Built in the Dark

Built in the Dark: How Solitary Confinement Rewired My Mind and Excel Saved My Life is the story of what happens when catastrophic decisions collide with extreme isolation and force a man to rebuild from the inside out.

Christian Torres went from the NYPD to federal prison, where he spent 18 months in solitary confinement. In that darkness, stripped of identity, routine, and control, he began rebuilding the one thing he still had left: the way he thought.

What started as survival became transformation. Through structure, systems, and the unexpected power of Excel, Christian developed a new framework for making sense of pressure, consequence, and uncertainty.

Built in the Dark is not just a memoir. It is a gripping story about the cost of bad decisions, the power of mental reconstruction, and the discipline required to build a new future when everything familiar has been taken away.