June 26, 2026 • 13 mins
The introduction to No Version Left is where John Theriault begins taking the mask off. This episode goes beyond the idea of the podcast and into the truth behind it — the grief, addiction, silence, identity loss, and survival that brought him here. It is raw, personal, and unfinished in the most honest way: a beginning built from everything he could no longer carry alone.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:04):
The three most important questions in life are
why, why, and why.
Because by the third why, youusually get the hard truth.
My name is John Terrio, and thisis my story.
SPEAKER_00 (00:14):
But this time, I'm not cleaning it up for you.
This is no version left.
This isn't a highlight reel.
It's not a polished version.
SPEAKER_01 (00:31):
And this certainly is not the version people post
when they're trying to convincethe world that they're okay.
This is what's left when there'snothing left to hide.
Welcome to no version left.
Only the why remains.
And before I say anything else,I need you to sit with
something.
There are parts of my life I'venever said out loud.
(00:52):
Not because they didn't matter,not because they were small, but
because they didn't fit theversion of me people expected.
The version that feltacceptable.
The version that made otherpeople comfortable.
And if I'm being honest, I gotreally good at protecting that
version.
I learned how to say justenough.
How to smile while fallingapart.
(01:13):
How to make pain soundmanageable, or how to make
survival into something thatlooked successful.
From the outside it worked.
The life in LA, the rooftopexperiences, the VIP treatment,
the first-class flights to thoseperfectly framed photos, or the
career, the image.
It all looked like someone whohad things figured out.
(01:34):
But underneath that, there areparts of me I refused to touch.
Parts I buried so deeply thateventually I stopped noticing
they were buried at all.
And the truth is, when you spendenough years editing yourself
for other people, eventuallyforget what's real.
But this isn't just about me,because I think a lot of people
are doing the same thing.
(01:56):
Not with the same story or thesame wounds, but the same fear.
The fear that if people saw thefull truth, those messy parts,
the broken parts, thecontradictory parts, they'd
leave or judge or stop lovingyou.
So instead, what do we do?
We perform, we manageperceptions, we protect the
(02:16):
image, we become versions.
Versions that function, thatsurvive, that makes sense to
everyone else, even when theystop making sense to us.
And for a long time, I thoughtsurvival meant keeping
everything controlled, keepingeverything presentable, never
letting people see how badthings really got.
(02:38):
And there are moments where Iconvinced myself I was fine, or
at least fine enough.
But eventually something startshappening.
The distance between who you areand who you pretend to be gets
harder to carry.
You feel it in those quietmoments.
The moments when the roomfinally goes silent.
(02:59):
You feel it when you're alonewith your own thoughts and
there's nowhere left to run.
And eventually you realize theversion you built to protect
yourself, it's also the thingthat's slowly destroying you.
So this podcast is me stopping.
Stopping the performance,stopping the editing, stopping
the instinct to make everythingsound cleaner than it actually
(03:22):
was.
Not because it's comfortable.
Honestly, this is terrifying.
Because telling the truth meansadmitting things that don't
sound good out loud.
Things people may notunderstand.
Things I barely understoodmyself.
But I also know this.
If I keep protecting theversion, I lose myself
(03:43):
completely.
SPEAKER_00 (03:45):
And I think a lot of people know exactly what that
feels like.
SPEAKER_01 (03:49):
So if you're trying to figure out who I am, my
name's John.
And the honest answer is I'vebeen a lot of different people.
Some versions of me lookedstrong.
Some looked successful, somelooked confident.
Some versions were built fromgrief, from fear, from survival,
some from loneliness.
(04:11):
There's a version of me caringfor my mother.
The version of me chasingsuccess.
The version of me trying tooutrun pain.
The version of me coping in waysI never thought I would.
And for a long time, I thoughtthose versions defined me.
But they don't.
They're fragments, defensemechanisms, adaptations, pieces
(04:34):
created to survive differentmoments in my life.
And the parts I hid the most,they're actually the parts that
explain everything.
There's a question that'sfollowed me for years.
Quietly, constantly,consistently there.
Why?
Not the quick version.
Not the easy version.
Not the version people use toask it and then move on to
(04:57):
something else.
I'm talking about the kind thatstays with you.
The kind that follows you intosilence.
The kind that, you know, issitting on your chest at 3 a.m.
as you're wide awake staring atthe ceiling.
Kind that forces you to look atyourself when you don't want to.
Why did I move to LA or why wasI afraid to come home?
(05:17):
Why did I work myself into theground?
Why did I stay in situationsthat were destroying me and I
knew it?
Why did I keep accepting painlike it was normal?
Why did I spend much of my lifetrying to earn love instead of
believing I deserved it?
And there are so many othertimes I've asked why.
And if I'm honest, there's yearswhere I didn't want the answers.
(05:42):
Because finding the truth, or atleast looking for it, meant
confronting things I wasn'tready to see.
So instead I kept moving, keptfunctioning, kept distracting
myself, kept building versionsof myself strong enough to avoid
the deeper question.
But eventually, avoidance stopsworking.
The noise fades, the imagecracks.
(06:05):
Eventually you're left staringat yourself with nowhere else to
look.
And that's where this begins.
This podcast is not me arrivingat some perfect understanding.
This isn't a here's my story andhere's the lesson.
This is me inside of it, stilluntangling it, still trying to
understand it, still trying tobe honest about it.
(06:28):
Which means some of this it willbe uncomfortable.
Some of it may contradictitself.
Some of it won't have a cleananswer.
But life rarely does.
You're going to hear things mostpeople don't say out loud.
The moments I wasn't okay.
The choices I made just tosurvive something.
(06:49):
The ways I coped.
The thoughts I carried, theshame, the grief, the anger, the
loneliness, the parts that don'tfit neatly into the version
people know.
And I'm not cutting those partsout anymore.
But this also isn't hopeless.
And that matters too.
Because somewhere inside all ofthis, there's clarity, there's
(07:11):
growth, there's understanding.
There are moments where thingsfinally start making sense in
ways they never did before.
Not perfectly, but honestly.
And a lot of that came from onequestion.
Why?
Ironically, that question wasplanted in me a long time ago.
(07:33):
My father passed away almost 20years ago, but some lessons
outlive people.
And one of the few conversationsI remembered so vividly happened
after an early morning hockeypractice, one of those freezing
Canadian mornings where you knowthe world still feels half
asleep.
During that drive home, heshared with me the three most
(07:54):
important questions in life arewhy, why, and why.
That was it.
Because by the third why, youusually stop getting the easy
answer.
You get the truth.
I didn't understand howimportant that lesson would
become, but my dad's view, thatperspective, that question has
changed me.
It stopped letting me live onlyon the surface.
(08:16):
It forced me to look underneaththe decisions, underneath the
coping, the patterns, the pain,and understand far more than I
ever would have.
And once you truly see the whybehind something, you can't
unsee it.
But maybe that's where changefinally starts.
So that's what this is reallyabout.
(08:37):
Not just a story about whathappened, but a search for why
it happened.
Why I became who I became, whycertain patterns repeated, why
some wounds stayed open, why Ikept running from things that
eventually demanded to be faced.
Because I don't think people aremissing information anymore.
I think we're missing honesty.
(08:59):
The kind that doesn't perform,the kind that doesn't try to
sound inspirational, the kindthat doesn't clean itself up
before being seen.
Just truth.
Even when it's uncomfortable.
And maybe in hearing mine and mesharing my story, others will
start hearing their own lifedifferently too.
Maybe you stop judging yourselfso harshly.
(09:22):
Maybe you stop judging someoneelse before understanding their
why.
Maybe if you finally recognizeparts of yourself you've spent
years trying to outrun, thingswill make a little more sense.
Because I don't think mostpeople are evil.
I think most people are hurt,confused, surviving, trying to
(09:42):
cope with things they neverlearned how to carry.
And sometimes the worstdecisions of our lives make a
lot more sense when we finallyunderstand the pain underneath
them.
So if you're here, you don'tneed to have your life figured
out.
I don't.
You don't need to be healed.
You don't need to be perfect.
You just need to be willing tonot look away.
