Dry January, the month of the no-alcohol challenge, offers a reset and a chance to enforce healthier habits after weeks of indulging in holiday drinking.
The annual challenge began in 2012 as a public health initiative from Alcohol Change UK, a British charity.
Sarah Dermody, associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's psychology department, said when people take a break from alcohol use and return to it, they tend to drink less.
“It [Dry January] could have a longer-term impact on people’s drinking levels and that could be partly because they’re just more confident that they don’t need alcohol to have a good time or they have had an opportunity to test out alternative beverages and find some that they like and they can turn to those instead of fully drinking alcohol,” Dermody said.
“I think for folks that do the Dry January and kind of return to heavy drinking, I wouldn’t expect there to be a long-term benefit of that one month of alcohol-free if what they’re typically doing before and after that is drinking heavily,” she said.
Dermody said having Dry January and more public awareness of the negative health effects of drinking for everybody helps lessen some of those negative stereotypes about why people would decide not to drink.
“I think that people can lean on that and students can say, ‘I didn’t drink for a month and I felt great,' or 'I learned that I can have a good time without it and I think that that would be a more socially kind of acceptable response than it was five or ten years ago,'” she said.
Dermody said with attention growing among the negative effects of alcohol, the college demographic is drinking less in comparison to prior generations of post-secondary students.
“University students today are a bit more health conscious and a bit more aware of the impacts of alcohol. Hopefully peer pressure, while obviously it still exists, would be a bit more flexible or easier to counteract,” she said.
Andrew Hathaway, a sociology professor at the University of Guelph, said it can certainly be a challenge if someone is trying to reduce alcohol use but is in a crowd of people who do not have the same kind of motivation.
“We can think of ways from a public health messaging perspective to recognize the designated driver or the person who isn’t drinking by providing them attractive options such as mocktails so they don’t feel like they’re ruining the party or something by not by not partaking,” Hathaway said.
“From a harm reduction perspective, we need to think of interventions that are tailored to the needs of individual consumers, meet people where they’re at and sometimes that kind of overly paternalistic kind of just say no messaging can have the opposite effects,” he said.
The National Library of Medicine reported alcohol is linked to more than 60 medical conditions, including cancer, diabetes, depression and hypertension.
It said although it can be difficult to ask patients about their drinking behaviour, Dry January is a great way to broach the topic in a non-threatening way, nudging patients to consider their drinking levels and encouraging them to cut down.
“Having the support of knowing that others are doing it in a particular month and maybe this kind of being part of the team spirit, might be beneficial in terms of allowing people to do that and not have it feel like such an awkward break from their routine,” Hathaway said.
He said general moderation and responsible use management are probably the most effective overall although a third of the population does not reduce their alcohol use.
Dennis Martell, executive director of the National Social Norms Centre and past director of health promotion at Michigan State University, said when taking a break from alcohol be it during Dry January or in general, it is important to pay it forward.
“If you do this you need to first pay attention to how your body feels without drinking alcohol, paying attention to your breathing, your blood pressure, your head and body aches and needs. All these things need to be paid attention to and should give you hope to change if the feeling is positive,” Martell said.
“Second, pay attention to the amount of socializing and friends you have during the dry time, see who likes being with you, how you act, whether it is difficult to have conversations, all the things that go into why people may drink and possibly why they need to drink,” he said.
“Third, pay attention to the amount of money you are spending during the dry month and how much all the drinking costs as well as what you replace it with, fourth pay attention to the way your family feels toward you and how they act while you are free of alcohol. Finally, pay attention to the world and how it looks and feels without alcohol,” Martell said.
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