For Media
7 Years to Life is an autobiography about addiction, transformation, and a life I never dreamed of.
Press bio
Jozef Môstka (39) is a programmer from Orava, Slovakia. He used methamphetamine, weighed 155 kilograms and didn't leave his room for two years. Today he is sober, runs half-marathons, climbed Elbrus last year, and is publishing a book about how he got back.
Short bio
I was getting high in Bratislava, in a house where the walls were covered in mould and an old mattress lay on the floor. Just me and a light bulb in my hand.
I am 39, I live in Orava and I work as a programmer. I weighed 155 kilograms. I have been sober since 2021. On 10 July 2025 I stood on the summit of Elbrus.
I am writing a book about it. It is called 7 Years to Life.
Long bio
My name is Jozef Môstka. I am 39 years old, I live in Orava and have been working as a programmer for fourteen years. I trained as a cook and waiter. I taught myself to programme.
In 2011 I took methamphetamine for six months. I was getting high in Bratislava in a house where the walls were covered in mould and an old mattress lay on the floor. I quit — but not for long. Over the next ten years I kept going back to it.
In 2017 I lost weight from 130 to 100 kilograms. I exercised, kept to a diet and it looked like a victory. It wasn't. I wasn't dealing with why I was eating, only how much. A year later I was back to 110 kilograms. Then I stopped weighing myself altogether.
From 2018 to 2020 there is not a single photo of me. I sat in my room, took drugs, ate too much pizza and crisps and watched The Simpsons. The schizophrenic delusions were already under control by then. Nobody saw me and I didn't want anyone to see me.
In 8th June 2020 a treadmill was brought to my flat. I bought it for 944.90 €, because I knew I had to do something with myself, and walking was the only thing I was capable of then. Fifteen minutes a day. Three days later I stepped on the scales: 155.3 kilograms. I had never weighed more, and until that moment I hadn't even known how much I weighed.
In the first three months nine kilograms came off. Over the next eleven months, three more.
The turning point came in autumn 2020. It wasn't a decision made after reading a book or following good advice. It was because there was nowhere left to go. In the end it was an escape to my mother and her embrace that pulled me out of the drugs, and one morning I set a boundary that has held to this day. I was never in a treatment centre. Since 2021 I have been sober, and every week I go to an abstinence club where we talk with others about what we have been through.
Since March 2023 I have been training four times a week. I have run fifteen half-marathons and one ultramarathon, I do cold-water immersion, I climb via ferratas. On 10 July 2025 I stood on the summit of Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe. I chose it because it was the greatest challenge I could imagine — a man who once couldn't tie his shoelaces over his belly.
Today I weigh 105 kilograms.
It took me seven years to get from there to here. It didn't happen through diets. It happened through dealing with the sorrow I had carried from childhood and learning to like myself. I am writing a book about it called 7 Years to Life.
It is not a story about how once you lose weight, you are done. It is a story about how if a person wants to lose weight, they have to focus on something completely different. What that is, is in this book.