(10:03):
Because in these next episodes,it's time to go deeper.
The versions I created, why Ineeded them, the moments that
changed me before I evenrealized they had.
The coping, the consequences,the grief, the survival, the
understanding that came after,or the understanding that I'm
(10:24):
still trying to find.
Nothing is off limits.
If it's part of the story, itbelongs here.
This is where I stop editing,where I stop protecting the
image.
This is where I stop trying tomake my life sound cleaner than
it actually was.
Because the truth is, I'm tired.
(10:45):
Tired of carrying versions ofmyself that were built just to
survive.
Tired of pretending pain didn'taffect me.
Tired of making things look okaywhile quietly falling apart
underneath.
And maybe the hardest part toadmit, there were moments I
didn't recognize myself anymore.
(11:07):
Moments where I looked in my ownlife and wondered how I got so
far away from who I was supposedto be.
Moments where I felt completelydisconnected from myself, while
everyone around me still thoughtI was fine.
But underneath all of that,underneath those mistakes, the
coping, grief, anger, shame,there was still something human
(11:30):
left in me asking one question.
SPEAKER_00 (11:33):
Why?
Why did this hurt so much?
Why did I keep running?
SPEAKER_01 (11:40):
Why did I spend so much of my life trying to become
someone easier to love?
SPEAKER_00 (11:46):
Maybe this podcast is the first time I've stopped
running long enough to actuallylisten to the answer.
Not the polished answer.
Not the inspirational answer.
The real one.
Even if it breaks me open.
Because surviving.
SPEAKER_01 (12:08):
Well, I can't keep surviving inside this version of
myself.
Inside the versions that wereonly created to survive pain.
And maybe that's the mostterrifying part of all of this.
Realizing I don't actually wantthe old version of me back
anymore.
(12:28):
Not the successful one, not thestrong one, not the composed
one, not the version that knewhow to smile while quietly
disappearing underneath.
Because every version I createdto protect myself cost me pieces
of who I really was.
And I think somewhere along theway, I disappeared too.
(12:50):
If telling the truth costs meevery version of myself I use to
survive, then maybe that's notlosing myself.
SPEAKER_00 (12:57):
Maybe it's finally being me.
This is no version left.
Only the Y remains.
The three most important questions in life are
why, why, and why.
Because by the third why, youusually get the hard truth.
My name is John Terrio, and thisis my story.
SPEAKER_00 (00:14):
But this time, I'm not cleaning it up for you.
This is no version left.
This isn't a highlight reel.
It's not a polished version.
SPEAKER_01 (00:31):
And this certainly is not the version people post
when they're trying to convincethe world that they're okay.
This is what's left when there'snothing left to hide.
Welcome to no version left.
Only the why remains.
And before I say anything else,I need you to sit with
something.
There are parts of my life I'venever said out loud.
(00:52):
Not because they didn't matter,not because they were small, but
because they didn't fit theversion of me people expected.
The version that feltacceptable.
The version that made otherpeople comfortable.
And if I'm being honest, I gotreally good at protecting that
version.
I learned how to say justenough.
How to smile while fallingapart.
(01:13):
How to make pain soundmanageable, or how to make
survival into something thatlooked successful.
From the outside it worked.
The life in LA, the rooftopexperiences, the VIP treatment,
the first-class flights to thoseperfectly framed photos, or the
career, the image.
It all looked like someone whohad things figured out.
(01:34):
But underneath that, there areparts of me I refused to touch.
Parts I buried so deeply thateventually I stopped noticing
they were buried at all.
And the truth is, when you spendenough years editing yourself
for other people, eventuallyforget what's real.
But this isn't just about me,because I think a lot of people
are doing the same thing.
(01:56):
Not with the same story or thesame wounds, but the same fear.
The fear that if people saw thefull truth, those messy parts,
the broken parts, thecontradictory parts, they'd
leave or judge or stop lovingyou.
So instead, what do we do?
We perform, we manageperceptions, we protect the
(02:16):
image, we become versions.
Versions that function, thatsurvive, that makes sense to
everyone else, even when theystop making sense to us.
