Are You Taking a Break from Drinking for January?
I’m not sure if people, on balance, feel invigorated and inspired by a challenge like Dry January, or if it gets them down. We’re a couple of days in already, and so I wanted to speak particularly to people who may be struggling now, but also to encourage you to take a look a little further down the line and hold fast to your goals even if you're off to a strong start. It’s doable!! 30-days can make a quite remarkable difference. And getting back up if we’re thrown is as important as learning to stay the course.
I, personally, think it’s a great thing to give a shot, as long as we are in reasonably good health and maintain some perspective about it. I tend to feel that taking a break for a day, a week, a month, all have great benefits for most people.
But it’s hard to launch a challenge full-on all at once. It’s the problem with resolutions, in general. And drinking and other addictive activities have their own extra pull. Chunking it down to 30 days helps, but there’s still that whole element of doing it perfectly or “failing” which can trip us up. So I think, remember there’s no failure here! It’s an effort. A challenge. An opportunity to see where we stand and go from there.
IMPORTANT: This is not for everyone. Don't try this if you think you might be in serious danger of withdrawal. Get some medical help for detox. More on that below.
Benefits of the Dry January Challenge
First, as I’ve said, it’s a challenge. That can be fun! Other people are doing it, and it has become kind of trendy, especially among young-ish adults, so the stigma is nominal. That’s important, given that this now appears to be the fastest growing group with serious alcohol-related problems like liver failure and death.
There are a lot of good health benefits in stopping, even for a relatively short period of time. Big, loose community endeavors can introduce a lot of support and momentum to our efforts, and it builds bonds with people too, to have a common objective and to be working on the same type of endeavor, encountering similar problems along the way. It can be fun with a group or some family members and there are all kinds of fun non-alcoholic drinks these days.
For many, it’s just a break. Like doing a cleanse or going to a super-fancy spa once or twice a year. Taking a month to get healthy, hydrate, eat well and avoid drinking is good for our bodies, our sense of being able to take charge and accomplish things we put our minds to, and our mental health. It’s a great way to start off any time of year to kind of reset and put ourselves on healthy paths.
And you never know, we might find that we WANT to change our relationship to alcohol after taking a small step back to evaluate. We may have been unaware of the many benefits of abstaining or reducing for a bit.
Or we may not have realized how groggy and vaguely ill we were feeling all the time. We may find we’re sleeping better. Our energy and our skin may improve. Crushing anxiety doesn’t suffocate us the minute we wake up. Maybe we’re getting more done at work or feel more “on our game,” in general. Some people may choose to continue, and others may find themselves lessening their intake, overall shifting their drinking into a more casual, occasional mode.
What if I Can’t Stop? Or I've Slipped Already?
Now, for some of us, it may not look like that. It may be that we can’t get started or it feels too hard. We may have felt too physically ill to continue. We may have talked ourselves out of trying for any number of reasons. Or, looking out a little further, what if we slip in mid-January? Do we keep going or abandon the effort?
First, don’t give yourself permission to slip. It’s not inevitable, and you can do it.
But if for whatever reason something happens, and you do, it is not the end of the world, and it does not have to be the end of the challenge either.
Don’t Give Up!
Hold on. Yes. It's true that it feels discouraging when we try something and then fail to accomplish it as smoothly as we’d hoped. That’s the problem with setting big swooping New Year’s resolutions, and sometimes 30 days or 7 days are bigger challenges than we expect.
But that’s okay.
So, how to look at a “failure?” Did you learn anything? What pulled you away from your effort? Were you okay and then a party came up or a friend came over or you decided to go to the bar? Or were you obsessed with the thought of drinking every minute that you couldn’t? Were you sad? Lonely? What was your expectation of yourself? Did you live up or down to it? Did you think you could do it going in? Were you surprised that alcohol seemed to mean more or less to you than expected? Objectively, how did you feel physically, mentally, emotionally, when you weren’t drinking? When you were?
What if you continue on and make the most out of the month. See what you can do? Does it seem like there could be benefits to going for a stretch of time? There’s nothing magic about January 1st. You could start today, tomorrow, on the 15th and do 30 days from there. Or what if you cut your consumption in half? Or shook up your routine. Or focused on healthy, risk-free scenarios versus high-risk, dangerous drinking scenarios …
More broadly, what did you want from this challenge? Health benefits? To interrupt sketchy drinking habits? To focus on work? To see if it’s affecting you or not? To set the stage for future reduced drinking or continued abstinence? How can you refocus on those and keep them front and center?
