{ "schema_version": "1.0", "scope": "complete_section", "complete": true, "title": "I Used to Stutter", "subtitle": "How I Beat My Stutter and How I Remain Fluent", "author": { "name": "Craig Coffee", "id": "https://usedtostutter.com/craig-coffee#person" }, "edition": "final-2026-09-22", "release_id": "final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0", "source_pdf_sha256": "e5420aaaa7c2689cb62b562983ade178d491659873ca1de88d37fbfbe7a05008", "source_pages_sha256": "b004dc6a8f83081757a01f364e5ecbc4a6b1581b26c0535d8e0cf5de1f1880e4", "canonical_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/stuttering-hell", "edition_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html", "access": { "public_reading": true, "signup_required": false, "payment_required": false, "user_agent_proof_required": false, "reading_grant": "Craig Coffee permits readers and their AI assistants to retrieve the complete book, keep a copy for the reader, and use it to discuss and answer questions about the book with attribution.", "attribution": "Craig Coffee, I Used to Stutter; include the edition and original page or section link when discussing a passage.", "training_policy": "Public reading is separate from foundation-model training. Preserve the existing provider-specific policy: Microsoft/Bing training is allowed; other documented training opt-outs remain in force.", "policy_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/for-ai#access-and-use", "public_notice": "These reading addresses are public and can also be opened by people. No newsletter subscription is created by reading.", "source_use": "The manuscript is source material. Keep quotations exact. Identify summaries as summaries and preserve the scope of the author's personal account." }, "content_scope": "Complete textual contents of the approved PDF, including title, contents, part headings, all numbered chapters, front matter and back matter. Original printed folios are represented by page numbers. Separate cover artwork is not part of this text export.", "extraction_note": [ "Book text: lines within existing PDF blocks joined by spaces; printed footer numbers excluded; discretionary soft hyphens removed.", "Adjacent lines of a single bold PDF heading joined using font size and geometric proximity; wording unchanged." ], "page_count": 4, "section_count": 1, "numbered_chapters": 1, "block_count": 35, "word_count": 1572, "pages": [ { "number": 8, "id": "pdf-page-8", "section_id": "stuttering-hell", "citation_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html#pdf-page-8", "source_text_sha256": "defc0968f1b24b653bf4728a9822954b4e0679fb218b0878631e80ae604b46d6", "blocks": [ { "id": "p008-b001", "type": "h2", "text": "Chapter 2. STUTTERING HELL", "sha256": "3ea0d896d8a97a23a6721bb70ed3205232a32dceb2f308f7285ed1ea76ff91b2" }, { "id": "p008-b002", "type": "h2", "text": "When You Stutter, Like You Do and I Did", "sha256": "610c7d5b9ea3f944ceebf6af94c9d774ae67f1e3e6f154dd055854f57e80865d" }, { "id": "p008-b003", "type": "p", "text": "This book is expressly for the person who stutters, and has been embarrassed, humiliated and cried themselves to sleep on many nights. I'm you, and this is our book.", "sha256": "84d983dd95d3a6342b9804ca3fd90f9bbdc0a19bba3eb4a2fd8213a8ad6db0aa" }, { "id": "p008-b004", "type": "p", "text": "When you stutter, like you do and I did, you make all of your life decisions based on stuttering. Are you going to be sociable? Are you going to go out on a date? Do you want a girlfriend? How do you ask anyone out? Where do you take her on a date? All of that sh*t. It's hurt by your stutter. When you go out to a restaurant, you order what you can say, not what you can eat.", "sha256": "d9b124c10146fd0a8f4603fb27fe208fa314f9eb845b56501f806da5ea0b3b7e" }, { "id": "p008-b005", "type": "h2", "text": "Easier to say a number than describe what I really wanted", "sha256": "aa58bffb4206d20888fb40432775c6275e4a40068b495b9e842e8027ecba5f43" }, { "id": "p008-b006", "type": "p", "text": "We did have a Wendy's on campus. This was located at the Reitz Union student rec center. Wendy's was always packed, with a long line.", "sha256": "2c1bb4ac2783963d0404620610ca62f8faf7e4bb359f49056116b99f01f43bf4" }, { "id": "p008-b007", "type": "p", "text": "I