11/10/2026
A month ago I posted my 8 years of sobriety piece here on my page VidaStories. On my website VidaStories I posted it as my first blog post where I will continue my blog and publish short stories.
By John Boyter
8 years of sobriety today. How it happened.
The first time I self-medicated using alcohol to cope, calm down and sleep started in my late teens living in Germany from 1988 to 1990. I was working as a trainee and had just turned 19 right after high school.
I would meet with a Danish friend either Thursday or, more often than not, already Wednesday night to drink to get through the rest of the week. We both worked in Hamburg for our dads’ businesses, and I think he hated being there as much as I did.
The second year in Germany was, on the one hand, more interesting as I was traveling around the country instead of being stuck in a sad apartment in Hamburg. I was stationed with different German partners of the business for 2–3 months in each place. I traveled more and more south in Germany.
On the other hand, I felt lonelier, but in each place I stayed, I met a local German girl I hung out with. Although always just platonic.
For instance, a girl who had oversold herself for a job in the export department and needed help with her English. I helped with writing letters and faxes, and she was shy about calling English-language clients. I told her what she should say. She was pretty. I saw her outside the office too, making her fiancé jealous.
Then there was a quiet girl who was showing me the different departments and systems. She was a trainee herself and one year younger than me. I just wanted to talk to her during coffee and lunch breaks. She was serious, shy and wore glasses. Long brown hair in a bun. Her luminous smile did it for me.
Very smart and engaged. I am sure she has some high corporate position nowadays. I sat with her for about a month. I loved it, but I think she was exhausted from me talking about everything else other than the business. Two shy people hanging out only because I was assigned to her desk.
Another stayed long term at the same bed and breakfast, a Gasthaus, as I did. She was a bit wild and struggled one time to pay her rent, which sounded really crazy to me. We smoked w**d one time in her room and she made a pass at me, but for two years I was fearful and guarded. I just wanted someone to talk to and was practicing dating.
I don’t remember the names anymore of those German girls. They made an impression on me because I was completely alone. We had zero contact afterwards. In 1989–1990 you would have to make an expensive international phone call or write and send a letter to stay in touch.
After my first period in Hamburg, my emotional reservoir had been almost depleted, but during this last period in Germany, I gained some romantic confidence, which meant my tank wasn’t completely empty when I moved back to Aarhus. But I was more guarded and anxious.
Then during 1990–1993 in Aarhus, the first year was a recovery and my social life was considerably better. I was now really determined to find a girlfriend, and I did finally while being in Aarhus sharing an apartment with a friend, away from my childhood home, and with more distance from the gatekeeper.
It would be the first and last girlfriend I ever introduced to my family, and it didn’t even last two years. I spent one memorable Christmas with her, her mother and her mother’s partner. We also went on a few vacations together. All very relaxing and easygoing.
At the family business, as the youngest of four sons, I was going nowhere faster and faster. Sometimes I say jokingly I was a trainee for five years instead of just the two years in Germany. My dad didn’t seem to have a plan for me. I moved to Copenhagen to go to university there as a type of escape. Maybe not the best start to an elite education.
It went well at first, and everything was new and exciting. The parties were fun. I discovered in Copenhagen I could meet girls by sitting at the bar drinking and talking to girls who were ordering drinks or drinking in the bar like I was.
After having finished in Aarhus, including evening business-school exams, and after moving to Copenhagen and getting through the first year with exams, a delayed heartbreak arrived. It was more over a late teenage love that resurfaced than over my first girlfriend. She had been a rebound for who I really would have wanted to be with. Buried love.
After the first years, the same type of drinking as in Hamburg as a coping mechanism started. I liked studying law and university life, but I couldn’t handle the competitive environment. Just like the corporate world wasn’t for me.
Later in Copenhagen, I had two relationships. One woman was Cuban and a high school Spanish teacher; the other was Danish, a bilingual secretary. She proofread my thesis. They were very different: one more mellow, the other a bit wild. Both were kind, open-minded and creative.
One was there during a period of the degree, the other as I was finishing it. Both were there while I was already pulling away from the family in Aarhus. I drank less then, when I had a girlfriend. But I struggled with commitment. We stayed in touch as friends afterwards.
During 1999–2002, the drinking got worse and worse, bordering on full-blown alcoholism, but I still managed to finish my degree in 2000. Holding on to a job was harder.
I had stopped believing in love and that I could hold onto someone—something originating from my very early teens already, with constant “policing” if I liked a girl, and if I was caught making out with a girl, there was hell to pay. Now as an adult, I was a nervous wreck if I really liked a woman. Worst case, I would be terrified. Still, if I felt love, I never hesitated to be direct and just say it.
My father had passed away suddenly in 1998, and I had not finished well with him, which tormented me. In 2001 I sold my shares in the family business.
Eventually, I left Denmark “during a binge,” as I sometimes say, spending a period in Havana. After that, I went to Santo Domingo after a “bad hangover”. Always battling mood swings with anxiety and depression.
In Havana, my first girlfriend there had been an elite rhythmic gymnast and was now a contortionist artist. Smart girl too, and there was never a dull moment. She wanted me to invite her to Denmark and was trying to get me to drink less and lose weight. But I was a lost cause. I did lose weight with her, but the other aim didn’t materialize, and then there were more. More diverse too.
Between going from Havana to Santo Domingo, I was essentially a drifter from 2004 to 2006, going back and forth and to other places. In Havana I went to nightclubs and piano bars. In Santo Domingo to cabarets and clubs and bars in beach towns away from the capital. Before going insane, I decided to start a business in Santo Domingo.
