who's sat where you're sitting.