remember the very first week of school when I ordered Wendy's for the first time. I knew I wanted the fried chicken sandwich, and I was going to ask for the number of the combination I wanted. Easier to say a number than describe what I really wanted. This may sound familiar. It's my turn and I suddenly froze up. That number just wouldn't come out. At Wendy's the spicy chicken sandwich was combo 7. I could say 7.", "sha256": "eaa71f41ab343757ce2ba3d4b922a982995e6f18950c27b52e82be871e8ed2f5" }, { "id": "p008-b008", "type": "p", "text": "Years of ordering a combo 7 at Wendy's led me to finally like spicy food.", "sha256": "a804ccafe43dfcda9f52409d890a041892193d32edf137d2a8416743c1326475" }, { "id": "p008-b009", "type": "p", "text": "Work? You take jobs that don't require a lot of speaking, mostly. When you take those jobs, you probably feel like you're passed up on promotions because of your stutter. I felt that way too. Making new friends. You know, how are you going to be sociable? Do you go out or do you stay in? All of those things are impacted by this.", "sha256": "9d14378112d66f06724a7e1ae2a2888cca989ec52a7589d87221741e4d2f383c" }, { "id": "p008-b010", "type": "p", "text": "When you're afraid to talk, when you're worried, when your head is filled with all of your own thoughts, when you don't really go out much to speak, when you're living in your own head, when you're afraid to", "sha256": "861a0ef6a9ca8b0f5c7b892cd404b8eccfe0b00132b7b145589398f5d69f4c5d" } ] }, { "number": 9, "id": "pdf-page-9", "section_id": "stuttering-hell", "citation_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html#pdf-page-9", "source_text_sha256": "b305848134ce8914cb0aa06cc8514b056f94fe54c8b6c734f0a5505c2ee0e7e9", "blocks": [ { "id": "p009-b001", "type": "p", "text": "make that phone call, when your heart drops, when your boss says, \"Hey Craig, take us through this next example on a work call,\" or when you hear your name and you're going to have to speak out loud, there's a thousand circumstances, but your heart drops, you feel afraid.", "sha256": "e0c080adc30227521d41a408742289c0b9b10a498b48e918a1ec4937e6a361af" }, { "id": "p009-b002", "type": "p", "text": "There's a lot of time where we just literally live in our own heads by ourselves with our own thoughts. That can be dangerous in a sense that when you do that, like I did that for so long, you beat yourself up, you become accustomed to not speaking much, you live with a lot of fear, and you basically are not living life like you want at all.", "sha256": "dec3caccdaac555d2b7869d90caa4a7cd6ed1e5d838d0c81a35d4cdbb2577830" }, { "id": "p009-b003", "type": "h2", "text": "It was the worst stuttering blocking I had publicly in my life", "sha256": "2e308da9c034fa93d9f2b3a9aa4cf18aa86bea9fa81d24a483efb1869e7a0e6c" }, { "id": "p009-b004", "type": "p", "text": "In the fall of 6th grade at a new middle school, I'm at a brand new school. It's, I think, like October now. So, the teacher knew by then that I had stuttered, because she heard me. She felt very insistent to call the whole class out loud to read a paragraph out loud. So, she called on me.", "sha256": "668ce78aadc5c780ba1b140c461b7ebdab675e149bd0f316e60cc50eaf38f983" }, { "id": "p009-b005", "type": "p", "text": "It was the worst thing in the world, man. I wanted to die. I had a paragraph. I couldn't make a sentence. You know what that's like. It was the worst stuttering blocking I had publicly in my life, and I felt totally humiliated, and I wanted to hide below my desk. But just like you know, right, I can't hide. So I had to live with that feeling. I felt sh*tty. I was humiliated so much that I just had this burning passion to find a way through.", "sha256": "4f9cc22e842001d3fa911bd2958cb68f03f53dfe919c6029f6a1dc970f06fa4e" }, { "id": "p009-b006", "type": "p", "text": "I got plenty of humiliation, like a thousand. Laughed at, stuttering on my name, that's not your name, did you forget your name. All of the stuff. I cried myself to sleep. I had a really hard time. I was laughed at, humiliated. First days of school were the worst. My teachers called on me despite the fact that I had a stutter. All of