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Does participating in Dry January have merit? “It’s a matter of practising alternative behaviour”
Every year, as the holidays draw to a close, a lot of people take part in Dry January. A month without alcohol is said to bring several health benefits, and a time to take a closer look at your relationship with alcohol. Do these benefits really exist, or is Dry January mostly a hype?
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Some 10 years ago, Dry January came over from the UK, and in the years that followed, the initiative gained considerable popularity. According to the GGD, nowadays even a quarter of Dutch people take an alcohol break in January. So there is no way around it, Dry January has now become a firmly established trend. But how much use is a month of total abstinence really? Folia asked UvA professor of developmental psychopathology Reinout Wiers.
Are there benefits to participating in Dry January, or is it mostly a hype?
“There are definitely benefits, research shows that up to six months after participating, there is an effect on the amount of alcohol a person drinks. This is mainly about people breaking their habitual behaviour and getting the experience of not drinking in a situation where they normally would.”
“It does depend on how much someone was drinking before. But most people who drank more than the prescribed amount before participating in Dry January – a maximum of one glass a day, and not every day – will soon start to notice the effects. So for students, who regularly binge drink - for men that’s five glasses or more in a short time, for women four or more – the same is true.”
Which effects will they notice?
“The short-term effects of alcohol include a poorer night’s sleep and reduced energy, in addition there are increased chances of risks such as being involved in accidents or nightlife violence, but the chances of noticing this in a month are of course small. People who drink a lot on a regular basis are likely to notice the decrease in negative effects on mood and energy after just a few weeks. If they wake up with more energy in the morning, that can play an important role in raising awareness, and be a motivation to not drink a bit more often even after January.”
“It’s also a matter of practising alternative behaviour. After a tennis match, for example, you could have a beer, but if, after a month of ordering alcohol-free beer or water, you notice that you feel active the day after, you take that pleasant experience with you beyond January.”
So is a month enough time to break that kind of pattern?
“Yes, a month can be long enough. There are even people who respond so well to it that, to their own surprise, they decide to stop drinking altogether. But of course this differs from person to person and depends on how much you drank before. Yet many people start to notice the effects after just a few weeks, so that can be enough to teach alternative behaviour.”
So even if you just start drinking again in February, it makes sense to participate in Dry January?
“Yes, the effects last. Say you used to drink twenty-five glasses a month, six months after participating in Dry January you might ‘only’ drink twenty-two glasses a month. So people are still more likely to choose the non-alcoholic option much later. When people participate annually, we see the same effect recurring more often. It is a socially accepted trial period.”
Would students, a group within which there is a lot of drinking, do well to all join dry January?
“Alcohol is a poison to the body and is associated with more than 10 forms of cancer. It has less of a link to one specific form of cancer like smoking, but it is related to many forms of cancer to a lesser extent, but still demonstrably so. Think intestinal, oral or, for example, breast cancer in women. Many students have the idea that drinking, smoking and other substance use is something for college days and that they will cut down or stop after that. This is often the case too, but damage may already have occurred, and a proportion of students do not manage to cut down or stop well after college.”
“When you participate in Dry January as a group, it can be stimulating. It is good to link fun alternatives to it as well, for example by working towards a sports performance or organising an evening of alcohol-free cocktails.”
Because of initiatives like Dry January, are students looking at alcohol differently these days?
“Not drinking is certainly becoming more accepted in society as a whole, but whether this is also the case among students, I don’t know. Certainly among adults beyond student age, it is much more normal not to drink alcohol on occasions when traditionally you would. Like not eating meat, this has become more strongly accepted in recent years.”
“Tens of thousands of people participate in Dry January every year. In the end, that’s quite a fair percentage of society that has some experience with this. I also notice it myself. In the past, the only excuse not to drink after an evening of tennis competition was that you were the designated driver, now that is no longer the case. People don’t ask about it anymore, and don’t make comments about it if you don’t drink.”