And for a long time, I thoughtsurvival meant keeping
everything controlled, keepingeverything presentable, never
letting people see how badthings really got.
(02:38):
And there are moments where Iconvinced myself I was fine, or
at least fine enough.
But eventually something startshappening.
The distance between who you areand who you pretend to be gets
harder to carry.
You feel it in those quietmoments.
The moments when the roomfinally goes silent.
(02:59):
You feel it when you're alonewith your own thoughts and
there's nowhere left to run.
And eventually you realize theversion you built to protect
yourself, it's also the thingthat's slowly destroying you.
So this podcast is me stopping.
Stopping the performance,stopping the editing, stopping
the instinct to make everythingsound cleaner than it actually
(03:22):
was.
Not because it's comfortable.
Honestly, this is terrifying.
Because telling the truth meansadmitting things that don't
sound good out loud.
Things people may notunderstand.
Things I barely understoodmyself.
But I also know this.
If I keep protecting theversion, I lose myself
(03:43):
completely.
SPEAKER_00 (03:45):
And I think a lot of people know exactly what that
feels like.
SPEAKER_01 (03:49):
So if you're trying to figure out who I am, my
name's John.
And the honest answer is I'vebeen a lot of different people.
Some versions of me lookedstrong.
Some looked successful, somelooked confident.
Some versions were built fromgrief, from fear, from survival,
some from loneliness.
(04:11):
There's a version of me caringfor my mother.
The version of me chasingsuccess.
The version of me trying tooutrun pain.
The version of me coping in waysI never thought I would.
And for a long time, I thoughtthose versions defined me.
But they don't.
They're fragments, defensemechanisms, adaptations, pieces
(04:34):
created to survive differentmoments in my life.
And the parts I hid the most,they're actually the parts that
explain everything.
There's a question that'sfollowed me for years.
Quietly, constantly,consistently there.
Why?
Not the quick version.
Not the easy version.
Not the version people use toask it and then move on to
(04:57):
something else.
I'm talking about the kind thatstays with you.
The kind that follows you intosilence.
The kind that, you know, issitting on your chest at 3 a.m.
as you're wide awake staring atthe ceiling.
Kind that forces you to look atyourself when you don't want to.
Why did I move to LA or why wasI afraid to come home?
(05:17):
Why did I work myself into theground?
Why did I stay in situationsthat were destroying me and I
knew it?
Why did I keep accepting painlike it was normal?
Why did I spend much of my lifetrying to earn love instead of
believing I deserved it?
And there are so many othertimes I've asked why.
And if I'm honest, there's yearswhere I didn't want the answers.
(05:42):
Because finding the truth, or atleast looking for it, meant
confronting things I wasn'tready to see.
So instead I kept moving, keptfunctioning, kept distracting
myself, kept building versionsof myself strong enough to avoid
the deeper question.
But eventually, avoidance stopsworking.
The noise fades, the imagecracks.
(06:05):
Eventually you're left staringat yourself with nowhere else to
look.
And that's where this begins.
This podcast is not me arrivingat some perfect understanding.
This isn't a here's my story andhere's the lesson.
This is me inside of it, stilluntangling it, still trying to
understand it, still trying tobe honest about it.
(06:28):
Which means some of this it willbe uncomfortable.
Some of it may contradictitself.
Some of it won't have a cleananswer.
But life rarely does.
You're going to hear things mostpeople don't say out loud.
The moments I wasn't okay.
The choices I made just tosurvive something.
(06:49):
The ways I coped.
The thoughts I carried, theshame, the grief, the anger, the
loneliness, the parts that don'tfit neatly into the version
people know.
And I'm not cutting those partsout anymore.
But this also isn't hopeless.
And that matters too.
Because somewhere inside all ofthis, there's clarity, there's
(07:11):
growth, there's understanding.
There are moments where thingsfinally start making sense in
ways they never did before.
Not perfectly, but honestly.
And a lot of that came from onequestion.
Why?
Ironically, that question wasplanted in me a long time ago.
(07:33):
My father passed away almost 20years ago, but some lessons
outlive people.