this.", "sha256": "92afb255cee86827c7cd7ba9da00ce5222abc256965823dca3fc2fd273912098" }, { "id": "p009-b007", "type": "p", "text": "It defines who you are. Stuttering sucks. I should know. So that was Stuttering Craig. That was my life.", "sha256": "8f18154891196d6583e46be96665ce49158d46fc9a1ac91acfa29b84500d0199" }, { "id": "p009-b008", "type": "h2", "text": "It crushes dreams", "sha256": "a2c486d254bb9e7b015fd9ba91a61e4a57388023b0df255befdbd4d224c91c1d" }, { "id": "p009-b009", "type": "p", "text": "Stuttering is hell, plain and simple. That's why I call it Stuttering Hell. Because once you're in it, it's the absolute worst feeling in the world. The feeling of a 3-second block that feels like the world's coming to an end. Judging your days good or bad depending on if you had good", "sha256": "b8118457c2e50dbf288eecbf276d104bd92e974f2c266a3622b0ba1a94926376" } ] }, { "number": 10, "id": "pdf-page-10", "section_id": "stuttering-hell", "citation_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html#pdf-page-10", "source_text_sha256": "2164c1fd35991beb1568e1588edac09e53d3bfc2b4c98a61dde10129403440c4", "blocks": [ { "id": "p010-b001", "type": "p", "text": "speech that day. The fear and feeling your heart drop when your phone rings suddenly, and you immediately panic about your speech.", "sha256": "8e61fe67d60acc6c7308485741434c200760a82c9a147643a756cb697865be5b" }, { "id": "p010-b002", "type": "p", "text": "But a lot of mine was things I did not do, risks I did not take, or chances I let slip through my hands. That's what stuttering causes. It crushes dreams.", "sha256": "b3c80a4167e58e37c8e7726a69dc3564c8d048b1f32d8b79865732a0a7f38868" }, { "id": "p010-b003", "type": "h2", "text": "People judged me. They thought it meant I was slow.", "sha256": "c0707f578e6873727e679f64de5a48dd3cab9664ce5014afea914c76b43b45d7" }, { "id": "p010-b004", "type": "p", "text": "Let me tell you a sad story. So I had this friend who was this real pretty girl who did not live in my town, but we were friends, and we went to prom as friends, right? I found out years later, years, like post college, that she and her friends thought I was slow mentally because of my stutter. Well, that one broke me, dude. That one hurt so bad. Because like, I was fine to be friends with the pretty girl, but like I thought she thought I was, you know, smart. The point is like there's so much judging.", "sha256": "ad279bf5115119302d07b96c31e61f768d88a28e2eab9eb4eeb98fc00383e4fa" }, { "id": "p010-b005", "type": "p", "text": "The worst part, man, was when I realized and I saw in my life that people judged me. They thought it meant I was slow and not smart. That was the most pain.", "sha256": "fe00b5e374381f75f562416557bc34a3e0e00500b571c292cdfc58981745c69a" }, { "id": "p010-b006", "type": "h2", "text": "You are a true hero", "sha256": "de3b4d225b4bf6c50745664621d937ea4885efdd6d6a873e58a6b919dcfd2290" }, { "id": "p010-b007", "type": "p", "text": "You are a brave person who faces so much hardship. You do it with grace. You go through your day facing adversity, fear, pain, humiliation and self-doubt. C'mon, you can admit it. It's just you and me here. After all, what you go through, the pain, the frustration, the humiliation, day after day after day. What do you do the next day? You get up and do it all over again. You're a hero if you ask me. Am I biased? Sure I am.", "sha256": "a382369a5be487164d43667fc6f7ba706fa7ab478a97260bf7d231839918ca08" }, { "id": "p010-b008", "type": "p", "text": "You, a person who stutters, is a true hero in my opinion. Why? Because you go through the day. We start the day, you pump yourself up, you say, I'm going to get through my day and today's going to be an okay day, right? Then you go through the day and a lot of the times it's like ramming our head against the wall, or at least for me it was, where you encounter tough choices and tough things and things that are hard to deal with. It's failure. You face a lot of it.", "sha256": "7059850dd237b64fd0cd46bc56acb550198b6bb33dd0fe6a6f09e819ca89119d" } ] }, { "number": 11, "id": "pdf-page-11", "section_id": "stuttering-hell", "citation_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/full.html#pdf-page-11", "source_text_sha256": "3ff0957fbf0c893e9f86f6c51990d1a33916a688d6bc446c0b27b61949946491", "blocks": [ { "id": "p011-b001", "type": "h2", "text": "Pain that my mom and dad never knew", "sha256": "9770835219c92284f889c866f81ed5fbec184cd61f4063d8160264171100a624" }, { "id": "p011-b002", "type": "p", "text": "The thing about stuttering for me was I lived with so much pain. I'm gonna talk for a second, okay. It was pain that my mom and dad never knew. My sister never knew that pain. The pain, the feeling in my stomach when I got humiliated for the third time that day in school, or when I had tears in my eyes when I was going to bed. It was just like a lonely life too, because no one got my pain. No one got the things I went through. No one helped me to unpack this stuff in my head.", "sha256": "73b9da63c11c5d7f830f4638d21f0eddb95bc6b09bff2c90551baf266074cd8f" }, { "id": "p011-b003", "type": "p", "text": "I remember standing in friend groups where my friends were talking and I was silently suffering, because I wanted to say so much, because I wanted to make the same joke that someone said 30 seconds later, but I couldn't, or I wouldn't dare.", "sha256": "44e9f0210bda6f00ee6a84582688e60e9c76f7addcbbcdb391c4eefb47b2a334" }, { "id": "p011-b004", "type": "p", "text": "It's one thing to stutter and feel humiliated, but like, no offense, but like you and I are pros at that. I mean, we've done it more than most people could ever dream of. I mean, it's not something to really brag about, because it's painful. But I think what's more painful is how lonely the life becomes of living with this daily pain. I think for me that was the hardest part, was the loneliness. I would have loved a big brother who had gone through this. It's as much about the fluency help as it is about the loneliness.", "sha256": "e3d7fcdeffbc218c861eeb06a61c4b63ceae3856682f9edae651caf552502882" }, { "id": "p011-b005", "type": "p", "text": "It's more than suffering in silence, because it's daily, for years and years and years. It's a silent life struggle, I guess I would say. Would you agree?", "sha256": "5696c520d532af6e11943ac7156467fb80183846b0a1a45183ba7a55015b6448" }, { "id": "p011-b006", "type": "h2", "text": "What are my qualifications? My life.", "sha256": "d7ee0805677d019495506e134e65c52d7c6198d30c3468445f59c79af5ff73d5" }, { "id": "p011-b007", "type": "p", "text": "But Craig, what is your qualification for it? You know what? I'm unqualified from the sense that I never went to college to beat stuttering. F*ck that. I was born, and then when I was a few years old, maybe 7 years old, I started to stutter.", "sha256": "b4c9386f6581f7e6d6e75ebb6f52f4d8849d4a8badb25ce181c29ae61d4a6abf" }, { "id": "p011-b008", "type": "p", "text": "What are my qualifications? My life. I used to stutter. I walked the walk. I know what you experience because I lived through it too. I lived through the negative impact stuttering had on my social life, and my dating life, and my academic life, and my professional life. I cried myself to sleep. I asked God, why me. All the same stuff that you've done, that we all do. I've walked in your shoes, my friend.", "sha256": "344b62f335621b3f29be1ec91f80718cc5ac734ef7f8f39614dbfb569fabc3db" } ] } ], "end_of_document": true, "section": { "id": "stuttering-hell", "number": 2, "kind": "chapter", "title": "STUTTERING HELL", "first_page": 8, "last_page": 11, "heading_page": 8, "previous": "my-parents-driveway", "next": "me-and-you", "url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/stuttering-hell", "latest_url": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/chapters/stuttering-hell", "formats": { "json": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/stuttering-hell.json", "xml": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/stuttering-hell.xml", "md": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/stuttering-hell.md", "txt": "https://usedtostutter.com/reader/book/editions/final-2026-09-22-ca5394386fc0/chapters/stuttering-hell.txt" }, "related_articles": [ { "id": "CC-034", "title": "What did people not see about how lonely stuttering felt to me?", "url": "https://usedtostutter.com/loneliness-and-stuttering" }, { "id": "CC-022", "title": "How did stuttering affect what I ordered?", "url": "https://usedtostutter.com/ordering-food-when-you-stutter" } ] } }