Confessions of a Reluctant Dry January Participant

How it's going...

We've decided to do dry January

What started as a throwaway comment at some point in early December, reared it’s ugly head on New Year’s Eve as this was Erik’s response to my asking if we should open a bottle of fizz to celebrate the donging of Big Ben…

Him: ”Yes, but you can’t save the leftovers for tomorrow, we’re doing Dry January remember.”

Me: “Er, no I made some glib comment and thought that if we did ‘do’ Dry Jan we’d not start until Monday 6th Jan obviously…”

Apparently not.

The thing is, I like booze

There I said it.

I enjoy the taste of beer and wine. My lager days are long behind me and I never really got on with spirits, it’s all real ale and red wine these days. Luckily we have a fabulous local brewery, well two, but my heart is with Orkney Brewery, my favourite being Corncrake although I was introduced to the very tasty Man O’Hoy on Christmas Day. And yes, of course I’ll be petitioning them to change the name to Han O’Hoy, maybe…

I should say we’re not massive drinkers, in fact we’re fairly monk-like compared our my former years. This is more to do with how life has developed rather than intention. Put me back in my home town of Tunbridge Wells for a weekend and it could go horribly wrong. I grew up in hospitality, my dad and uncle had a hotel and the bar was it’s beating heart. They were also a big part of the local rugby club, you can imagine! On my mum’s side, we have Irish Catholic roots, which in my family at least, meant that having a drink was integral to any celebration. Celebrations include birthdays, weddings, funerals, an Aunt popping round, the clock striking 6pm, that kind of thing!

But for all the boozy shenanigans of my upbringing, there wasn’t anything sinister or truly damaging. For us, alcohol is generally about fun, celebration and connection, with varying success, of course - we’ve always been a fairly high spirited and argumentative bunch.

The booze sits there in the shed, mocking me!

Mocktails 🤢

The alcohol free market is huge now. It’s not just uninspired mocktails anymore, but also alcohol free beer, wine and spirits. However, there is one overarching problem, they just don’t taste as good, especially the ‘like for like’ replacements.

If I want a sweet drink, I’ll grab a can of coke zero, or have kombucha or fruit juice. Alcohol gives the drink a depth that can’t be matched, especially red wine, my drink of choice. The alternatives are always far too sweet, nothing can ever compare to a rich smoothness of good Cab Sav or the bite of a cracking Rioja. Luckily I’ve found 2 beers I like, one is surprisingly a lager, Becks Blue which is refreshing and is perfect when you have a thirst on. The other is Adnams Ghost Ship, but unfortunately it’s not quite AF at 0.5% which means it’s off the menu for January.

So, for now, I’m stuck with tea or water, which don’t quite scratch the itch of a good Cab Sav or a golden ale named after a seabird, but are better than the weird AF wine or water that’s been shown a juniper berry and passed off as AF gin. I might not drink spirits but even I know what gin taste like.

Previous Attempts at Sobriety

This isn’t my first time giving up booze. I embarked on Dry January in 2016, it was one of 12 challenges I undertook as part of a yearlong fundraising campaign for Cancer Research UK. Then in 2023, I tried it again after hitting a bit of a brick wall with work, peri-menopause and life in general. I lasted about five and a half weeks.

You’d think I’d have noticed some benefits during these booze-free stints, but honestly, not so much. People rave about the sleep, the pep, the clear-headedness, the radiant skin. Me? I still felt tired a lot of the time, I didn’t sleep any better, my stress levels didn't go down, my skin didn’t improve and the thing that pissed me off most…I gained weight.

Maybe I didn’t stick with it long enough to see the magical changes happen. Or maybe my body just really likes wine. I think it’s the latter.

So why am I doing this?

Good question.

Part of it, I think, is curiosity. Maybe one day I can reach the dizzying heights I see every single day in my instagram feed from the smug sobers with endless energy and glowing skin. They often talk about the horrible hangovers and alcohol anxiety, but when you only have a couple of wines in the safety of your own living room that doesn’t really happen for me. Of course it does still happen, usually if I’ve seen friends or family and we’ve been on a bit of a bender, but that’s twice a year at most. I suppose the real test would be to stay sober at the next family thing, but have you met my brothers?!

I’m not going to pretend that weight isn’t a factor. Back in 2021 I was in really good shape, the best I’ve been. I was going to a running club/bootcamp thing twice a week then doing around 10k every Saturday with a pal. It felt good. I then moved away from friends to the Dales, sprained my ankle spectacularly in a Tough Mudder and wound up in Orkney. Now I have no-one to meet on at 10am on a Saturday and no gang to spend 2 hours a week with doing crazy arse exercises in a field. Removing the beer and wine will help surely? Except for now, I’m simply replacing those empty calories with the less empty calories of 5 biscuits and a piece of toast, because, you know, I’m not boozing…

Snacks & more snacks

But really, the reason I’m doing it this time is because E wants to and while I can’t blame him, I did suggest it after all, I can’t help but feel a little narked at how enthusiastic and puritanical he’s being at the moment. OK he’s not being that puritanical about it, but he is also eating fewer biscuits and more fruit.

First impressions of ‘sobriety’ - the story so far

1. I still feel tired.

2. I still don’t have pep.

3. New Year’s Day without a drink was weird.

But maybe this is just the adjustment period. Maybe, by the end of the month, I’ll be bouncing out of bed and shouting, “Huzzah, I’ve got alllll the beans!” Or maybe it’ll be “Huzzah, it’s February 1st, it’s a Saturday, what time are we cracking open the beer?”

Either way, I’ll probably tell you about it.

Throwback to January 2023 when we had MASSIVE snow!