James Swartz was born in Butte, Montana, in 1941. He grew up inLewiston, Idaho, and had a very happy childhood. The small world ofLewiston could not contain him, however, and at seventeen he left for amilitary prep school in Minnesota. He spent two years in a liberal artscollege in Wisconsin, was expelled for disciplinary reasons and enrolledat the University of California at Berkeley in 1963. Six months shortof graduation he ran off to Hawaii, where he started a successful smallbusiness. But something was terribly wrong; at twenty-six he had becomean alcoholic, chain-smoking, gluttonous adulterer, and life in everyrespect was not worth living. One day in the post office in Waikiki hehad a life-changing epiphany that put him on the path to freedom. For more about that remarkable journey, read Mystic by Default.