You're Gonna Need This Stiff Advice To Get Through Dry January
Let's approach Dry January with less religion and more reflection
So you’re trying Dry January, going sober for the first month of the year. Maybe you’re only Dry January curious or even Dry January annoyed, looking for a good hate read.
If it’s your first time, by Day Five some of the advice from those ubiquitous AI-generated “How To Succeed at Dry January” listicles may be wearing thin. It’s not all wrong, this advice. Getting rid of the alcohol in your house, finding a supportive community online or in real life, mixing up some substitute mocktails, or looking for health benefits like better sleep or weight loss . . . this may help.
For me, though, much of the Dry January discourse is too repressive or precious, failing to address the lived reality of an alcohol-free month. Dry January officially launched as a campaign in 2013 through the organization Alcohol Change UK. As Dry January has traveled across the pond to the U.S., it’s taken on values from Alcoholics Anonymous and themes from recovery literature, becoming more doctrinaire. An alcohol-free month isn’t lifetime sobriety. Dry January deserves a more relaxed and reflective attitude.
This is my fourth Dry January. I started back in that first pandemic winter when many of us were still semi-homebound. As was the case with Cheryl Strayed, who shared her drinking story in a great recent essay, my cholesterol had started to trend upward. My doctor pointed out that my two-drinks-a-day habit was double the recommended amount for women and the likely culprit for high cholesterol in my otherwise healthy lifestyle.
Mostly, though, I tried Dry January because I was curious about the shape of a month without alcohol. Near nightly observance of cocktail hour? I knew that plotline. I’d written that story for myself over and over again. Not drinking for a month presented a compelling new narrative.
Here’s some of what I’ve learned from my Dry January experience.
N.B. This post is not designed for people who discover they have a serious drinking problem during Dry January. I feel for those people and recommend they seek out an AA meeting or other support as soon as possible.
An online support group can be a mixed bag
The common advice to find a supportive Dry January community reflects the AA model: Get thee to a meeting.
That first year, my online Dry January group was helpful at the start. Fun too, with some real British wits among us. But these groups naturally involve a broad spectrum of psychological and physical dependence on alcohol. By January’s second half, I realized I’d been identifying with serious drinking problems that weren’t my own and absorbing anxiety that didn’t belong to me. When Tim in Shaftesbury posted that trying to go a day without drinking made him sweat and shake and what could the problem be, I messaged Tim to ask that he please get the medical support he needed. I lay awake at night worrying about whether Tim had entered that rehab center.
Taking a break from my online group allowed me to recognize that I didn’t crave alcohol constantly or have trouble mustering the willpower to refrain. I simply got bored during long evenings at home and had developed a nightly cocktail habit to ease the boredom.
As much as I want to be supportive, steering clear of online Dry January groups prevents me from overextending myself. Maybe I’ll be ready to return and.help out next year. I’d like to.
Our mileage in Dry January support groups may vary. Groups are worth a try, but not mandatory.
Mocktails . . . meh. Try other drinks.
Mocktails often are recommended as a Dry January panacea. Lately, I’ve also been hearing about “drybations.” Bubbly alternative drinks do seem to help some abstainers get through the month.
For me, clinking ice cubes into a glass for a fake gin & tonic is a cruel reminder of what I’m missing. I sip a glass of “red blend” that’s redolent of vinegar, and think, wow, I’m really not drinking wine now. Nothing makes me crave alcohol more than mock alcohol. Besides, the substitutes can be as expensive and caloric as the real thing. If we indulge in them every night, they rob us of Dry January’s money and calorie-saving benefits.
I recommend other drinks. Hot herbal tea is soothing and delicious on long winter nights, with no characteristics to suggest the alcohol we’re forgoing. The genuine pleasure of food and drink pairings without alcohol is worth exploring or recalling. Remember before you drank wine or beer when soda’s carbonation complemented a cheesy pizza? Green tea cleanses the palate between pieces of sushi better than sake ever could.
Dry January isn’t all or nothing
If we want to reflect on alcohol’s role in daily life, it can be instructive to commit to 31 alcohol-free days. A full month away from the hard stuff exposes the many ways alcohol might be part of our lives: celebrating, consoling, gathering, cooking, traveling, etc.
Dry January participants will sometimes drink in a moment of frustration, on a special occasion, or just because. In 2021, more than a few in my group drank on the 6th when insurrectionists stormed the U.S. capital. If there was any night to drink, it was that one. On the 7th, they announced their departure from the group. Dry January was over for them. Better luck next year, they said.
I encouraged them to stick around. Instead of thinking of Dry January as the proverbial wagon from which a fall is somehow irremediable, why can’t Dry January be more like a hop-on hop-off tourist bus?
Whether or not we drink during Dry January is less important than how well we reflect on any drinking. How did it feel? Did it enhance the occasion? If we drank at the wedding of a dear friend, the answer may be yes. If we caved on a weekday evening at home alone with Netflix, maybe not.
Again, Dry January doesn’t have to emulate AA culture: No red chip for 31 days of Dry January sobriety. If after drinking a day or two we feel it would be valuable to continue Dry January, we should get right back to it without shame, without any sense of having to start over.
