5 Questions I Wish I Had Asked Myself at the End of Dry January

January is drawing to a close, which for many readers will mean that they are either anticipating resuming their regular alcohol habits post Dry January (DJ), having enjoyed a ‘reset’ or gained insight into their relationship with alcohol.

Others may be debating about whether to continue exploring sobriety, given their 31 day head start. Still others may have started out with the best of intentions, and for various reasons found themselves abandoning DJ. Wherever you find yourself in this journey, I salute you for giving it a go.

While DJ gave me an invaluable taste of what being alcohol-free was like, as someone who had an uneasy feeling that I had strayed from the ‘Take It or Leave It’ club, in some ways it prolonged my coming to terms with the reality that alcohol was increasingly gaining power over me. An inner voice that I call the Winer was quick to crow Look! You did it! Clearly you do NOT have a drinking problem! Let’s go celebrate with a nice cold glass of pinot gris!

My Dry January experiences — I did five before quitting drinking for good in April 2021 — were an invaluable part of my journey to full-on sobriety, but also in hindsight presented some pitfalls. Here are five questions that I wish that I had asked myself on January 31st.

1)Why did you decide to do DJ in the first place?

I had many reasons for trying DJ, but the biggest one was trying to answer the question of whether I was an “alcoholic.” My initial thinking was that if I was able to successfully complete DJ, it was solid proof that I did not have a problem.

And yet: if I did not have a problem, why did I need to “prove” anything? And why, having proved it, was I in such a hurry to get to a liquor store on February 1st, even when it fell early in the week? If you’re experiencing this type of inner drama, I would suggest that it may be telling you something.

2) Is there a voice like the Winer in your head? What’s it saying?

My Winer was masterful at making excuses for me to drink, to the point where in hindsight, it even engineered situations to justify it. There was a lot of self-pity involved, along with lots of lovely meals. After all, if I had put the work into making a nice dinner, didn’t it deserve to be complemented with wine, even on a Tuesday night?

If you have a voice like this in your head that is dedicated to promoting/justifying alcohol, watch out. It’s the one that may be eagerly anticipating what type of alcohol you are considering enjoying to break your booze “fast” on February 1st.

It may be a voice that said “F*&k this sanctimonious Dry January BS, you need a drink” earlier in the month. What harm can there be in just one or two? It’s (insert one of these, or your own) a special occasion, a hard day, a social occasion that would otherwise be unbearable etc.

I deserved wine, according to the Winer, for an ever-increasing list of reasons: my hard work as an entrepreneur, parent, and supporter of a multitude of social demands. The word ‘deserve’ came up a lot: I deserved to relax, to have a break, to enjoy some ‘me’ time, to take the edge off, whatever.

3) Is there another voice in there somewhere? What’s it saying?

My voice that said Yes to trying DJ was crying out for relief, after yet another yucky-feeling Sunday morning. It expressed anxiety about the increasing sway that the Winer was having over my judgement about things like skipping yoga because I was too tired, being irritable with my family and co-workers, my escalating consumption of Ibuprofen and a million other ‘little’ things.

Is there part of you that wants to keep going? That’s jumping up and down and saying things like Wow how incredible is it to finally be well-rested?! You do not need alcohol to have fun! Look, Ma - no hangover! Tune in and see what it’s saying.

4) How are you feeling? What’s your before and after list?

Having been booze-free for close to 31 days, how are you feeling? What have you noticed or learned?

For me, the biggest change was sleep (more and higher quality), but also things like reduced facial redness and less tired-looking eyes. Overall, I had more energy and felt more present and alert. Better balance in yoga. More ease with decisionmaking, sharper insights and more creative ideas at work, feeling sexier and more joyful. These are not small victories, particularly as a post-menopausal woman in my 50s.

Make a list. Are there any downsides? I would definitely have a good cry in there somewhere. Rather than attempting to socialize without my trusty pal sauvignon blanc, I passed on invitations, missing out on some social events. Whatever.

I went to the Edge that I was not ‘taking off’ with wine. This was not easy or comfortable, however it forced me to—guess what?— actually deal with things in a satisfying way. I came to see that rather relaxing me, wine had actually been numbing me out, leading to resentful tolerance or procrastination.

Had I been drinking, the Edge would have been a perfect excuse for a couple of glasses of wine, followed by inaction, crappy sleep, and the looming whatever-it-was hanging over me the next morning, along with a persistent, foggy, irritable, vague-headachey state of being.

Having watched myself over three years undergo this tug-of-war effect of knowing the competing voices, I came to understand—alarmingly—that the Winer was cool with DJ, as long as I framed it as justification for re-joining the drinking ranks.

