The White Flag AA meeting (pp. 346–347)
‘When I was drunk I wanted to get sober and when I was sober I wanted to get drunk,’ John L. says; ‘I lived that way for years, and I submit to you that’s not livin, that’s a fuckin death-in-life.’ […] ‘A fuckin livin death, I tell you it’s not being near alive, by the end I was undead, not alive, and I tell you the idea of dyin was nothing compared to the idea of livin like that for another five or ten years and only then dyin,’
Context
John L. from the podium: death-in-life is the exact terminus the anhedonia essay later gives It, and his casual arithmetic — dying being nothing next to living like that for five or ten more years — is the same preference-for-death logic Kate states clinically in the ward. Addiction testimony, but it's the theme's vocabulary spoken plain.