01
The new second edition
★ The original edition reached #1 in four countries
The Devil
Inside Me
What happens when the most dangerous person in your life is the one staring back at you?
A brutally honest confrontation with trauma, addiction, betrayal, fractured identity, faith, and the consequences of a lifetime spent running from the truth. Completely rewritten and expanded for the second edition.
01
The Story
Nothing is softened. Nothing is offered as an excuse.
He survived the darkness. Then he had to answer for it.
For more than thirty years, Joshua T Berglan searched for relief in drugs, sex, manipulation, fantasy, and escape. The relief never lasted. The damage did.
Told through ten intense episodes, The Devil Inside Me follows a wounded child into a life capable of devastating the people who loved him most—including himself.
From childhood abandonment and violation to fatherhood, HIV, incarceration, and faith, Joshua confronts both what happened to him and what he chose to do afterward.
This is not a neatly packaged redemption story. It is a record of the continuing war between the man he is becoming and the destructive impulses that once controlled him.
“It is a warning about what can happen when pain is buried—and a testimony to what becomes possible when a person finally chooses to face it.”
02
Ten Episodes
A life told in fractures.
Ten chapters. Ten confrontations. No safe distance.
02
Inheritance
03
Violated
04
Drive
05
Surprise
06
LaLaLand
07
HIV
08
Cheater
09
Kids
10
Death
CHAPTER ONE Newport
First class from Newport Beach to Oklahoma City, draining miniature vodka bottles and already planning the night: the dealer, the drugs, and the people he called playthings. The book opens at full velocity and shows exactly how the addiction turned human beings into props.
CHAPTER TWO Inheritance
His father's melanoma returns, the doctors give him a year, and part of Joshua feels joy—because the death he is waiting for is attached to money he believes he is owed. An unflinching look at entitlement he refuses to soften in the retelling.
CHAPTER THREE Violated
He wakes one morning to find both older sisters gone and does what children do: assumes he drove them away. This chapter traces that loss and the abuse that followed, locating where so much of what comes later begins.
CHAPTER FOUR Drive
Home from California with eight vodkas in him and one thought: where is the dealer. His girlfriend is standing right there. Addiction had rewritten his vocabulary—desire became necessity, a delayed text became betrayal.
CHAPTER FIVE Surprise
“You need to take a paternity test.” He agrees only to prove everyone wrong, shouting denial loud enough to pass for evidence. A man who never wanted children discovering that he has one.
CHAPTER SIX LaLaLand
Los Angeles arrives as an invitation: sunlight, traffic, possibility. Days sober except for weed—the bargain he made with himself—and a city that worked on him like a drug before he ever touched one.
CHAPTER SEVEN HIV
“Josh, you have tested positive.” Shame delivers its verdict before the clinician finishes the sentence: that he did this to himself and deserved to die with it. The gap between what medicine said and what he believed.
CHAPTER EIGHT Cheater
The girl he was certain was out of his league, and two and a half years spent waiting for her to realise her mistake. What a man does with someone who respects him when he cannot respect himself.
CHAPTER NINE Kids
Early memories of family that was loud, crowded and safe—then age seven, when it fractured. How he came to want the feeling of family without the responsibility, sacrifice or intimacy that builds one.
CHAPTER TEN Death
Booked into Los Angeles County jail, disclosing his HIV status for medication and for protection. Five previous incarcerations, but this time facing five years. The apology whispered to his girlfriend that was partly real and partly still bargaining.
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Choose Your Edition
Read it.
Hear it. Face it.
The revised and expanded edition is available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook formats.
Hardcover
The definitive physical edition
$35.00
on Amazon
↗
Paperback
The complete revised story
$25.00
on Amazon
↗
Audiobook
Listen to the story on Audible
$8.99
on Audible
↗
Kindle
Read anywhere, immediately
$9.99
on Amazon
↗
Listed prices are in USD and may change. The retailer page shows the current price.
04
Questions
What is different about the second edition?
The second edition is a complete rewrite, not a light revision. The story is the same and it remains uncensored, but there is significantly more context around what happened and why. It is still graphic. It is written more responsibly rather than more gently, and the quality of the writing itself is stronger throughout.
What is The Devil Inside Me about?
It is Joshua T Berglan's memoir of more than thirty years spent seeking relief in drugs, sex, manipulation and escape, and the accounting that followed. Ten chapters cover childhood abandonment and abuse, addiction, fatherhood, an HIV diagnosis, incarceration and faith.
Is it a true story?
Yes. It is a first-person memoir. Joshua writes about what happened to him and, just as directly, about what he chose to do afterward.
Is there a content warning?
Yes. The book contains explicit accounts of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, drug use, compulsive sexual behaviour, domestic abuse, self-harm, incarceration and illness. It is written for adult readers.
Is this a redemption story?
Not a neat one. The book is a record of an ongoing war between the man Joshua is becoming and the destructive impulses that once controlled him.
What formats is it available in?
Hardcover at $35, paperback at $25, Kindle at $9.99 and audiobook at $8.99. Prices are in US dollars and may change. The retailer page shows the current price.
18+
Reader discretion is strongly advised
This book does not look away.
Contains explicit accounts of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, drug use, compulsive sexual behavior, domestic abuse, self-harm, incarceration, illness, and other mature subject matter.
The new version is here