Dry January: 12 Tips On Going Booze-Free This Month

The beginning of any new year promises the inevitable, gurgled talk of resolutions: promises to keep, relationships to rekindle, changes to make habits to quit.

Enter Dry January, that famed inaugural month in which people, en-masse, set out to get sober for 31 days, often in a disciplined effort to start the new year fresh in a state of perfect, or at least adequate, mental clarity.

Yes, the very ethos from which Dry January springs is the assertion that sobriety neednt be reserved for people who live with alcoholism. It can be a reset for those who want to have a healthier relationship to drinking.

Alcohol use and its associated problems exist on a spectrum, Dr. John Mariani, director of Columbia Universitys Substance Treatment and Research Service, told CNN Health . There are people who dont meet the criteria even for mild alcohol use disorder, but are drinking more than what would be considered healthy.

This is the gray area : the deep and wide space between rock-bottom and occasional drinking.

Maybe youre starting to wonder what it looks like to drink more mindfully. Maybe drinking is distracting you from being present, or attaining certain goals, or maintaining some relationships, or, maybe, eating up all your money (very valid). Maybe you just want to test it out, purely for the sake of curiosity.

Whatever your reasons, were here to help.

Congratulations to everyone doing Dry January!

Some are veterans, some are rookies, but all are welcome!

As always, feel free to reach out if you are considering it

Lets do this

Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) January 1, 2020","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Jack Posobiec","author_url":"https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec","cache_age":86400,"description":"Congratulations to everyone doing Dry January! Some are veterans, some are rookies, but all are welcome! 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Congratulations to everyone doing Dry January!

Some are veterans, some are rookies, but all are welcome!

As always, feel free to reach out if you are considering it

Lets do this
Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) January 1, 2020

Why should I want to stop drinking?

Most people are at least vaguely aware that too much alcohol is bad for you, just as they know that too much of anything is bad for you.

But what they might not know is that, per the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , drinking is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States, just behind poor diet/physical inactivity and tobacco. In Canada, alcohol is the leading cause of substance-related deaths in hospital, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information .

Sure, its true that incorporating some alcohol into your diet has been linked with benefits to the body , like lower risk of heart attack, diabetes and gallstones. But its also true that, even at low levels of consumption, alcohol does have the potential to interfere with sleep quality, mental health, energy, skin condition, and weight, among other things.

Dry January is honestly gonna be the best thing for me and my bank account

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Dry January is honestly gonna be the best thing for me and my bank account
Calum Palla (@calumpalla) December 29, 2019

A 2017 study published in the BMJ found that even moderate drinking can alter the brain. Heavy drinkers who participated in the study were found to have risk of hippocampal atrophy (a form of brain damage associated with memory-loss conditions and trouble with spatial navigation), decline in language skills, and slower thought processing.

The surprising part: the heavy drinkers in question consumed only about two beers or two glasses of wine per night in a week.

The rule of thumb is that the more you drink, the greater the risks.