Ronsisvalle: Dry January ... Forever? You can kick the alcohol habit. Here's how.
Back in 2012, the British Alcohol Change Charity UK launched the first “Dry January” challenge to help people take a break from alcohol and reset their bodies and minds after all the holiday celebrations.
It makes sense, right? January is a great time to reboot healthy habits and make changes that will help us live better lives.
The response to Dry January has been incredible as it has grown beyond the UK to become an international movement.
Here in the United States, close to 35% of legal-aged adults took part in Dry January in 2022, and it seems as if the movement gains momentum every year.
While everyone is not successful in completely cutting out alcohol during all of January, the challenge certainly seems to help people understand the unconscious triggers to drink and highlights the value of making intentional choices about how powerful we want alcohol to be in our life.
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Even the organizers of Dry January recognize that not every participant will choose sobriety for the entire month, let alone the year.
The goal is ultimately to gain insight into the power of alcohol and to achieve long-term control over the choices we make.
I've seen the struggles
As the founder of LiveWell Behavioral Health’s addictions program, I have watched people struggle with alcohol for years and the phenomenon of Dry January is quite fascinating.
I’ve often contemplated why and how the movement has become so popular, especially considering the increasing impact alcohol has on our culture.
The research indicates that alcohol use has indeed increased over the last several years, with a considerable uptick during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
With this increased use of alcohol, there have come significant consequences.
The rate of deaths that can be directly attributed to alcohol rose nearly 30% in the U.S. during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some data suggests that deaths due directly to alcohol use are at the highest rate recorded in at least 40 years.
The research on deaths that are related to, but not a direct result of, alcohol is not much better.
Excessive drinking is associated with chronic issues like cancer (especially breast cancer, liver cancer, and cancers of the gut, like colon cancer) high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease.
It’s almost as if we know on some level our collective alcohol use is increasing and that it has negative impacts on our physical health, not to mention our relationships and our mental health in general.
Dry January may have provided us with a vehicle by which we can all explore the role we want alcohol to play in our lives long term.
Considering the impact the overuse of alcohol has upon our overall health, it might be time for us all to consider extending dry January into the rest of the year.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that everyone must cut out alcohol completely. What I am proposing is that we accept the challenge to be more intentional about our alcohol use and to consider the idea of cutting down on our alcohol use permanently.
Benefits of quitting drinking
If you do accept the challenge to permanently cut down on your use of alcohol, you can expect some quick benefits to your physical and mental health.
After just 30 days you should start to see the following benefits to your physical health.
For instance, after 30 days of sobriety, most people will see their blood pressure reduced by approximately the same amount as you would expect had they taken blood pressure medication.
The risk of diabetes should be reduced by about a quarter and you might even see that you have lost weight.
Amazingly, some research even shows changes in growth factors that are connected with cancer after just 30 days.
While You can’t reduce your cancer risk significantly in a month, some studies show the proteins that are linked to cancer fell by about 70% after about a month of abstinence from alcohol.
Regarding mental health in particular, the long-term benefits of stopping or cutting down on alcohol use are clear.
Alcohol is a depressant. While it does offer short-term relief for stress and anxiety, the overuse of alcohol ends up being a recipe for diagnosable depression and anxiety.
After just 30 days of abstinence from alcohol, many people notice better sleep, improved mood, higher energy levels and less anxiety and depression.
While I’m not proposing that just 30 days without alcohol will fix all of your physical ailments, I am suggesting that if you extend the strategies of Dry January to the rest of the year it will translate to very real long-term health benefits.
Here are strategies to help you start
If you’re ready to accept the challenge, there are some strategies you can employ to help you be successful at cutting back on your alcohol intake over the long haul.
1. Find like-minded friends.
Change usually happens within the context of relationships.
It’s much easier to follow through with significant changes if you have people in your life who will support you in your efforts and be a fan of your progress.
Identifying these built-in coaches is an important part of this process. Look for people that will encourage you when you are struggling rather than criticize you or be indifferent about your lack of follow through.
It helps tremendously if these encouragers are also attempting to cut down on alcohol consumption.
This special kind of mutual burden-bearing relationship gives you the opportunity to speak into someone’s life when they are struggling, which gives them higher motivation and empathy to do the same for you.
On a basic level, knowing that we’re not alone as we attempt to meet a goal is invaluable.
2. Understand your triggers.
The one thing that will sabotage your efforts to curb your alcohol consumption will be the triggers that are unique to your drinking behaviors.
