5 Questions that I wish I had asked myself at the end of Dry January

January has now drawn 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’ alcohol 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 pretty 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 try 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 nice 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 coming up with suggestions like stopping by the liquor store to stock up and taking a bottle of wine with you to every social event as a ‘gift’ that you know is secretly there to ensure that you are able to drink what you want.

I deserved wine, according to the voice, for an ever-increasing list of reasons: my hard work as an entrepreneur, parent, and overall 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. I deserved it. Wine was a reward for me coping so admirably with life’s vicissitudes: in fact, it’s basically what it was invented for, right? So sayeth the Winer.

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 was one that was mindful of the fact that I am co-parenting a teenage daughter and didn’t want to be full of it when it came to being a healthy role model. It expressed anxiety about the increasing sway that the Winer was having over my judgement about things like driving, skipping yoga because I’m too tired, being irritable with my family and co-workers, my escalating consumption of Ibuprofen and a million other ‘little’ things.

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 (talk about cause and effect!). Overall, I had more energy and felt more present and alert. Better balance in yoga. More ease with decision making, sharper insights and more creative ideas at work, feeling sexier and more joyful. These are not small victories: particularly as a menopausal woman in my 50s, I do not take my overall sense of wellbeing for granted.

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 seeing friends. 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? — deal with it. Which I did, and moved on, and had a great sleep and woke up feeling like I was 14. 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 that I would benefit from taking a break from alcohol and getting a better idea of where I truly stood with it, 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 pass 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 giving away so much of my 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 in the form of a 100 day challenge, kicked off with DJ.

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? I was never going to be able to actually get through life as a sober person, so why deprive myself of my buddy wine any longer than necessary?

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

An interesting fact that I have come across in my learning about the neuroscience of addiction is that our brains dislike uncertainty. If you think about it, 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 so much less fun! 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. My sobriety date is April 14, 2021. You can read all about it here.

If Dry January has shown you that alcohol may be a problem

What I want you to know from the vantage point of being ecstatically sober for going on two years, is that I wish that I had taken things more seriously sooner. I know, I know: it took what it took for me, and that’s perfect. But what if sharing my story could make a difference for someone else? What if they were on a similar path, and had similar questions and inner dramas to mine? I’d really like to save some of you a bunch of time that might otherwise be wasted in so many ways.

Sharing my journey has been an invaluable form of healing to me. Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD — the medical term for ‘alcoholism’) is a progressive condition that is often not dealt with until people hit a ‘rock bottom’, causing significant harm to themselves and/or others. This was thankfully not true for me, and I feel incredibly lucky that I was able to head myself off at the pass, as it were.

Besides, addiction is just one part of the risk of drinking. As a Canadian citizen in recovery from AUD, I was fascinated and excited to see the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) recently issue updated low risk alcohol drinking guidelines. The guidelines are a major shift from the previous 2011 edition, and took into account over 6,000 pieces of research that point incontrovertibly to a causal relationship between alcohol and heart disease and seven different types of cancer. The guidelines crucially state that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption, and restrict ‘low risk’ drinking to no more than 2 drinks per week. If this is news to you, check out this media coverage.

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. If you’re feeling any of this, I encourage you to reach out and share whatever is showing up for you with someone you trust, or failing that, then to find an online community (The Luckiest Club was where I landed, however there are dozens out there) to connect with. You don’t need to call yourself anything or even have abstinence as a goal: ‘sober curious’ is a great place to be. Oh — and if you have not read Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol, then go get a copy.

Hang in there, be good to yourself, don’t be afraid to ask for help and trust that angel voice: there’s a whole other world of goodness to be had beyond January 31st.

Note: this article was originally published on Medium on January 28, 2023.