Eight straight answers.

1. Are rehabs paying you?

No. Not one. Not now. Not ever. No referral fee, no commission, no kickback, no “preferred partner” deal. The reason this site exists is that almost every other website on this subject is paid by a clinic to send you to that clinic. I will not be one of them. If a clinic ever offers, I will say no in writing and forward the offer to anyone who asks. That is the whole model.

2. Are you a clinician?

No. Not a doctor, therapist, counsellor, sponsor, interventionist, recovery coach, psychiatrist or nurse. I went to a four-week residential rehab in the UK in June 2020 and have been sober since. I am the patient, five years in, who paid the fee, did the work, walked out, and lived the years that followed. Plain English from one person who has been there. Anything that should come from a clinician — medication, detox, diagnosis, prescriptions — the bot says so plainly and points you to your doctor.

3. Is this SI (super intelligence)?

The bot is built on top of a large language model. The voice, the bias, the rules, the lane, and the things it refuses to do are mine. I wrote the system that drives it. I update it. I read the conversations that get flagged. The model is the engine; the steering, the brakes, and the road are mine. When it does not know, it says so. It does not pretend to be human and it does not pretend to be a clinician.

4. Why charge anything?

Because anything genuinely free on the internet is paid for by someone you cannot see — usually an advertiser, and on this subject often a clinic paying for the referral at the other end. Membership is what keeps that out. It pays the model bill, the hosting and the time, it is paid by you rather than by the treatment industry, and that is the whole commercial relationship.

Membership is one annual membership for the whole network, bought at contented.guide, and the current price is shown there. The encyclopedia, the safety routes and the withdrawal information are free and stay free. Nothing commercial is ever shown to someone in trouble.

5. How private is this?

No account is created on this site and no payment is taken here. Your conversation is held in your own browser under keys beginning sb_, not in a database with your name on it. Messages briefly pass through OpenAI's API to generate a reply; under its business terms that content is not used for training and is retained only briefly for abuse monitoring. Cloudflare holds standard technical logs for a short period, for security, joined to nothing.

If you are a member, your browser presents a short-lived signed token so the chat recognises you. It carries no name, no email and no payment details. The full detail is on the privacy page.

6. What makes this different from the rest of the internet on this subject?

One person. One lived experience. One opinion. No referral fees in either direction. The encyclopedia is free and points you wherever the answer actually is — including away from me. The bot is paid because the bot is the bit nobody else is doing: a calm, opinionated wingman at three in the morning who has been through a UK residential rehab and the five years that follow. Most other sites are either advertising dressed up as advice, or American twelve-step content translated badly for a UK reader. I am neither. The voice is mine. The bias is mine. The standards are mine. If you do not like the cut of it, the site is not for you, and I would rather you knew that on minute one than minute eleven.

I have also lived and worked across different countries and cultures. Alcohol problems look different on the surface — wine with dinner in southern Europe, a private constraint in a Muslim household, a forty-thousand-dollar US rehab quote, no insurance and no money in any of those — but the underlying patterns are often the same. The bot reads what you actually say and adjusts. It does not assume from a name or a postcode.

7. Refunds?

Membership is handled at contented.guide, and that is where a refund is requested. If it was not what was on the tin, ask and it is refunded — no form, no queue, no explanation required. One person reads those messages.

8. What data is actually kept?

On your device: your conversation threads, your boundary acknowledgement and any notes you type, under keys beginning sb_. Clearing your browser data removes them and they are gone for good.

On the network: if you are a member, contented.guide holds the account — an email address and the payment record held by the payment processor. This site never sees your card, and no clinic, insurer, employer or advertiser ever sees anything.

Not kept anywhere: your name, unless you type it; a profile of you; your chat content in a database of ours; anything sold to anyone, ever.