Story: Coding Through Chaos : Addiction, Recovery and Acceptance

What if your search for connection took you somewhere you never meant to go—almost costing you everything? John Walker grew up building computers and exploring early internet forums, always looking for a place to fit in. As a teenager, he hacked his school network and spent hours on IRC, but loneliness crept in. Drugs became a fun exploration and a social experiment. But soon, addiction pulled him into homelessness and jail. Even at his lowest, John turned to online communities. He ran IRC bots to keep recovery chatrooms safe from trolls and built scrapers to solve tough data problems at work. These technical challenges gave him a reason to keep going, even when face-to-face life felt impossible. But the real turning point came when John stopped trying to hide his differences. How do you rebuild when you feel like an outsider? Episode Page Support The Show

You can listen to Story: Coding Through Chaos : Addiction, Recovery and Acceptance online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Story: Coding Through Chaos : Addiction, Recovery and Acceptance is an episode from CoRecursive: Coding Stories by Adam Gordon Bell - Software Developer.

This episode is 48:06 long.

This episode was published on Jun 3, 2025.

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