Worst reason ever to start a business, but it probably saved me.
With the business, I met many people I still know today. It was the business connections that made it worth it. I liked real estate and the expat and foreign business clients my partner and I dealt with, as we worked with commercial space.
For seven years, from 2004 to 2011, I did not go back to Denmark. I began the residency process in the Dominican Republic as a tourist, which is no longer possible.
Right at the beginning, a friend during that time — a Canadian legal secretary named Tamara whom I had drinks with in the Cayman Islands and whom I showed around Havana once — said, “I think you are barking up the wrong tree.”
“But now I set it up with an offshore company in Cayman operating in the Dominican Republic, and I am working with some people.”
“I am just telling you my opinion,” she said. “I think you should be doing something in the arts.”
“Like what?” I said.
“I don’t know. Paint, write or something like that.”
I appreciated her honesty and felt deep down maybe she was onto something.
In the Dominican Republic, I now had some more solid ground under me, and for a number of years, I managed to stop drinking several times for 3–4 months at a time, but I repeatedly slid back. I developed a close connection to my fellow real estate broker, who became my business partner and still is.
First we worked together. Then she was my girlfriend. We were also married. She has nursed me during illness and depression. We lived together again during the beginning of the pandemic. Now I visit her in Santo Domingo. My “Dominican sister”. I think maybe she likes my company. We have known each other for over 20 years.
The business broke even for several years, but never really more than that. I had other income then, so I was okay with that, but I also started getting bored with it. We had a coworking space with virtual office services and a brokerage. I thought the combination was smart: a fee business and a transactional business, but it also meant we were running two very different businesses.
During the years 2014–2018, things unraveled and I went through a rollercoaster of bad decisions traveling between Santo Domingo, Miami and the Cayman Islands, going around in circles. I had some ideas around starting an online business based in the Cayman Islands. I got a business visa with residency there and was building a house. I failed miserably.
It was in a way similar to my drifter years but more sophisticated and expensive. Some issues from my drifter years had also caught up with me. It was here I lost a lot of money. Before that, I had played it relatively safe with business and investments. Now I had periods of heavy drinking again and several health issues.
One time in a beach town drinking too much, I ended up in a clinic out in the sticks with dangerously high blood pressure. They couldn’t get it under control, and I was transported into a clinic in Santo Domingo, where I then got better. My partner stayed at the hospital one night on a sofa bed in the room with me.
Then not long after, it was my stomach, where I had an ulcer and an amoebic stomach parasite at the same time. It was really debilitating. A strict diet managed by my partner and no drinking for six months cured it.
Not that long after again, I had something with my nerves, I think. Maybe neurological; they couldn’t figure it out. My legs and arms were stiff, and I struggled to walk, including up stairs. I had my partner drive me almost daily for a few weeks to a local hotel with a large pool. I would almost roll into the pool. The swimming cured it slowly.
I also went back to Havana. I was looking into a rumor about a child but never figured it out. At the same time, I had a lover there. She was about thirty, fun, sensual, with a taste for interesting lingerie.
The search was a dead end and left me with frustration and grief. She asked for a monthly allowance, but I stopped going. She was never unpleasant—very mellow and funny. I never resolved the search, and I gave up.
When I finally quit drinking for good in September 2018, I didn't really plan it. I was taking a break to solve some business problems and just never drank again. I suddenly realized how much I had lost both financially and personally, which was a shock to me.
A severe depression followed where I felt that if I drank, it could kill me. The fear kept me from drinking again. Being fearful had made me drink too much initially, but now a deeper fear took over.
The “black dog” followed me into the start of the pandemic, when we then closed the office and business in Santo Domingo at the start of lockdown. My partner always kept working as a real estate broker, though.
Early January this year, I sat outside in the village of Las Terrenas, where I own an apartment. I had been experiencing panic attacks again. My heart rate suddenly spiraled and was nearing 140 sitting down. I tried using deeper and slower breathing to control it.
I managed to look calm and finished my breakfast with pancakes and coffee. I got up and slowly walked back via the beach, and the panic attack eventually subsided completely in my apartment. I decided to quit caffeine and sugar after that. It just gives me a bad taste and vibe now. I went cold turkey again.
Lately, some of the trauma has been unleashed and the fear is diminishing. It seems the years of sobriety and now also stricter dieting, lots of exercise and going down memory lane in Aarhus, where I grew up, have been positive for my nervous system.
I went through some thorough soul searching, and after some immense sadness and uncontrollable crying, I now feel I am in a better and safer place emotionally.
Through the healing process, it has been helpful to talk to a few friends from that time here in Aarhus when I was coming of age and into early adulthood. It has been a good opportunity to reconnect.
Over four years ago now, I moved back to Denmark, after a heart attack in Aarhus, where I was operated on. Now I split my time between Aarhus in Denmark and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Something I hope I can keep on doing.
I moved through three careers — exports, law and real estate. Each began with some genuine interest, yet I never settled in any of them. My own restlessness and emotional difficulties made it hard to stay the course. I just seemed to end up having a bad experience and felt like I didn’t want to go back to it.
I realize I am more sensitive and creative than disciplined and suited to conventional business. Now I keep a low-overhead operation in Santo Domingo and support my partner’s real estate work while trying to focus more on creative projects.
I just turned 57, and today I am 8 years sober building a calmer life, one day at a time.