I was also increasingly unhappy with how I was feeling the rest of the year, though, which was sucked right back into a perpetual state of being mildly hungover, arguing with myself about whether or not it was ok to drink, how much was too much, whether I was an ‘alcoholic’ and on and on. It was exhausting.

Between giving me a taste of how much better I felt without alcohol and showing me that—rather than giving me a Get Out of Jail Free card on alcoholism—I was skating on increasingly thin ice in terms of dependency, Dry January’s impact was shifting.

Devoting so much mental real estate and vitality to something that was giving me less and less pleasure was simply not worth it. I was literally tired of thinking about drinking, which led me to a website with that name, and inspired me to up the ante with a 100 day challenge, kicked off with DJ. This was 2020. Yes, Covid! What was I thinking??

Sure enough, on January 31st the Winer showed up to make a stink. Hadn’t I done enough? What about the family dinner coming up — how could I be expected to suffer through that without wine? 100 days is forever! Why bother? You will never get through life as a sober person, so why deprive yourself of your buddy wine any longer than necessary?

5) What’s your goal for February 1st and beyond?

An interesting fact that I have learned about the neuroscience of addiction is that our brains dislike uncertainty. It makes so much sense: to hold a debate takes way more energy than to make a clear, simple decision and move on. The debate keeps you stuck, whereas the decision sets you free.

Having committed to the 100 days, I was astonished to learn that—woo hoo!—beyond the 31 day mark lay a whole new level of energy, sleep, clarity and other goodies. I was literally freaking out every day about how good I was feeling, as I bounded along these previously-uncharted booze-free days. If I was feeling this good after 50, 60, 90 days, why not keep going?

I went back and forth more times than I can count: it was like those old cartoons of having an angel on one shoulder whispering You can do this! You’re already free! Keep going! and a devil on the other saying You are not an alcoholic! Life without booze will suck and be no fun! YOU will be no fun anymore. It’s not worth the effort!

April 10th, 2020 was my daughter’s 15th birthday. It was also day 101. All day, I debated, but in my heart I knew that I was going to give in. I baked a special cake and planned a beautiful meal. Given that it was Covid and we were all bored out of our minds with parties out of the question, I wanted to make the most out of celebrating my beloved child. Celebrations are one of my biggest drinking triggers, and champagne is the Winer’s ne plus ultra drug of choice.

Not having made up my mind to keep going or setting another goal (I flirted with the idea of a year), and having accomplished the truly amazing feat of 100 days without alcohol, I succumbed to the cold bottle of champagne that I knew was sitting in the back of the fridge. The Winer was euphoric, and even tried to sell me on the idea that I was also ‘rewarding myself’ for my 100 days of sobriety. I also felt like total garbage for letting the Winer have their way on my daughter’s birthday.

At that point, my angel voice had had enough Winer bullshit: there was no way that I could in good conscience put up with that depth of conniving. Rather than winning me back into the happy fold of drinking, the Winer has shown me their true colours. Alcohol was a problem, my life was being run by a self-destructive voice telling me to drink poison, and the only way to stop it was… to stop. For real. For good. End of story.

To cut a long story short, it took me just over a year after that pivotal experience to finally let booze go, but finally the magic day came. My sobriety date is April 14, 2021. You can read all about it here.

Parting thought: alcohol’s risk is about way more than “just” addiction

Looking back, I feel like my focus on dependency/addiction was a red herring. For sure, Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD, the medical term for alcoholism) is an all-too-real potential risk, but what I want to point to here is that alcohol may be seriously undermining your health, even if you are truly a ‘Take It or Leave It’ drinker.

I’m talking about all of the new research and warnings coming from places like the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Surgeon General, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA.) The fact that alcohol, even in “moderate” amounts, can cause cancer and heart disease is no longer up for debate.

AUD is a progressive condition that is often not dealt with until people hit a rock bottom, causing significant harm to themselves and/or others. But those extreme negative consequences did not just jump into someone’s life one obvious, memorable day. It’s a continuum that is incredibly subtle and for which there is no absolute test or way to know when you’re in trouble. Even if you feel under control today, as long as you’re still drinking, you remain at risk.

All of which is to say, there are more reasons than ever to check in with yourself and see what Dry January’s deeper insights may be.

What I want you to know from the vantage point of being ecstatically sober for going on four years, is that I wish that I had taken things more seriously sooner. For folks who are scared to imagine their life without alcohol, the old AA adage One Day at a Time may feel more manageable than Never.

Hang in there, be good to yourself, don’t be afraid to ask for support if you feel that you need it, and listen to your angel voice. Trust me: there’s a whole other world of goodness to be had beyond January 31st.

This essay is an updated version of one that I originally published on Medium in 2023.