The 3 Best Ways to Nail Dry January
The 3 Best Ways to Nail Dry January
How to go a month booze-free when you can't even go one day.
For many years, I despised those people who would proudly proclaim to no one in particular apropos of absolutely nothing at all: Oh so hey, I’m DOING DRY JANUARY! :) Fuck. Off. I had to resist every urge in my body and brain to not respond with: I’M VERY SORRY TO HEAR THAT, SHARON.
So you can imagine my horror to find myself sitting here at 5:54am on the morning of my 360th day waking up to no hangover, having not only ‘survived’ Dry January 2022 but also having kept the damn thing going all year and thusly transformed my entire life, first by saving it when I ditched alcohol for good on January 1st. But perhaps ‘horror’ is too strong a word. It’s still early after all and the only thing anyone wants strong at this hour is her fresh brewed French dark roast.
If you’ve been with me for just about any amount of time this year, you can probably guess the truth is that I hated Dry January because I had a very serious drinking problem. I hated it because I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go a whole month without drinking. I couldn’t even go one day. And I hate shit I cannot do. So I shove it out of my sight. Because I hated all the places in me that felt weak, incompetent, or scared. I just didn’t want to face that in myself. Let alone explain the deep folds of my traumatized subconscious to some rando schlub at a party who was turning down drinks in January while I happily slung about my signature Sauvignon Blanc.
However you find yourself when you arrive to the New Year on January 1st, whatever reasons you have for attempting Dry January, it’s all good stuff. The fact that I am writing about my sobriety and you are here reading about it is already revolutionary. Because we are curious to know ourselves without poison fucking us up. So let’s do this. My three best tips for staying sober for a whole month when you think you cannot manage even one day.
Tip #1 - Make the Commitment to Not Drink for a Month and Stick with It
No matter what. 31 days. No alcohol. No second guessing. Because the thing is that I know it seems like it’s about alcohol but it’s so much bigger than that. It’s about interrupting a terribly destructive cycle (I would go so far as to say that if you are struggling to get through a Dry January, what you are really wrangling with is an addiction, but I know people get all kinds of prickly about that word so we can use pattern and cycle and habit to soften the mood). And the way you bust up an insidious pattern of self-destructive behavior is to be able to trust yourself that you will do as you say you will do.
Maybe I shouldn’t say it this way but I’m going to anyway because at it’s core it is absolutely true: It’s more important that you can prove to yourself that when you make a commitment to take care of yourself you will come through on your promise to yourself than it is that you don’t drink. It’s like a little kid who learns that going to kindergarten doesn’t mean mommy is abandoning her because mommy always comes back. It’s a trust thing and it’s absolutely essential for building a solid life upon. 31 days. No alcohol. No fucking around.
Tip #2: Know Your Trigger Time and Plan Ahead to Soothe It
My trigger time was late afternoon. And when I say ‘trigger’ I do not mean the time I would actually pick up my first drink. I mean the time you start thinking about drinking. Around 4pm I would start romanticizing the impending wine rendezvous (see, romanticized). Work was winding down. All that was left was to get the hell home so I could pour my fix and smooth-fuzzy-sail on through my bliss filled booze fueled evening. Which is also a dramatized romanticization. In reality, wine made me irritable, numb, agitated, and stupid. I really don’t have better words for it. It made me mean, angry, resentful, and fights, toward the end and scattered throughout, were almost a given. Fights which, since I stopped drinking, have stopped cold. I’m not kidding.
When you finally arrive at the moment where normally you would drink the drink, have something set up in advance to do with your fingers, hands, mouth, and mind. Have a pretty glass that feels good in your hand and fresh delicious sparkling water to immediately fill it with. IMMEDIATELY FILL IT WITH. :) A lot of this is about being set up in advance for what you’ll do and then executing said plan without thinking much. You know what to do. Do it.
Have little bits of things to nibble on so you can eat those little bits one after another if you need to calm yourself over the whole hour it takes to wind down. I had peanuts and raisins. Truth be told, after almost a whole year sober, I still do all this at happy hour time and while I make dinner. Put on chill music that you love. Light candles. Focus on being cozy instead of going numb.
Tip #3: Remember the Only Drink You Have to Resist Is the First One
Sounds simple but your racing mind will try desperately to convince you otherwise. Despite how overwhelming it may feel, you are not actually taking on the herculean task of warding off an entire evening of drinking, chaos, arguments, anxiety, restless sleep, or next morning hangover. All of that is in your mind. It’s all memories trying to get you - ironically enough - to drink to forget the fear of not drinking.
When you make the commitment to not drink for the night (one night at a time, that’s the only way this happens anyway), all of your internal machinery is gonna be pissed to some degree. But you do NOT have to answer to it, or explain to it, or engage with all of the random fears it will throw at you. Just for tonight, just do not pick up that first drink. That’s it. And that’s everything. Deal only with what is actually happening in the moment. That’s what sobriety is. And the only thing that can teach you how to not drink is not drinking. HOW ANNOYING. :)
And there you have it for the 3 best tricks to keep you sober all of Dry January and all of however long you want your alcohol-free life to go on, really. There’s a million more tips you can try. These are the core three that got me to 30 days and beyond. I hope they serve to not just assist your dry goals, but to give you a perspective on something you may not have realized before: not drinking is more about self-trust, mindfulness, and presence than it is about alcohol. Quite frankly, I think we give alcohol way too much credit for its ability to insert itself into our lives. It isn’t a requirement. For anything.
The wildly beautiful thing about sobriety is that it opens up space inside of you that you didn’t know was there. Space that when not filled with alcohol stands naked and waiting for actual self-love to rush in. And love does, that’s the incredible thing you can’t see coming until you stop drinking. Because you learn to trust yourself, your ability to make a commitment to yourself, for yourself. And by ‘love’ I mean: everything. All of the feelings, emotions, pains and joys and wonders and tragedies of being a human creature alive and functioning cleanly on this earth, come flooding into that newly opened space. Where you remove what has been eroding you, what gives you life begins to flourish.