Is There a Downside to Doing a Dry January?
The benefits of doing a Dry January are plenty!
From better sleep to better moods, giving up alcohol for January has helped millions of people across the world reconsider their relationship with alcohol. But, what about the downsides of doing a Dry January? Do they exist?
In this episode, I talk about the origin of Dry January, and:
My first experience with doing my first “Dry January” in 2012, and what led me there
How our mindset and expectations toward taking a month-long break from alcohol matters above all else
The downsides, benefits, and lessons I learned from my first month-long break from alcohol
How to participate in a Dry January with curiosity to learn more about your relationship with alcohol along the way
If you're setting yourself up for the new year with all this pressure and you're telling yourself right now, let me get through the holidays and then I'm going to start. You could start today. You don't have to wait till January 1st.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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[00:00:00] Hey there. Welcome to two 50 and beyond. I am Lori Massicot, the midlife sobriety coach and founder of team alcohol free. If this is your first time stopping by, welcome my friend. First of all, we talk about living an alcohol free lifestyle later in life. And if you're returning back to the podcast, hi, my old friend, come on in.
[00:00:20] Let's have a conversation about Dry January. It is coming up. We are in December when I'm recording this, and this is such a great initiative. Let me first tell you what Dry January is, and I'm reading it from the website. Dry January started as an initiative in 2012 by Alcohol Change UK, a British charity, and the reason for it at the time was, I don't know if they've changed this up, to ditch the hangover.
[00:00:49] Reduce the waistline and save money by taking a break from alcohol. And that started in 2012. That was a year before I stopped drinking. I [00:01:00] knew nothing about it, but during 2012 and the beginning of 2013, I set myself up with my own dry January because I've had all of those things that I wanted to do. I thought I was going to lose a bunch of weight.
[00:01:13] I thought I was going to save. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars because honestly, that's what I was spending on alcohol between my husband and I. And I also thought that I was going to ditch those hangovers. Just the hangovers. That was the one thing that was in my life at that time that it wasn't just a day.
[00:01:34] They were three days, four days. I was literally drinking a few nights a week, a few days a week, I should say that, a heavy binge drinker by the end of my drinking career. And I would be sick and not feel well for about, I don't know, three days. So when you really look at it, I was drinking for three days.
[00:01:54] I was hungover for three days. I have one good day out of the week. That's what it was. Yeah. And. [00:02:00] I know that there is such a benefit to taking a break from drinking alcohol. There's such a benefit, but we don't talk about that there's a downside to it. And this is a question that I got from a listener, I think it was last year.
[00:02:12] It may have been even the year before, but I have this board where I keep podcast topics and I plunked it on there and it was definitely like talk about the downsides. It was going to be sobriety. And then I thought, well, let's narrow it down to doing a dry January because that's what the question was.
[00:02:29] It was coming up on the end of the year. I had probably mentioned dry January, or maybe they just heard it. And the person that had reached out had asked me, you know, what are your thoughts on me doing another dry January? And the key word here is another, because it was basically like that mindset that we have when we do something over and over again, or trying something.
[00:02:49] We hear all of the benefits we see. Other people doing it. And there are millions of people now who partake in a dry January. It's being written up on the news and [00:03:00] magazines. It's out there, but yet we've tried it and didn't work for us. Either you've gone back to drinking day seven, you'd gone back to drinking day two, or you go back to drinking after day 31, whatever it is.
[00:03:14] So when the question was asked to me, it was definitely coming from that place of. I don't know if I should bother with this. Would this be beneficial to me? Or is there any downside for me being somebody who has tried it maybe three times, maybe less than that? Is there a downside for me doing it again?
[00:03:30] And so that's what I want to talk about today. Cause we talk about the perks. We talk about all the upsides to sobriety. I never want to be that person where you come here and I'm only talking about the benefits. I know that I don't do that. I know that my guests, we've had really great, honest conversations.
[00:03:45] But when I'm at this point in my sobriety at 10 years sober, I can. Always, always remember the downsides of my first couple of years of getting sober. It was not rainbows and butterflies for me. There [00:04:00] was no pink cloud that I was floating around on. There were a lot of downsides. But what I started to look at very early on was the ultimate downside of my drinking and how that would look if I continued.
[00:04:13] We all know there is a downside to most everything in life. If we look at it like that, right, we can always find the downside in something. And you can hear some from somebody else and go, Oh my gosh, they don't have any kind of downside in looking at sobriety. They were excited to get into this. That's not what you want to hear here.
[00:04:30] For me, I'm going to be honest with you. I wasn't, I didn't want to quit drinking what I wanted, or I didn't want, let's say this. I didn't want to continue feeling the way that I felt for such a long time. And we're talking at least a decade, but if I'm being really honest, probably more than that, where I wasn't enjoying it.
[00:04:49] I was no longer in my twenties. I was in my thirties. I was mid forties when I quit drinking, it was not fun for me. And so I really looked at that when I stopped drinking as, you know, Is there a [00:05:00] downside to giving up alcohol? Sure. I can think of them. I'm going to talk about them in just a minute, but there was more of a downside at that point when I quit to continuing to drink.