Heads up: If anyone wants to fly me over to dine at Modena’s Osteria Francescana this month, I’ll definitely have a few glasses of wine with my meal before resuming my teetotaling ways for the rest of January.
Focus on a different lifestyle instead of an alcohol-free one
Have you ever spent time in an Islamic country where booze is forbidden to the faithful? Maybe you order wine at a restaurant anyway, because it’s on the menu and hey, you’re not Muslim. A lovely hajibed waitress arrives with a glass of cabernet, holding it out to you on a tray so she won’t have to touch the vile stuff herself. As she dashes from your radioactive table back to the safety of the kitchen, you lift your glass to taste wine so acidic that the bottle must have been open for months. Drinking simply is not part of the culture; indulging feels both disrespectful and inconvenient. You give up alcohol for the rest of your time there without missing it at all; you’re too busy experiencing the wonders of a new culture.
One trick of Dry January is embracing or creating a different lifestyle so that the absence of alcohol becomes the presence of something good or at least diverting. Some people do yoga in the evenings; some have focused nighttime work sessions. One friend thinks of Dry January as her “vacation” from alcohol. Whatever helps us see Dry January as possibility instead of negation.
You may not lose weight or experience any dramatic benefits
Dry January groups usually involve a guy posting about how he lost 12 pounds in his first week of Dry January—and the only change he made was not downing seven pints of stout a night at the neighborhood pub! For those of us over 25 who long ago shifted to more moderate intake of lower-calorie drinks, Dry January weight loss may not be so immediate or extreme. Not seeing weight loss, improved sleep, better skin, or other benefits can discourage some participants enough to quit early. One friend gave up after a mid-January cholesterol test didn’t show improvement.
Expectations around Dry January can involve what Leslie Jamison calls "contract logic" in her brilliant book The Recovering. Contract logic is believing the renunciation of going dry will somehow pay off in benefits or inspiration. I anticipated my first Dry January magically yielding an enlightened, disciplined self that meditated and wrote with calm consistency all day long. It didn’t. Dropping a not-fantastic habit isn't a golden ticket to good habits. Good habits still require effort and cultivation. Whether or not I drink, I still have to do the work of building a meaningful life every day.
Hoping for certain Dry January benefits is fine. Managing expectations can ensure a better experience.
Sober sex is better sex, at least with someone you love
No elaboration is necessary.
Reactions to your Dry January experiment will vary
Some first-time Dry January participants are surprised to encounter resistance from friends and family. No armchair psychology here on how the person who mocks Dry January loudest is obviously harboring profound fears of a drinking problem of their own. Instead, here are some common categories of response, which can overlap:
Support: “Dry January? Cool. I’ve always wanted to try that.” You’ll be tempted to overshare with these sweet, supportive people. Don’t!
Condescension: “I used to stop drinking sometimes. You’ll see that it doesn’t matter in the end.”
Denial: “I don’t need Dry January because the only thing I use every day is weed.” Do not suggest a Smokeless September to these friends. They’re not ready.
Hostility: “You’re not coming to the bar with us for a month?! F&!k Dry January and the parched horse it rode in on!”
Hostility masquerading as cultural enlightenment: “I’m surprised someone as well-traveled as you would fall prey to the puritanical self-abnegation of Dry January. I mean, do the French do Dry January?”
Recovering: “So will you come to an AA meeting now or was this just pretend sobriety?" Some friends in recovery who believe all drinking is problematic may consider your Dry January participation a half-measure or even a cry for help.
Responses to Dry January say as much about our culture as they do about the people who espouse them. Being prepared for varied reactions allows us to receive them dispassionately and even humorously as we stay the course in our Dry January goals, whatever those goals may be.
Moderation . . . it’s complicated
When we emerge from Dry January, we may decide to move forward with moderate consumption. We consider strategies. Drinking only on the weekends. Sticking to one drink a day. Observing one alcohol-free week a month. Some Dry January participants obsess over these possibilities as the month comes to a close. Some discover their drinking is so problematic that it’s smarter to quit forever.
Some of us don’t need a moderation strategy. For a couple of months after Dry January, the only alcohol that doesn’t taste like poison to me is very good wine or high-end tequila and mezcal. The prohibitive cost of enjoying these expensive items more than occasionally works as my immediate moderation plan.
For many of us, Dry January’s annual reset is so powerful that we never regain our old drinking frequency or volume. This past September, I put some cocktails in the cooler on the final day of pool season. When I got home, they were untouched. I’d forgotten about them as I spent the day swimming, talking with friends, and reading a novel. Dry January was still with me, eight months later.
Dry January’s psychological shift is more important than the amount we drink after its completion. As Cheryl Strayed writes, we might come to realize that mindful drinking isn’t about doling out a prescribed number of drinks but untethering ourselves from the belief that alcohol is synonymous with so many moments in our lives.
What most of us want from Dry January is freedom and possibility. If we’re less religious and more reflective about Dry January, we might just find it.