Reflections on Dry January

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll walk through what I learned about myself during Dry January.

Dry January, or the practice of abstaining from alcohol during the month of January, is an exercise that started in the UK about 10 years ago.  But recently it feels like more people are trying it out.  Or at least some form of it.  Some folks do a lesser version, which they call Damp January or Dampuary.  I have a close friend who has stopped drinking for a while, so I thought I’d do Dry January this year in solidarity.  As I near the end of this little experiment, I thought I’d reflect a bit on what I’ve learned.  First some

Background - I grew up in a family where alcohol wasn’t important — no one drank much at all.  That said, in my high school, drinking was synonymous with independence and rebellion — neither of which I experimented with much until my senior year.  But college for me was entirely centered around drinking since I went to a school known for partying and was a member of the Greek system.  In fact, it seems that I grew up in the hey day of alcohol as seen in US alcohol consumption charts — my formative years line up precisely with the country’s drinking peak over the past century.

Hyperaware - Because of all this, I know that, if left unchecked, I WILL have a tendency to drink more than I should. In fact, I DO drink more than I should, as my father likes to remind me.  The guidelines for a woman are no more than 7 drinks a week and 3 drinks on any given occasion.  So, I have a lot of rules for myself that keep me from going overboard.  I do not drink by myself -- only when socializing.  I try not to drink more than 2 drinks a day on the weekends and 1 on work nights.  I also have been recording the number of drinks I've had every morning (along with a bunch of other stats) for over 10 years.  All of this does a pretty good job of keeping me in check, but I still have a tendency to go a little overboard occasionally and more predictably on vacations and holidays.  The other thing of note is that I'm part of a

Alcohol Focused Community - Every event that we go to seems to involve alcohol.  We went away over Labor Day to tour all of the fun breweries in Richmond.  There are wineries everywhere in the area where I live.  I started a happy hour group with 4 other families when our kids were tiny and all of those occasions were alcohol based.  There are two festive annual events that involve a bar crawl to local establishments.  Every conversation that is not conducted while exercising is over a drink.  Every weekend occasion, dinner party, and night out involves drinking.  I'm not necessarily knocking this -- it's just surprising to realize how integral drinking is to socializing in my community.  I only know one person in my greater social group who doesn't drink and she really seems to think about which events she chooses to attend.  All that to say, this isn't a benign environment to think about drinking less or getting sober -- there is a lot of pull either overt or internally to keep drinking just to belong and be fun.  In addition, if you happen to talk about drinking less, it triggers insecurities, unwelcome self-reflection, and sometimes anger in others.  Okay -- so that's a little about my background, my awareness, and my community.  Now let's talk about my Dry January reflections.

First 10 Days - the first week to 10 days were probably best characterized as kind of unpleasant.  I don't drink enough that I had any immediate health benefits from stopping.  But I WAS keenly aware of feeling emotionally deprived and a tiny bit resentful at myself.  That's kind of weird, but that's how I was feeling.  That first week, I got through a book club meeting -- where I would normally have a glass of wine -- and a very stilted, awkward meet up for drinks.  On the first Saturday of this experiment, we had dinner with a couple who was also not drinking for January.  I was extremely self conscious and feeling super boring -- like I couldn't seem to come up with any interesting conversational topics or relevant questions about the topic at hand.  The next day, I asked my friend if she thought I was acting weird and she thought it was a fabulous, relaxed, and interesting evening.  Her perception of me was that I was precisely the same as I usually am.  Which means that I wasn't nearly as awkward as I thought -- OR that I'm not nearly as entertaining with alcohol as I thought I was.  Either way -- I was really in my head and overthinking things.  I mean really -- my job is to ask questions -- which I do perfectly sober every day.  And I'm perfectly entertaining while on walks or over coffee --  I basically just needed to settle down. 

Take Aways - So, it took around 10 days, but I did settle down.  Once I got into the swing of things, I really started to understand my relationship with alcohol a bit better.  And here are my take aways:

• Social Tolerance - I like people, I like hanging out, but I cannot do it indefinitely.  After all -- I'm an ambivert -- half extrovert, half introvert.  With alcohol, I can tolerate super long socializing MUCH more easily with events running to 3 1/2 or even 4 hours long.  Without it, I reach my max at right around 2 1/2 hours.  After that, it starts to feel like I'm getting diminishing returns and I'm not nearly as charming or engaged. 
• Don't "Need" It - Taking a break has made me realize that I don't really need alcohol to be fun and engaged.  I didn't even realize that I was relying on it for this, but my freak-out in the first 10 days revealed this to me.  At any rate -- it's not as important in that way as I was making it in my head.
• Lost weight - I did lose some weight in this process.  Not a ton, but a couple of pounds.  This makes me reconsider the heavy IPAs that I tend to favor that add to my caloric bottom line.  Plus, I think the dis-inhibition created by alcohol was messing with any motivation that I had to stick better eating habits.  And finally,
• I miss it - this probably could use a bit more reflection and scrutiny, but I like looking forward to a drink on Friday.  I enjoy tipping a glass to celebrate or mark events.  I like the immediate release of workday tension as the first drinks are poured.  Maybe this is more subjective than reality and maybe 35 years of drinking has conditioned my brain to release more dopamine when alcohol is present, but I do miss the release and celebration of that first drink of the night. 

So, those are my reflections.  I've enjoyed this experiment to get to know precisely what it is that I enjoy about drinking and to shed some of my false assumptions.  I don't think you can accurately assess these things without taking a giant step back from it.  I do plan to resume drinking again in February, but I guarantee you that I won't drink as often or as much as a result of this experiment.  We'll see how long that lasts! 

I'd love to know what you think.  Have you just come off of Dry January?  Have you learned anything about yourself in the process?  Have you considered taking a month off?  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching.