The actual physiology, slow

What the body needs after the bottle, said plainly. Not the supplement aisle. Not the wellness internet. The actual physiology, slow.

The discharge letter said drink water and get sleep. The doctor said your bloods will normalise. Neither of them said how, or how long, or what it actually feels like at week eleven, or what the supplement aisle is selling and what it is not.

Talk it through The first ninety days

It is rarely one problem. If you suspect yours is connected to more than this, start at contented.guide, where the twenty guides join up.

The body that drank for years is not the body that is going to live the next forty. The first body knew alcohol better than it knew water. The second body has to learn water again, and electrolytes, and sleep without sedation, and food without the hunger alcohol creates and the hunger alcohol kills. The first ninety days are the obvious window. The first ninety months are the actual one.

I am James. Fifty. Sober since June 2020. Tenerife — the chair I work from. This page is what I needed when none of the things on the discharge letter said how. It is one person's practice over six years, with the lived authority earned where it is earned, and the limits named where they sit. It is not a programme.

This is not medical advice. The body recovering from chronic alcohol use is a clinical body, and any of this that intersects with your medication, your liver function, your blood pressure, your heart, your sleep apnoea, or your mental health belongs with a clinician who knows you. The bot will say so plainly. So will I.

What this site is for, and what it is not.

This site is for the person who is out of the clinic, or never went to one, or is six years on and still working out what the body needs without alcohol in it. It is the bridge between the four weeks of the guide to the inside of residential treatment and the rest of life. It is where the discharge-letter line "follow up with your doctor" becomes a conversation that has actually been had.

The site is built around what one person learned over six sober years about water, electrolytes, sleep, food, movement, sun, breath, and the slow work of the soft tissue that drinking dehydrated and stiffened. It is built on physiology where physiology is settled, on lived practice where it is not, and on the line between the two — said plainly.

What the site can do:

  • Tell you what the first ninety days of the body's reset typically look like, in plain English, without supplement marketing
  • Tell you what to ask your doctor, when to ask them, and what the bloods are actually showing
  • Tell you what one person has done, daily, for six years — the water routine, the electrolyte routine, the sleep routine, the food routine, the movement routine, the body work — with the rationale, the limits, and the bits that are mine and may not be yours
  • Carry the bot for the question that does not fit a general page

What the site will not do:

  • Sell supplements, equipment, programmes, or protocols
  • Tell you what to do with your body — your body is yours and your clinician's, not mine
  • Replace your doctor, your hepatologist, your psychiatrist, your physiotherapist, your dietitian, your sleep clinic, or any specialist your particular history requires
  • Pretend the body has a single right answer; it does not

Ninety days. Six years. Roughly seven hundred and fifty hours of soft-tissue work over that time.

Some numbers, said plainly, from one person's six years:

  • Roughly two and a half litres of plain water a day, taken in cups not bottles — for six years.
  • Roughly four hundred milligrams of magnesium a day, in food and supplement, with a clinician's review of the dose every twelve months.
  • Roughly seven and a half hours of sleep a night, on average, on a fixed wake-up — sometimes worse, occasionally better, never under six on purpose.
  • A long walk every day, with a floor I do not drop below even on the worst day.
  • A short session every day of soft-tissue work— the slow, deliberate practice of moving the connective tissue, the fascia, that drinking stiffened. Some days a foam roller. Some days a tennis ball. Some days hands. Said plainly: it is a short session a day, every day, for six years. That is roughly seven hundred and fifty hours, cumulative, on the body.
  • Time in the sun every day, deliberately, when the sun is available — Tenerife helps; the page says where this generalises and where it does not.
  • Two doctor's appointments a year, minimum, with bloods at one of them.
  • Zero alcohol, daily, for six years as of writing

Naming the practice is not a programme. It is the order of magnitude of what the body needed, for one person, to feel like a body again. Your numbers will be your own. Your clinician will tell you which of these are wrong for your particular liver, kidneys, heart, or sleep.

The thing nobody sells

The body learns water in months, electrolytes in seasons, sleep in years, and the soft tissue last of all. The supplement aisle sells you the bottle. The thing the bottle does not contain is the time. There is no shortcut for the time. There is only what you do, daily, for the time it takes.

The supplement industry is built around the promise of speed. The recovery industry sells the four weeks as the work. Both are wrong about the body. The body recovers in the time it takes, on a clock the body sets, and the only thing that moves the clock faster is doing the small things daily. The big things — the cleanse, the protocol, the reset weekend — are theatre. The small things, repeated, are the practice.

Who this site is for

  • The person home from rehab, looking at the discharge letter, not knowing what the markers mean
  • The person who never went to rehab and stopped drinking on their own and is six weeks in and feels strange
  • The person who has been sober for years and is still working out what the body needs
  • The partner of a sober person, trying to understand why the food, the sleep, the energy, the sex drive are different
  • The doctor who has a patient between assessment and admission and wants a page they can recommend
  • The HR director or occupational health adviser thinking about return-to-work conditions
  • The reader who has never had a drink problem but loved someone who did and wants the body's version of the story
  • The reader on day five out of detox, looking up "how long until I sleep" at three in the morning

These pages do not care where you are starting. The guide does not either.

The pages free. The guide, for members.

The body pages on this site cover water, electrolytes, sleep, food, movement, the slow work, the conversation with your doctor, what the bloods are for, the first ninety days and the first ninety months. Free. No supplement affiliates. No referral fees. No upsells.

The bot is for the question that does not fit a general page. I am six weeks out and my sleep is still terrible — what do I tell the doctor? My discharge letter says thiamine for six months and I cannot tolerate the tablets. My partner is sober four months and the cravings for sugar have not stopped. I want to start running and I do not know how to do it without doing too much. My bloods came back and the doctor did not really explain them. Membership, for as long as you need it.

It speaks plainly. It speaks in any language if you write in that language. It holds context across weeks. It picks up where you left off. It knows its limits. It is a companion, not a clinician. If a question crosses into clinical territory it stops being clever and routes you to the doctor, the duty doctor, your local emergency services, or the hospital. Crisis routing is never paywalled.

Membership is bought and managed once, at the network console, and it carries across every guide in the network. These pages are always free. The safety routes are always free.

Talk it through

No higher tiers on this site. If demand makes a structured brief honest later — for occupational health, for HR, for family solicitors briefing a client on the post-residential picture — the Transparency Post will name the moment. Not before.

Pick the door that fits today.

"The body is the part of the recovery that does not announce itself. There is no twenty-eight-day milestone for the soft tissue, no graduation ceremony for the sleep, no certificate for the second year of normal bloods. The body just gets quietly better, in pieces, in the time it takes, while you do small things daily. This page is a description of the daily small things, by one person who has done them for six years. The rest is between you and your body and the clinician who knows it." — James, Tenerife, May 2026