I’ve done a month off the sauce. I failed at Dry January, so attempted Dry February instead. This is the point I normally celebrate by having a drink. There is a lot of expectation riding on that first drink. Once the initial relief of near-continuous December hangovers is over, I usually spend the rest of January counting down the days until my next drink - fantasising about how amazing it will taste! It occurs to me that I spend most of Dry January heavily investing in the idea that alcohol is a precious commodity. I’m realising that my previous attempts to limit my drinking have only served to increase my desire for it. What an insane and perverse paradox – I periodically stop drinking so that I can carry on! I stop so that I don’t have to stop! Behind this paradox is the secret hope that not drinking for a month will reset my brain. By taking a break, I will restore my brain chemistry to a place where just one pint will be enough to get me to a loose, happy state! Goodbye problematic drinking! Farewell hangovers! In just 30 days I will have restored the damage done by 30 years of heavy drinking! Isn’t the brain a remarkable thing? Aren’t I so clever to have found a way to beat biology!
This time feels different. I’m entering this stretch of abstinence with a different goal – to eliminate my desire for alcohol. Over the last couple of years I have been taking more and more ‘strategic breaks’ and yet my drinking has ramped up considerably. It’s as if the breaks have given me permission to drink more. And each time I go back to drinking, my tolerance has not subsided – I can drink as much as I ever did. I know this is a bad neurological sign.
Reaching a month is point of vulnerability. The call of the drink is strong and this is the time I would normally answer. For this reason, I am joining a ‘small group challenge’ – a 30 day period of increased support. The desire for alcohol cannot be eradicated in 31 days, even thought I would like for this to be the case. I feel good for not having drunk for a month, but I can sense the heft of desire moving beneath this surface sense of wellness. There’s a monster stirring in the depths, rocking my makeshift sobriety raft. My booze bitch is a Kracken!
As part of the small group challenge, we were tasked to write down our reasons for starting this journey – apparently these are known as the ‘whys?’ Here are mine:
1. I don’t want to die with a big fat “what if” hanging over me. What if there was a better life out there for me that I just didn’t have the courage to try? What if there was more to life than an endless cycle of drinking, hangovers, regret and worry? What if there was something better beyond the veil of drinking, but I was just too afraid to draw back the curtain and look? I don’t want to be a “what if” guy.
2. I don’t want to continue running on empty - living a depleted, washed-out version of life.
3. I can’t achieve the things I want to achieve or be the person I want to be if I continue to drink alcohol. I don’t know who the AF version of me is, or what is possible for them - but I know that alcohol is holding me back.
4. I don’t want to be scared and fearful anymore. I’ve been using alcohol to manage social anxiety and fear all my life. It’s been my shield since I was thirteen. I’ve propelled myself through life on an ethanol shaped rocket. It’s time to step off and meet life head on. What’s the worst that can happen?
So, there we have it. 31 days under my belt. 30 days of increased accountability to go. If I achieve this then I this will be longest I have gone without alcohol since I started drinking. This is a sobering thought in itself.
Perspectives from the research and professional literature
It’s fascinating to read this diary entry having not had a drink for well over three years. It creates a huge sense of relief that I achieved my objective of eliminating my desire for alcohol. But it also generates anxiety when I see how precarious my early sobriety was - how easily it would have been to slip back into drinking and to lose the chance to live the kind of life I now enjoy. At this point in my journey there was no serious intention to give up alcohol forever - I simply wanted to carry on with a period of abstinance long enough to reset my brain so that I could go back to drinking.
It also makes me reflect on some of the research into the short and medium term outcomes and benefits of Dry January participation. Despite the increasing awareness and participation in Dry January and Sober October, we have very little high quality research evidence on its impact. The best research currently available is the work of Professor Richard de Visser and colleagues at the University of Sussex who completed a series of small studies looking at the characteristics of those who try Dry January, their progress, its psychological impact and drinking behaviour trajectories during and beyond the month long campaign. The outcomes reported by these studies suggest that individuals who take part in Dry January are more likely to reduce their alcohol intake than those who do not formally take part, and that participation is associated with improvements in self-reported physical and psychological wellbeing. This data also suggest that a significant number of participants make lasting reductions to the amount they drink for up to six months following the end of the campaign, and that there is little evidence of a rebound effect in those that resume drinking (i.e. people don’t end up drinking more than they did).
These studies contribute to an encouraging picture of Dry January participation, but there are some important caveats. The data on six month impact on behaviour is based on only 37% of the origional sample - not atypical of this kind of research, but it warrants caution when extrapolating to understanding a population-level impact. The data also suggest that those that participate in Dry January attracts people who drink more heavily than those that don’t, and that those that fail to complete a month of abstinant are the heaviest drinkers with the greatest degree of psychological distress. For this reason, I would suggest that trying and failing at Dry January or Sober October is an important warning sign that your drinking is on its way to becoming a serious problem.
I’m also left thinking that our research efforts into Dry January are quite naieve and unsophisticated. I think the field (health psychology, public health) has taken a rather naieve, albeit understandable, view that a period of alcohol abstinence is an unproblematically positive thing. But I think the research of de Visser, and this diary entry, suggest that many people come to Dry January with complex motives. We have not really taken very seriously the idea that participation in short-term abstinance challenges could play a part in a wider cycle of increasing dependence. This does not mean that we should give up on these campaigns - I believe that they are a good thing. But perhaps the organisers could do more to help people reflect on their experience of taking part in the context of their historical drinking patterns.