Try Damp January to drink less
Raise a fake margarita or a fake Negroni: Dry January is in full swing again.
The benefits of not drinking alcohol for a month are clear: you’ll likely feel better and save money. But people sometimes struggle to go straight from the booze glut of the holidays to 31 days without a drink. Some may have already considered giving up their plan to stay sober this month.
“For most people, the idea of a binary is not very useful,” says Ian Hamilton, associate professor of addiction at the University of York’s Department of Health Sciences. Instead, he and other experts said it might be more sustainable to try a “damp” January, or make an effort to drink less without giving up alcohol altogether.
“Damp January may be a better start to changing your behavior in the long term,” says Matt Field, professor of psychology at the University of Sheffield.
Here’s what you need to know about the benefits of downsizing and how to get started.
Humid January versus dry January
If you stop drinking completely, you’ll likely sleep better, see clearer skin, and have more energy throughout the day. Then there are the long-term benefits, including a lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other health problems.
But you can improve your health just by drinking less. For people who drink two or more drinks per day, it can reduce your alcohol consumption lower your blood pressure, said Dr. Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria. Scaling back can also improve your sleep, so you wake up less often during the night and feel fresher from day to day. It can also lead to weight loss.
And since Damp January means you decide, drink by drink, when to choose alcohol and when to abstain, you can experience “a sense of greater control” and freedom of choice over drinking than if you abstain completely, says Professor Richard de Visser. from health psychology at the University of Sussex, who researches alcohol consumption.
Humid January can help you build good habits that will last even after a month. The more you practice refusing a drink, the easier it becomes to do so, he said.
“If you think, ‘I can’t go out to dinner without drinking,’ and you try it once and it works – once you’ve had some of those situations, it gives you that feeling of, ‘Actually, I can do that well.’ And that is a skill that you carry with you,” says Dr. de Visser.
How to economize
If you choose a more moderate approach to reducing alcohol consumption, experts suggest reducing the number of days you drink per week, such as only drinking alcohol on the weekends. However, they warned against ‘saving’ your drinks. It’s true that if you go from one glass of wine a day to, say, five glasses of wine on Friday evenings, you’re still reducing your consumption overall. But Binge drinking can damage your liver and other organs and over time, break down important barriers in your intestines.
A drinking diary — which can be as simple as a smartphone note where you track your drinks over the course of a night — can help you track your consumption and make you more aware of your consumption, said Dr. Hamilton.
You can also alternate between alcoholic drinks and mocktails or soda if you drink, said Dr. Field. This will slow down your drinking and help reduce the number of alcoholic drinks you drink during a night. You can also consider what type of alcohol you drink: the higher the alcohol content of a drink, the greater its effect on your body. So consider ordering a beer with a lower alcohol content than a martini.
If you notice that you’re more likely to drink around certain people, or in a specific environment, it may make sense to reassess your social life, Dr. Naimi said. Consider trying “new things for the new year that might be fun, but might not be so alcohol-focused,” he said — and use this as an opportunity to broaden your horizons, rather than depriving yourself. Maybe that means sitting with friends at a restaurant instead of a bar, or going out for coffee instead of going out for a drink.
If you drink more than you intended on a given night, show some compassion. That’s the beauty of Damp January, said Dr. Field. “The advantage of a more moderation-based approach is that failure is possible,” he said. “Failure is human.”