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I Tried Dry January And Failed … Maybe I Should Have Been More Mindful

Tara Nurin
This article is more than 4 years old.

It’s taken me a month to recover from Dry January.

Not that I did Dry January, mind you. But I’m happy to use it as an excuse for drinking guilt-free in February.

Okay, seriously, here’s the deal. I tried to do Dry January. Explicitly for this Forbes column. It didn’t work out.

I’ve taken a dim view on Dry January (DJ) for years, claiming it as another fad for bandwagoners and blaming it for depressing alcohol industry revenue during what’s already the slowest month of the year. (Findings over its economic impact on the industry are mixed, and I'm certainly not discouraging anyone who feels they should cease or moderate their alcohol consumption. If you think you need help please love yourself and others by seeking help.)

Of course I support the desire to take a break from drinking to dry out and get some control over one’s wellness at the start of a new year. But this approach kind of strikes me as a feeble effort, like New Year’s resolutions, and though experts disagree on whether DJ generally leaves lasting results, some do say the it’s not the right strategy for heavy drinkers and that they’re skeptical about most people taking it seriously in the long run.

Further, to be transparent I took a month off drinking once and unlike all those dudes who brag they do dry months by cutting out beer and lose 15 pounds, I didn’t lose an ounce. So I don’t consider Dry January my friend.

But instead of slinking back to the dungeon of dumb ideas, Dry January has settled in with a drink. An oft-cited stat says one in five Americans of drinking age tried it last year. Not only is it spawning one-offs (oh, yes, say hello to Moist January and Sober October, and in researching this article I learned there’s Sober September, too), it’s burgeoning as a lifestyle and creating a surging market for non-alcoholic beers and cocktails. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as they’re quick to say on Seinfeld. In fact, shout out to Jackie at Philadelphia’s Art in the Age, who made me such an incredible NA “Kicktail” (aquafaba, black bitters, smoked pecan maple syrup, lemon juice, bay leaf and a splash of seltzer) a few weeks ago I honestly wondered why I booze up my drinks in the first place.

With all of this in mind and also knowing I needed to launch a healthy new diet plan as soon as I returned home from the holidays anyway, I set out to see what all the hype’s about. I started on Monday, January 6th and not earlier because long vacation in Puerto Rico, because Eagles in the NFL playoffs, and because everyone knows the year doesn’t truly start until the Monday after New Year’s day, regardless of what day that is.

I did well at first. That first Monday through Friday I didn’t drink at all. Go me, abstaining on the nights I don’t even drink under normal circumstances.

Then Saturday came, and after previously making a deal with the devil, the devil got the best of me. I’d scheduled a taping of my beer TV show that afternoon at Eight and Sand Brewing in South Jersey and told myself I could just try a few sips of some beers. But no one warned me they’d have Bad Hombre, their Great American Beer Festival award-winning Mexican Stout, on tap. I ordered a small pour. Then a full one. Then finished off every beer in the two flights my co-host and I had been sampling during our interviews.

After the show, I drove to the Philly burbs to have dinner with an old friend who’d long insisted I meet her at a new brewery owned by her friend’s brothers. I’d given myself permission to order a flight … for research purposes.

Fast forward to the following Friday. I was home alone, feeling guilty for not having popped open any of the non-alcoholic (NA) beers or spirits I’d had shipped for the express purpose of trying them for this story. Because I’m not going to tell you which non-alcoholic distillery’s gin goes down as deliciously as viscous nail polish remover and which NA brewery’s porter tastes like burnt hair, you’ll just have to trust me that I’d been burned before (message me, I’ll tell you). So I forced myself into a Clausthaler grapefruit “beer.”

Tasting like a proper citrus spritzer instead of a poor attempt at a beer, I wrote in my notes, “Clausthaler Grapefruit: the triumph of Dry January.” Then, to reward myself for my restraint, I promptly ate five of my housemate’s Christmas cookies. It’s okay; they’re sugar-free.

(Pro-tip: After trying a few more NA offerings, I discovered that Athletic Brewing’s blonde ale actually tastes good, and the IPA is perfectly drinkable.)

The pinnacle of my month came on Wednesday, January 15, eight days after I’d started Dry January and the same week I received press releases headlined, “At This Moment, Millions Of Americans Are Questioning Dry January,” “’Dry January' Myth or Fact?” and “Dry January — Does it Really Work?”

So I wasn’t the only one not having fun with this. On that Wednesday, I met my friend Robin Shreeves to attend the VIP opening of a new hotel. Because we both arrived in less-than-stellar moods, we determined a glass of wine was needed. Immediately. I only followed that with a vodka tonic because the open bar had Belvedere, possibly my favorite brand, and I only drank the one after that because I could.

As we chatted with the on-site wine rep before dinner, I asked my friend why she’d chosen to break her own Dry January that night. She’d decided to stop doing it, she said, “because Dry January sucks.”

A few nights later, I gave up, too. I’m not doing this for myself, I reasoned. I’m doing it for an article. So here’s my conclusion. For me and a lot of people like me who responsibly enjoy a few drinks a week or fewer, Dry January sucks.

But I did learn some things, both through reading the spate of analytical and/or critical articles that have come out en masse this year and by querying my friend Cheryl, who brought me to the aforementioned new brewery and made a Dry January exception that night herself so we could try beers together. I expected to roll my eyes at her reasons for doing it and instead found myself very intrigued.

She told me she was doing a “mindful” DJ, examining the role alcohol plays in her life and observing what it means for her to do without. As part of her process, she’d listened to this National Public Radio Life Kit story about DJ, and I have to admit, it makes an enormous amount of sense.

The essence of the story, as explained by the guests and reporter, is this: “If you're thinking about doing a dry January or making some kind of short-term or long-term behavioral change,” they say, it helps to know about the behavior. Ask yourself questions like, “’How often am I drinking? How much am I drinking? Who am I drinking around? What are some of the reasons that I drink? How do I feel before I drink? How do I feel during drinking? And how do I feel afterward?’”

No judgment, they reassure listeners, but if you’re just going to stop drinking for a month then go back to your old ways, you’re robbing yourself of an important opportunity.

“It's the act of stepping back and looking at one's relationship with alcohol that we think is really where the magic is,” says a guest.

Then the reporter cites a study that shows at the end of doing Dry January, “82% said they felt a sense of achievement, 62% said they slept better, and about half reported that they'd lost some weight. Another big one was more energy.”

Oftentimes, the radio story concludes, “It's not literally alcohol that you want. You might want a sense of release, or you might want to let off some anger. You might want a hug.”

Maybe I did need more hugs or some other kind of emotional support in January. It’s possible – and reinforced by my inability to abstain for a week when “forced” to – I have some unhealthy behaviors around drinking that I’ve never thought to think about. The recommended self-exploration questions in the NPR story probe more deeply than most of those quizzes that help you figure out whether your drinking is problematic. (”No, I don’t binge drink weekly or monthly. No, I’ve never crashed a car or skipped work because of drinking. I must not have a problem.”)

As the NPR story says about its own set of questions, “Some of the answers may surprise you.”

I’m sure they would. I think come September, October, next January, or some month in between, I really might make a true effort try to find out.

     

  


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