Whether You Stop Drinking for Dry January or Not
You might decide this isn’t the right time for you or that there’s a piece missing somewhere in these efforts. There’s no reason to try day after day and then berate and torture yourself each and every time over your shortcomings. It may be time to try another approach.
You might or might not dive into deeper questions about your drinking -- are there warning signs for you in this experiment? Red flags? At what point might those be worth taking a look at? Can you set limits to the types of behavior that could develop into problematic behavior? What does it look like to stay in the confines of moderate/manageable use for you? Is that daily drinking? How much? Binge drinking seems to be prevalent right now, and there are problems with that.
People do have issues with addictive or problematic drinking (and other substance/behavioral issues). Sometimes we can go for a long time without seeing it. Sometimes it doesn’t cause disaster, but it drags us down. There’s no innate harm in taking a look. We can choose to do something more or not once we see where we are.
This isn’t to encourage you to worry or label yourself if you don’t have a “problem.” We are all pulled to excess in all kinds of arenas, and mostly we settle back into something workable.
Sometimes, though, we hide our feelings about our relationship with alcohol or other addictive fixations, even (maybe especially) from ourselves. We like it, so we don’t want to look at any negatives around it! Sometimes, though, we also are ignoring other vitally important things in our lives, like our health, loved ones, and the joy of living.
Now, for those who’ve gotten a great start, keep on going!! Enjoy. Pay attention to the world around you. Take good care of yourself: sleep, hydrate, eat healthy delicious foods, get outside, walk. Drinking blurs life and isolates us. Notice all the sounds, smells, colors, people … Many people feel significantly better after about 7 days. I personally think the 4th day can be pretty rough, mentally. Get through that!!!
Caution: Do Be Aware of Alcohol Detox Danger Signs
If you are physically dependent on alcohol, you may suffer from withdrawal if you try to stop abruptly. The severity can vary, but if you experience hallucinations, racing heart, serious shaking, that would be considered severe. Please get medical help immediately.
There is a good chart here, from the Cleveland Clinic: Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms. Withdrawal from alcohol can be deadly and there’s no good reason for you to suffer. A hospital ER can help. And if you drink heavily please talk to your doctor before you undertake anything drastic, like stopping abruptly. Some people physically need help with detox from alcohol and benzodiazepines, specifically.
Honestly, I would encourage anyone to get medical help via a detox through a hospital or a detox center for 2, 3, 5 days (however long they will keep you for that phase), if you drink heavily or feel like you can't stop. It is a relatively comfortable and very safe way to go about it. You could have effects, including seizures, up to four, five, possibly seven days, depending on your history, usage, etc. Once you start feeling better, there is less likelihood that will happen. Pay attention, and just be prepared to seek help if you need it.
If you know that you could likely use some assistance, don’t plunge into an abstinence challenge like Dry January. See if you can cut back. Reduce the frequency or amount a little bit. See how you feel. Can you cut it in half?
Many primary care doctors are now encouraged to manage “home detox,” and prescribe a small amount of sedatives to prevent seizures, discomfort and anxiety for even moderate withdrawal. Honestly, I'm not wild about this; I was so undisciplined, but by all means, consider that option.
Be HIGHLY aware that this is just for the first couple of days. Benzodiazepines are not indicated for long-term use, and they are deadly dangerous on top of drinking.
They can feel like a nice substitute for drinking, but that’s not their purpose . If we uncover severe anxiety when we stop drinking or other, that’s something to address more specifically.
Here is a link to the clinical guidelines from the American Society on Addiction Medicine (ASAM) on how to treat withdrawal: ASAM alcohol withdrawal guidelines.
Don’t Be Afraid to Try!
Now, having said all that, I don’t want people to feel scared or panicky about trying to stop. If you go half a day or a couple of days, and you start to feel seriously ill, then by all means go to a doctor, hospital or urgent care, consider a home detox or trying to taper down first.
Feeling a little shaky, restless, anxious, foggy, irritable, headachy, nauseous -- are minor signs of withdrawal. If you drank a lot recently, your stomach may rebel for a bit. Treat yourself like you’re recovering from the flu -- rest, hydrate, eat mild foods that are easy to digest, sleep as much as you can. Pay attention, and if you have someone who can keep an eye on you, that would be great.
But many, I would even venture to say most, do not have more than mild withdrawal symptoms. You may feel a little under the weather, your sleep may be off, but you will start to feel so much better after just a couple of days, and then see where you are after a week.
I would like to encourage people NOT to scare themselves away from cutting back or staying away from alcohol for a period of time, in January or at any time! From there, it can be a little easier to take a good look at what role you want alcohol (or other) to play in your life.
Happy New Year, and best of success in all your efforts this year!!!