And one of the few conversationsI remembered so vividly happened
after an early morning hockeypractice, one of those freezing
Canadian mornings where you knowthe world still feels half
asleep.
During that drive home, heshared with me the three most
(07:54):
important questions in life arewhy, why, and why.
That was it.
Because by the third why, youusually stop getting the easy
answer.
You get the truth.
I didn't understand howimportant that lesson would
become, but my dad's view, thatperspective, that question has
changed me.
It stopped letting me live onlyon the surface.
(08:16):
It forced me to look underneaththe decisions, underneath the
coping, the patterns, the pain,and understand far more than I
ever would have.
And once you truly see the whybehind something, you can't
unsee it.
But maybe that's where changefinally starts.
So that's what this is reallyabout.
(08:37):
Not just a story about whathappened, but a search for why
it happened.
Why I became who I became, whycertain patterns repeated, why
some wounds stayed open, why Ikept running from things that
eventually demanded to be faced.
Because I don't think people aremissing information anymore.
I think we're missing honesty.
(08:59):
The kind that doesn't perform,the kind that doesn't try to
sound inspirational, the kindthat doesn't clean itself up
before being seen.
Just truth.
Even when it's uncomfortable.
And maybe in hearing mine and mesharing my story, others will
start hearing their own lifedifferently too.
Maybe you stop judging yourselfso harshly.
(09:22):
Maybe you stop judging someoneelse before understanding their
why.
Maybe if you finally recognizeparts of yourself you've spent
years trying to outrun, thingswill make a little more sense.
Because I don't think mostpeople are evil.
I think most people are hurt,confused, surviving, trying to
(09:42):
cope with things they neverlearned how to carry.
And sometimes the worstdecisions of our lives make a
lot more sense when we finallyunderstand the pain underneath
them.
So if you're here, you don'tneed to have your life figured
out.
I don't.
You don't need to be healed.
You don't need to be perfect.
You just need to be willing tonot look away.
(10:03):
Because in these next episodes,it's time to go deeper.
The versions I created, why Ineeded them, the moments that
changed me before I evenrealized they had.
The coping, the consequences,the grief, the survival, the
understanding that came after,or the understanding that I'm
(10:24):
still trying to find.
Nothing is off limits.
If it's part of the story, itbelongs here.
This is where I stop editing,where I stop protecting the
image.
This is where I stop trying tomake my life sound cleaner than
it actually was.
Because the truth is, I'm tired.
(10:45):
Tired of carrying versions ofmyself that were built just to
survive.
Tired of pretending pain didn'taffect me.
Tired of making things look okaywhile quietly falling apart
underneath.
And maybe the hardest part toadmit, there were moments I
didn't recognize myself anymore.
(11:07):
Moments where I looked in my ownlife and wondered how I got so
far away from who I was supposedto be.
Moments where I felt completelydisconnected from myself, while
everyone around me still thoughtI was fine.
But underneath all of that,underneath those mistakes, the
coping, grief, anger, shame,there was still something human
(11:30):
left in me asking one question.
SPEAKER_00 (11:33):
Why?
Why did this hurt so much?
Why did I keep running?
SPEAKER_01 (11:40):
Why did I spend so much of my life trying to become
someone easier to love?
SPEAKER_00 (11:46):
Maybe this podcast is the first time I've stopped
running long enough to actuallylisten to the answer.
Not the polished answer.
Not the inspirational answer.
The real one.
Even if it breaks me open.
Because surviving.
SPEAKER_01 (12:08):
Well, I can't keep surviving inside this version of
myself.
Inside the versions that wereonly created to survive pain.
And maybe that's the mostterrifying part of all of this.
Realizing I don't actually wantthe old version of me back
anymore.
(12:28):
Not the successful one, not thestrong one, not the composed
one, not the version that knewhow to smile while quietly
disappearing underneath.
Because every version I createdto protect myself cost me pieces
of who I really was.
And I think somewhere along theway, I disappeared too.
(12:50):
If telling the truth costs meevery version of myself I use to
survive, then maybe that's notlosing myself.
SPEAKER_00 (12:57):
Maybe it's finally being me.
This is no version left.
Only the Y remains.
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