""George wanted me to play the spy game. No dramatic cases, just find out if I was followed on the street, how the mailboxes functioned, checking the monitoring of rooms etc., and for me it was just a bit too much The Hardy Boys. And I had not even read them.""

In 1970 a young Norwegian student entered the Soviet Union to take action against violations of human rights. He was arrested and sentenced to one year in a labour camp. Here is the story of what he experienced, on the internal and external level, behind the Iron Curtain.

Gunnar Gjengset is both a merited and scandalized scholar, a highly respected and satirical aphoristic with his own column in leading Norwegian newspapers for more than 20 years. Although his life story is thrilling, there is also ample room for humor and caustic descriptions of life in Academia, High Culture -  and the gutter.

After having been challenged by a possible ADD-diagnosis, Gunnar Gjengset understood that he had to take control over an escalating abuse of alcohol, before alcohol took control over his life. Quitting is easy, the quest is to cope with the void that threatens the mind as a black hole. He therefore developed a list for surviving, a day-to-day schedule for how to challenge the boozing.

First you have to admit that there is a problem, and then you have to invest one year of your lifetime.

But with a little help from your own will:

Here is the manual for how to Avoid the Void.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
To Avoid The Void
Just Quit
The Art of Not to Start
Asylum, Addiction and the Road to Avoid The Void

PART ONE: BACK IN THE USSR
Introduction: An Ex–Alcoholic in the Ex–USSR
1.  A Day in the Life of Gunnar Gjengsetovitsch
2.  Mother Russia
3.  Riding the Rap
4.  A Spy in the Making
5.  The Brave Tin Soldier
6.  The Mysteroius Resistance
7.  Back in the USSR
8.  Breakfast of Champions
9.  ...Then Everything Went Horribly Wrong
10.  Last Man Standing
11. Show Time!
12.  Peace and Friendship
13.  Welcome to the Criminal Asylum
14.  Hunger Strike – a Matter of Will
15.  Emil und die Detektive
16.  Will and Its Boundaries
17.  The Process

PART TWO: A DAY IN THE LIFE
1.  Leaving Las Vegas
2.  How Not to Drink
3.  The First Circle: The Drunkard’s Messy Routines
4.  How to Quit Quitting
5.  The Art of Not to Start
6.  ...At the End of the Day

PART THREE: NORWEGIAN WOOD – AVOID THE VOID
1.  The Temperance Seven
2.  To Avoid The Void – The Manual

Here is My Manual:
3.Face The Void
4. Red Sails in the Sunset

BONUS
1.  Medical Treatment
2.  Why WILL Would Work
3.  Summary

APPENDIX – LITERATURE