That ain’t nothing, friends!Īt the time of my first dry month, I was kind of “stuck” in a lot of areas (mostly deciding about the trajectory of my school and work life), and that mental fog/”stuckness” cleared up within a couple of weeks of no booze.
#I quit drinking plus#
But take out a calculator, and you’ll soon realize that “just a couple of drinks per night” plus weekend drinking will amount to over 900 drinks per year (yep, really just do the math). Everything from the people I was choosing to hang out with to how I was choosing to spend my time to a kind of blasé laziness / ”I’ll do that tomorrow” attitude was all tied to just a couple of seemingly innocent drinks. I had NO idea how much my light booze habit of one to two drinks per night, plus drinks on the weekends, was affecting me, my choices, and my life. I am not trying to come across as a total geezer here, but this was a big "aha" moment for me. Maybe “just a drink or two a night” is much more than that.
If you find yourself in a situation that just feels too peer-pressure-y, here are two tactics that worked for me to deflect.
In my personal experience, I got the most flak from friends whom I always suspected had less-than-healthy relationships with alcohol.
#I quit drinking how to#
Once I had some time to reflect, I realized that being sober can make some other people uncomfortable because they don’t know how to be social/interact without a drink. That said, it still totally sucked, and made me feel embarrassed ( Oh God, am I boring?) and sad. But ultimately, I realized it was about them and not about me. The first time I faced this, I felt totally unequipped for how to deal with it. People called me “boring," rolled their eyes when I said I wasn’t drinking for the month, and put a lot of pressure on me to “just have one drink.” Some people even stopped calling me or inviting me out to gatherings or parties. Almost everyone, including my own friends, was likely to get weird and even kind of pissy about it. This was the strangest thing of all about going dry for a month: other people. Here we go.Ī lot of people, including your close friends, will be SUPER annoying and unsupportive about your decision. Intrigued? If you are planning to try a Dry January, there are some important things you need to know before you embark on this challenging, enlightening, and ultimately rewarding booze-free journey. In fact, January 2016 will be my seventh Dry January. My first-ever dry January not only totally changed my relationship with alcohol it changed some of my friendships, and I’d even argue it changed my life. Going in, I figured I would probably miss having a drink with my friends on the weekends, but as it turned out, the effects were way more far-reaching than that. I also wanted to see how it would make me feel (better? more focused? totally the same?). Mostly, I wanted to see if having a sober month was something I could do. So, my Dry January was not about “detoxing” or turning around a serious bad habit. Before I gave this a try, I wasn’t even a huge drinker or partier - I would do wine on weeknights, and maybe a some cocktails on the weekends with friends. To some people, that might not sound like a big deal, but to me it sounded like a major commitment. That means no booze at all, for any reason (yes, even at a birthday party / wedding / after a bad day / whatever) for the entire month. This article was originally published on December 17, 2015.Ī couple of years ago, I decided to do a Dry January.
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