In 2013, when the concept of Dry January was introduced as a public health initiative by Alcohol Change UK, I had been sober for three years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was just 29 years old and an outlier – or should that be pariah - amongst my peers. Since then, I’ve become wearily used to the narrative of Dry January: “I’m doing ‘a you’ this month” friends say to me as they order a pint of coke, not a pint of wine when we meet. “It’s actually really easy” others remark as they reel off all the benefits of alcohol abstinence to me with wide eyes. “I might keep going” some say in what feels like a reductive version of the defining act of my life.
When I was drinking, I knew these benefits: better sleep, better skin, weight loss, improved concentration, brighter mood. In the depths of my addiction, a hard-won period of abstinence would reveal these benefits to me in what felt like a rebuke. The way, for example, I could use a keyboard without my hands shaking or the ability to answer the phone without having to lie about where I was. Each of these revelations held a thorny conundrum at their core; are you an alcoholic if you can stop, even for a day? It is my experience that alcoholics can stop drinking for certain periods of time, but they are not able to stay stopped for good. I certainly couldn’t manage more than a few days at a time, but I could, through gritted teeth, stop. See? I’m fine.
