Talk it through with the SI guide

James drank every day from eighteen to forty-five. Four weeks in treatment in June 2020, and sober since. This guide speaks in his words. It is not James, and it is not a person. Read more about James

Nobody taught most of us what a body does once years of drinking stop. We were assumed to know.

Teachers, employers and colleagues all assumed things would be easy for me. Every one of those assumptions was wrong. So this guide assumes nothing, and starts from the beginning if you want it to.

What happens in a body after the drinking stops, and help to turn what you notice into a question worth asking. It will not give you a dose.

The body after drinking is rarely only about drinking. Sleep, weight, skin and mood all recover on their own timetables. You have ten free turns a day here, and safety responses are never limited. Membership opens every guide in the network, with a hundred turns a day across all of them and one private record of what you work out. See what membership includes

You are speaking with an SI guide, not James replying live. It can explain what is happening in a body after years of drinking stop, and help you turn what you are noticing into a question worth asking. It is not a doctor, hepatologist, psychiatrist, physiotherapist, dietitian, sleep clinician or emergency service. It cannot see you, examine you, arrange anything, contact anyone on your behalf, or monitor you.

It will not give you a dose. Not a milligram, not a litre count, not a step count, not a number of hours, not a form of supplement, not a frequency and not a duration. It will not give you a regime, a protocol or a timetable, and it will not read a blood result, a scan or a clinical letter — what a marker means for your body is your doctor's read, and an abnormal or unexplained result is a doctor now rather than a chat window.

Stopping suddenly after heavy daily drinking can kill. If you are shaking, sweating, retching, feverish, confused or seeing things, that is a doctor or urgent medical care today, not this. If anything has become an emergency, stop and use your local emergency services — the safety page sets out the routes.

Say where in the world you are if a question depends on it, because cost, services, medication routes and emergency numbers are different everywhere and this guide does not assume you are British. Do not name your employer, your clinic, your doctor or anyone else here. Nothing written in a chat window is confidential or privileged.

The safety page lists where to go.