Straight answers
Seven straight answers.
Short answers, from this site's own pages. Where the answer is a refusal, the refusal is the answer and the reason is given.
How long until I feel normal?
Longer than the discharge letter implies and in a different order than you expect. The body learns water in months, electrolytes in seasons, sleep in years, and the soft tissue last of all. The first ninety days are the obvious window; the first ninety months are the actual one. The ninety-day page sets out what is happening underneath while it feels strange, stage by stage, and the honest headline is that around day sixty most people notice the floor of energy has risen — which is a floor, not a destination.
What should I take?
This site will not tell you. Not a supplement, not a form of it, not a milligram, not a frequency, not a duration. The figures on these pages are one man's own, reviewed by his own clinician every twelve months, and they are published as an order of magnitude rather than an instruction — your numbers will be your own, and your clinician will tell you which of them are wrong for your particular liver, kidneys, heart or sleep. What can be said generally is that chronic alcohol use depletes magnesium specifically, that most discharge letters already specify a course, and that the expensive electrolyte powders sold to people in early sobriety are usually not what the body specifically needs. The four foundations page says the rest.
My bloods came back and the doctor did not really explain them. Can you?
No. What a marker means for your body depends on your history, your medication and the rest of the panel, and reading it is the doctor's job rather than this desk's. What this site can do is tell you what each marker is for — gamma-GT and why it falls quickly with abstinence, MCV and why it normalises slowly over months, the liver enzymes, the kidney and electrolyte picture, the deficiency screen — so that you can turn the printout into a question. The medical handover page carries the list and a plain-English script to take into the appointment. An abnormal or unexplained result is a doctor now, not a search engine.
I am shaking in the mornings. Where do I start?
Not here. Alcohol withdrawal can kill, and shaking in the morning after heavy daily drinking is the sign that this has become medical rather than difficult. Do not stop suddenly on your own and do not let anyone talk you into it: that is a doctor today, or urgent medical care. This site will not give you a taper, a dose, a medication or a timetable, because that is a clinician's decision made with sight of you. The safety page sets out the routes, and none of them are a telephone number printed here.
Is the body work a method I can buy?
There is nothing to buy and there is no method. It is a short session a day of slow, deliberate work on the soft tissue — a foam roller, a tennis ball against a wall, hands — done daily for six years by one man on one body. The foam roller costs about the price of a takeaway and lasts a decade; the tennis ball costs less; the hands are free. There is no James Method and no James Protocol, and the refusal to brand it is deliberate: the moment a daily practice becomes a Method it stops being a practice and becomes a product. The slow work page also names the conditions — a recent operation, a bleeding risk, low bone density, peripheral neuropathy, pregnancy among them — that mean asking a physiotherapist before you start anything at all.
Why is there no plan on this site?
Because the body recovers on a clock the body sets, and the only thing that moves that clock is doing the small things daily. The supplement industry is built on the promise of speed and the recovery industry sells four weeks as the work; both are wrong about the body. The big things — the cleanse, the protocol, the reset weekend — are theatre. A plan published by a desk that has never examined you would be the same theatre with a different font. The refusals page lists the rest of what this desk will not do and what each refusal costs it.
Who is answering, and what does it cost?
The chat is an SI (super intelligence) guide. It is not James, not a doctor, not a physiotherapist and not a monitored human service, and it says so before you type anything. It will explain what is happening in your body and name where the evidence is settled and where it is not; it will not give you a dose, a regime, a timetable or a reading of a result. The body pages and the safety routes are free and stay free. Membership is live and covers every guide in the network, and the current price is shown on the join page only — no page here states it, and neither will the guide. The editorial standards page explains why.
Why am I so tired after I stop drinking?
Very common, and usually temporary. The body is adjusting: sleep is reorganising itself, and many people find the first weeks flat and heavy before the energy comes back. I felt it too. If the tiredness lasts beyond a couple of months, or comes with low mood, breathlessness or weight loss, speak to your GP and ask for blood tests.
Why can I not sleep after quitting alcohol?
Alcohol knocks you out but spoils sleep, so when you stop, the body has to relearn how to sleep without it. Broken nights in the first weeks are common and usually improve. A regular bedtime, daylight in the morning and less caffeine after midday help. If you are sweating, shaking or seeing things at night, that is withdrawal and needs a doctor now.
Is it normal to crave sugar after stopping drinking?
Yes, very. Alcohol is full of sugar, and many people reach for sweets in the first months. I would not fight it too hard early on: a biscuit is better than a drink. As things settle, the craving usually eases. If you have diabetes, talk to your GP, because stopping alcohol can change your blood sugar.