We usually think of physical triggers as the most powerful catalyst for drinking.
For instance, many people will say, “I drink when I’m on vacation,” or “ I crave alcohol when I’m at a bar.”
Let’s start here with a simple admission: physical triggers can be very powerful. If you want to reduce your drinking, it’s important to identify which physical locations, or even individuals, prime the pump for your drinking behavior.
Once you identify these settings, avoid them if at all possible.
We should add to these environmental triggers the idea of emotional triggers.
After working with thousands of clients struggling with addiction it is clear to me that the emotional triggers are, perhaps, the most difficult to identify and address.
The most intuitive example here would be stress.
How many times have you heard someone say something like, “ I’m so stressed out I need a drink.”
Alcohol is a very common coping mechanism to deal with stressful days or stressful moments in our culture.
But, drinking in response to an emotional state is the first step toward addiction.
When we use alcohol to medicate stress, depression, loneliness, boredom, social anxiety or any other significant emotion we are laying down neural pathways that make our brain dependent upon alcohol to cope with emotion.
As that process begins to play out we crystallize the brain’s desire to drink in response to an emotional state.
Emotions then become incredibly powerful triggers to use alcohol.
If we want to be successful in our commitment to drinking less over time we have to identify which emotions trigger the cravings for alcohol, and then develop other coping skills to manage those emotions.
The first step here would be to pay attention to your emotion over the course of a given day and begin to practice healthy coping skills in response to the emotional triggers.
Instead of drinking, we can exercise, reach out to a friend, journal, practice progressive relaxation, pray and meditate, or do any other activity that allows us to cope more effectively and efficiently with our emotions.
3. Find a new favorite drink.
Sometimes the most powerful part of drinking alcohol is just the mechanics of pouring and enjoying a great drink.
One easy strategy to help you be successful in curbing your alcohol use is to just find a new favorite drink.
There is almost an unlimited supply of nonalcoholic beers and wines on the market, and you can find these concoctions at any local grocery store.
Some people have had success, replacing alcohol with other drinks that are healthy for them.
For instance, kombucha is a fermented, lightly effervescent, sweetened black tea drink that some people drink for its purported health benefits.
I have had clients over the years reach for kombucha, instead of an alcoholic drink, like beer with some success.
Having a new favorite drink can be especially important when you were in social situations where you are accustomed to grabbing your favorite drink to enjoy with others.
Whether you choose tea, coffee, water or some other beverage you enjoy, the important piece here is to make sure that you have behavioral replacements for alcohol that will allow you to continue to engage in the mechanics of pouring a nice enjoyable drink.
Yes, there are caveats
We can’t conclude our conversation about continuing Dry January for the rest of the year without a few caveats.
First, if you’re a heavy drinker it’s important to know that sometimes giving up alcohol cold turkey can be dangerous.
If you’ve developed a physiological dependence on alcohol you could have a seizure in response to a lack of alcohol available in your brain.
People die every year in our country when they attempt to stop drinking cold turkey, and you must consult a medical professional to help you medically detox if you’re a heavy drinker.
If you’re not sure whether or not you need medical detox you can reach out to LiveWell Behavioral Health.
We are always here to help you navigate the process of curbing your alcohol use.
Secondly, it’s entirely possible that some people reading this article might have an emotional reaction to the topic of extending Dry January to the rest of the year.
If you’ve read this article and noticed that considering curbing your drinking behavior makes you irritable or frustrated, my encouragement to you would be to do your best to try to understand what’s driving your emotional response.
If you scoffed at the idea of drinking less, this article was probably written, especially for you.
The emotion elicited by the idea of drinking less probably points to a deeper dependence on alcohol for your day-to-day functioning.
Again, if you’d like to decipher why the idea of drinking less bothers you, the professionals at LiveWell Behavioral Health are always here to help. We will listen with a non-judgmental posture, and help you determine your best course of action going forward.
Finally, if you want, help to develop a plan to drink less this year, don’t hesitate to reach out to Livewell as well. Our professionals have training in both addiction and life coaching and are here to help you develop the strategies that will allow you to be successful and take control of alcohol.
Dr. Mike Ronsisvalle is a Licensed Psychologist and the President of LiveWell Behavioral Health, a psychological services agency that provides counseling to clients of all ages and addictions treatment to adolescents and adults. You can find him at www.LiveWellbehavioralhealth.com or call 321-259-1662.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Having a Dry January is the first step to kicking your alcohol habit