[00:05:10] If you're having this feeling, you're going into a dry January and you're thinking, why bother? It's just this, another thing that I'm going to get on board with, get excited for, for about a week. And then I'm going to disappoint myself because it's just not for me. If you've listened to the podcast, you've heard me talk about going all in.
[00:05:28] And for me, I had to go all in because of the type of drinker that I was, I didn't want just one, one sip would have sent me off into a tangent of two bottles. And so I knew for a fact that if I continued to do that, there would be a huge downside for my future. So I really did focus on that. I've talked about my reason why just was to feel better, but I focused on that reason why I didn't want to drink every single day.
[00:05:55] Instead of all of the reasons why I thought that I did and I had to give myself time to work through [00:06:00] that the downsides for me in the beginning were definitely feeling like I wasn't going to be able to relax because alcohol was really helping me with my anxiety. So I thought I wasn't going to be able to have fun.
[00:06:12] Or I wasn't going to be fun. I wasn't going to be invited. I was going to be left out. Those were all downsides that I was thinking of. And when I took that first break, it was January of 2012, I did it because I was so tired. I just remember coming out of that holiday season. I'm pretty much disgusted with myself and I thought, well, let's do this.
[00:06:34] I get Bill Massa caught my husband on board cause he's been my number one supporter. He gets in there. He's like, I'll do it. You know, you tell him we're going to save a lot of money. Yeah, I'm on board. We got excited when I went into it with the expectation that I'm going to save a lot of money. It's just exactly like their tagline.
[00:06:51] I'm going to lose all the weight and I'm not going to have the hangovers anymore. The hangovers, that was a real benefit. I had not. Experienced [00:07:00] a whole month, 31 days of not drinking since I had my son. And so at that point, so that was born in 2001. That was 2012. So I had not taken any breaks from drinking alcohol like that.
[00:07:14] So I did experience that benefit. I did not lose a bunch of weight because I pretty much ate what I wanted to. I'm okay with that. We didn't save money. I spent it on other stuff that I didn't need. So, you know, it was that expectation that I had set up for myself. So by the time I got done with this first dry January, I'm using my famous air quotes because it wasn't a dry January in my mind.
[00:07:35] I didn't know that it was happening. It's so funny too, because it really was happening. That was the first month that it started. And here I am out on my own, no internet, do not know the interwebs at that point in my life. And. I didn't learn anything because what I was doing, most importantly, at that time in my life, I was trying to convince myself I didn't have a problem with drinking.
[00:07:57] And I realized during that [00:08:00] time, I proved to myself that I could go 31 days without drinking, but I didn't learn anything about my drinking. I wasn't asking myself any questions, not experiencing the hangovers, but that wasn't enough for me to keep going. And I just ticked off the days and I held on tight.
[00:08:15] I cannot wait until February 1st. And so looking back, it's very easy for me to say in hindsight, that was a real bummer because at this point, 2012, I was about a year into really questioning my drinking, coming to that realization that, oh, I think it's more than what it was when you first started at age 14.
[00:08:35] And I really started to worry about it. I was up at night. I was worried about it. I was googling all these things. Am I an alcoholic? Asking all of the wrong questions. And so what I could have really have set myself up with that month to not have such a disappointment at the end of the month because that's what I felt like it was just like, okay, well.
[00:08:54] Didn't really fix anything. Didn't help me to do the things that I had set out to do. [00:09:00] So I'm just going to get back to it. Obviously I don't have a problem because I went 31 days without drinking and that is the real downside of it. Honestly, the downside for me was definitely taking that month off. What I didn't know at this point, so I'm not going to berate myself or anything, but asking myself some questions and getting curious about my drinking and what I really wanted more than alcohol, that would have been so beneficial.
[00:09:26] So I feel like I didn't give myself that opportunity. So if you're out there and you're looking at this as I've done this before, I love the initiative. I can get behind starting something at the first of the year because we're starting with this. Fresh slate. I love a good fresh slate starting the year and just feeling like there's so much hope and I can do this.
[00:09:47] I can get on social media and use the hashtag dry January. I can find other people that are doing this. You've got to stop first of all, and ask yourself why you want to do it. Check in with your expectations of what this [00:10:00] is going to look like for you. Definitely get around community, get around people who will support you in doing this.
[00:10:06] Get buddy. And have some conversations with yourself and maybe one other person where you can really work this through. Because I feel like if you don't do that, then yeah, there's a downside to it. Especially if you're somebody like me or it can relate to a little bit of my story where I was a pretty consistent drinker.
[00:10:24] Like I said, towards the end, I was drinking Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I was giving myself the week off because I was too tired to even function with work. I had started a business and everything at that point in my life. So if you are somebody like me. Who has tried before to take breaks from alcohol and you go back and you're really tired of it, take a look at what you want to do going into the new year.
