To avoid wiffling and waffling, Koob shares a few principles of self-regulation: monitoring, strength and standards. Set a goal for how often you plan to abstain (your standards), have the internal fortitude to stay the course (your strength), and keep track of your progress (monitoring).
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Monitoring can be as simple as jotting down how many drinks you’ve had on a sticky note or as involved as formally signing up through an app. If you’re someone who thrives on closing all the rings on your Apple Watch or seeing a badge appear on Strava, an app might provide the right kind of motivation.
In theory, these apps can also help with the “strength” side of staying the course by offering reminders and tips like mocktail recipes or strategies for socialising without liquid courage. Try Dry, a free app from Alcohol Change UK, a charity that helped to popularise Dry January over a decade ago, will also tally up your weekly savings from forgoing booze.
One thing to leave off your plan for a more sober month: THC. Companies overseas making cannabis-infused drinks are eager to step in to fill the glasses left empty during Dry January. One US-based firm, Cann, is going so far as to try to rebrand the month as “Cannuary”, and in an email pitch said transactions tripled in January and February of 2023 during its campaign to convert alcohol drinkers to marijuana users.
Asked if these companies were offering a reasonable substitute during Dry January, Koob’s answer was immediate and emphatic: No. “In a sense, you’re self-medicating if you have to substitute one psychotropic substance for another,” he says. And while cannabis companies like to argue that THC is much safer than other social lubricants, that doesn’t mean it’s benign; rather, its effects on the body are much different (and less comprehensively studied) than alcohol.
As Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, told Bloomberg last year, “both are associated with harms and both can lead to addiction”. It would be a mistake to turn Dry January into High January.
That’s an especially important message for younger generations. Surveys show Gen Z and millennials are increasingly interested in taking a more moderate approach to alcohol, but are also clearly the target audience for these cannabis companies.
Whether your January is bone-dry or moderately damp, it’s well worth the effort. If done right, the benefits of taking a break can linger well past the marketing schtick of a sober month. One study in the UK showed that people who took a January break continue to be more balanced in their drinking six months later. That’s an outcome that can make a real difference in our health.
Bloomberg
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