Welcome to the website of a recovering alcoholic.

Sober since 16 January 2025. That was the day I took a 1.5-litre bottle of strong beer for the journey and, for the eighth time in two years, went back to an addiction treatment hospital — the painfully familiar Hospital No. 17. Smoke-free since 10 March 2025.

Behind me are more than thirty years of alcoholism, several stays in intensive care, more than one episode of delirium tremens, and the loss of almost everything a person can lose — including everything that once made life worth living. On top of that, I was left with a mountain of debt.

But I also gained something less obvious: experience. Then came the search for answers, the study of what I found, and a gradual understanding of what happens to the brain when alcohol is tearing it apart — how it works, how it can recover, and how it can be put back together after giving up alcohol completely.

I’m a sysadmin. For twenty years, I configured servers, managed domains and networks, and repaired computers. It took me a long time to realise that alcohol was no longer just a bad habit, but a serious problem.

That was when I had to repair a very different device: my own head. First, flash the buggy BIOS; then install a clean OS. Only here, instead of Windows Server drivers and services, I was dealing with neural connections, dopamine receptors, and an overactive amygdala that sounds the alarm even when everything is quiet.

• An honest look at how alcohol can leave the brain in ruins.
• Practical tools I have tried and tested myself.
• Personal experience.
• Neuroscience without the jargon.
• Code, software and notes.
• And perhaps a little Dostoevsky. 🤣 (Because he was a brilliant psychologist and a fascinating writer.)

• Advice to “just pray and repent”.
• Advice of any kind.
• Magic pills.
• Mentoring or coaching.
• Promises of an easy road.
• Promises of any kind.

Here, I write about the constant fear I lived with for many years. About the brain I spent just as long methodically destroying with alcohol. And, finally, about the tools I have tried and tested on myself.

Or, more simply: the technical blog of a man rebuilding himself.

The site is under construction. So am I.

P.S. I am not trying to impose anything on anyone. I do not tell people what they should do. I simply share the experience and knowledge that helped me climb out of that hell.