[00:10:50] And if you're not ready to start something like this, it's okay. You can't give yourself a break. Just give yourself a break because you don't have to pressure yourself. [00:11:00] That's only going to make things worse. But ask yourself, am I ready to go all in on this? Am I ready to say this is a lifestyle change?
[00:11:07] This is something that I'm going to focus on that's going to add to my life. And I'll start with dry January. I can get involved in something like that. That's a great way to kick it off. The benefits of doing that is to really see that different side of yourself where you can get a different perspective.
[00:11:24] Possibly you're sleeping a little bit better. One of the downsides of doing something like this, where you are removing alcohol. And if you are somebody who is physically dependent on alcohol, you never want to go cold turkey. So please reach out to your doctor, get help there before you do that. But if you are somebody who is a consistent drinker and you use alcohol to help you sleep, that will be a downside.
[00:11:45] Definitely. That's going to be a challenge. Your sleep will balance out eventually. And a lot of the women that I've worked with, it may take a couple of weeks. It may take longer than that. But what I always tell them is drinking. Is not going to [00:12:00] speed up the process. It's going to delay it. So look at these things for yourself.
[00:12:05] What are you tapping into alcohol to help you do? For me with the anxiety, yeah, I had to, I had to get through a lot of tough things in my life and feel for the very first time in my life and be. And I don't look at that now as a downside. That's a complete upside. A hundred million percent. But back then it was hard.
[00:12:27] I don't want to do the hard, I just wanted it to be done and it takes time. Anything that we want that's worth it in life takes a lot of time, it takes patience. And as we get older, we learn hopefully to be more patient with ourselves, give ourselves some grace, allow some humanness into our lives that we are not perfect individuals.
[00:12:50] There are other people like us in the world who are struggling during the same time and To manage your expectations and to manage what you feel like [00:13:00] going into this would be a definite downside. Not being invited places. That took me a while to work through and you know what? I didn't get invited some places.
[00:13:09] And I'm okay. I'm still standing. And there were places that I didn't really want to go to anyway. I was just doing it because I was drinking. I'm not invited wine tasting anymore. I'm not invited to the brunches anymore. I'm not. And I'm okay. I made it, and I know that you can too, and if you're out there and you're setting yourself up for the new year with all this pressure and you're telling yourself right now, let me get through the holidays and then I'm going to start, I'm going to start.
[00:13:35] You could start today. You don't have to wait till January 1st. You don't have to wait for the perfect day where we are in midlife. It's what's in your heart and it's what is in your soul. That is pulling you and if you get that pull and you feel like I'm just so done with it, then it's your time It's really your time and give yourself a break get around other people who are doing it and sure there will be a downside To [00:14:00] everything we do in life if we choose to only focus on that So do me a favor if you're gonna do a dry January first of all email me I'm gonna put my email in the show notes reach out and say I'm doing a dry January You can totally email me once a week.
[00:14:12] You can email me a few times out of the month just to let me know how you're doing. I love to hear from you. And then also focus on what you are adding to your life by doing something like this. Ask yourself the questions when those cravings hit, you know, Hey, I'm interested in learning more about what this is and not just moving through it.
[00:14:33] If I'm taking a break, let's make this break count, man. That was the biggest downside for me. I didn't make that break count for myself and that's okay. I took another break in January of 2013. Again, I didn't know about dry January, but it was going on. And that led me a little bit closer to where I was in August.
[00:14:53] That's when I was really questioning my drinking. So change doesn't happen overnight. You know, there's different stages that we [00:15:00] go through. And I was in that contemplation station for a really long time. And I finally just decided one day I'm going to take action. It wasn't the first of the month. It wasn't the first of the year.
[00:15:10] It wasn't anything. Particular, there wasn't anything special about the day. It was August 11th. And if I'm being really honest, August is not even one of my favorite months. There was nothing happening except the fact that I was so tired of myself. So take a break, give yourself a break. It's a wonderful way to set the tone for the new year.
[00:15:27] Ease on into it though. You can set it up for yourself. Maybe I'm going to take 21 days off. Maybe I'm going to take the weekends off. Set something up for yourself and go into it with the attitude that even though I've tried this before, it's not over till it's over. We're doing it again. We're going to shift up a few things.
[00:15:44] We're going to maybe grab some new tools, come back and listen to the podcast. If you haven't gone through the essentials and the summary and go to my website, check out the essentials. I have all of the episodes for anybody who's really at the beginning stage of sobriety and Tune into that kind of stuff.
[00:15:59] [00:16:00] Get on Instagram if you like to be on Instagram. Put some music in your ear. Do something else for yourself in January and give yourself this time to come off the holiday, take care of yourself, and see what happens when you take a break from alcohol. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. I'm sending you out with a big virtual hug.
[00:16:16] Happy Holidays. I'll see you next week. Peace
Hey, there! I’m Lori, the host of the To 50 and Beyond podcast.
Where aging and living alcohol-free are celebrated.
To 50 and Beyond is about self-discovery, living for today, and designing an alcohol-free life that alcohol can’t compete with.
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