Welcome to Dry January!

Please keep my family in your thoughts during this difficult time.

I’ve heard about Dry January the last couple of years but haven’t felt compelled to try it until now. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s simply abstaining from alcohol for the month of January to reset your alcohol consumption for the New Year. Presumably, after 31 days without alcohol, I will feel refreshed and healthier and be more in control of my drinking habits.

Sounds good to me. My preferred drink of choice is wine and I am not picky. I don’t care for sweet wines but anything dry – red, white or rose’, sparkling or not – is tasty to me. I generally like a glass of wine at the end of the workday and will usually order wine when dining out.

I’ve been having some trouble with wine recently. My tolerance for alcohol has not been the same since The Child was born six years ago. Naturally, I drank almost no alcohol while I was pregnant and very little while I was nursing. It feels like my tolerance never really recovered from that. However, I’ve also noticed that my tolerance has decreased drastically in the last three years, possibly due to a medication I take. One drink is all I can manage in a setting where I am obligated to drive. Even if I stretch out a few glasses of wine over a 3-4 hour occasion, I still struggle with headaches and general yuckiness the next day.

I’ve tried a few other methods to curb my consumption. I really love the wines from Nomadica. They package wine in cans rather than bottles and each can is a single serving (about 8 ounces, actually a little bigger than a standard drink). I know I’m not the only one who struggles with temptation when there’s an already-open bottle of wine in the fridge or on the kitchen counter. Come on, it’s just going to go to waste. (Yeah, right.)

The Nomadica wines helped for a while. I would drink one with dinner, feel virtuous and that would be it. Over time, though, I found that I just opened another can. What’s one more, you’re not going anywhere, you deserve it. I’m hoping to get back to a place where I can have just one in an evening. They really are very tasty.

I’ve also tried a “dry” month before. I attempted Dry March last year. I made it eleven days and through various social functions before a combination of work and family stress convinced me to imbibe.  

My drinking habits follow a now-predictable pattern. I go two or three days without drinking. Then I have a single glass of wine after work one day, maybe after a stressful day. The next day, or couple of days, I might have two. Then perhaps on a weekend, or at a social event, I’ll have enough that I make poor eating decisions (like eating a whole bag of Christmas chocolates in one sitting), sleep badly and have a headache the next day.

What’s so bad about wine?, you might ask.  After all, the benefits of wine, particularly red wine, have been well-known for some time. Alcohol of any kind has beneficial effects on our hearts. It lowers our blood pressure and stress levels and increases levels of HDL, the “good” cholesterol. Red wine in particular is high in a type of antioxidant called polyphenols. Polyphenols may help to protect the lining of your blood vessels. A specific polyphenol called resveratrol gets a lot of publicity. Some studies show that resveratrol could be linked to lower levels of inflammation and blood clotting, which can lower your risk of heart disease.

So that all sounds great. Since heart disease is the #1 leading cause of death for Americans, it seems like we should be doing whatever we can to prevent it. Unfortunately, red wine and other forms of alcohol are only beneficial when used in moderation. Moderate levels of drinking are much lower than you’d think, and much lower than what a lot of us actually consume. Guidelines for moderate drinking are:

• No more than 1 drink per day for women of any age and men aged 65 and older
• No more than 2 drinks per day for men under age 65

Why is there a difference for men and women, and an age difference? In general, men are larger than women and larger people metabolize alcohol faster than smaller people. Larger people have more water in their bodies and more tissue with which to absorb alcohol. Women also usually have less than men of a chemical that the body uses to break down alcohol. (So if you’re a larger woman, it still isn’t ok to drink as much as men.) After age 65, alcohol stays in the bloodstream longer, so you feel more of an effect from the same amount of alcohol.

What defines a “drink”? In the U.S., a standard drink is considered to be 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of liquor, such as vodka or gin. A standard drink contains about 14 grams of pure alcohol. Again, things get tricky here. A 12-ounce beer containing 14 grams of alcohol would clock in at 5% ABV (alcohol by volume). A “standard” 5-ounce glass of wine would be 12% ABV. It’s commonplace to find beer that can be as much as 10% ABV and wine that can be 14% ABV. A standard size drink of these higher ABVs would contain more than 14 grams of alcohol, and technically, would not be a “standard” drink.

Also, consider the size of your drink. A bottle of beer might be 12 ounces, but a pint in a restaurant will be 16 ounces. A glass of wine at a bar might be 9 ounces. The devil is really in the details when it comes to maintaining moderate drinking levels.

Again, why does it matter so much? It matters because once we pass moderate drinking levels, the benefits of alcohol rapidly turn to dangers.

First, of course, not everyone should drink alcohol. Those who are pregnant or have a personal or family history of alcoholism, or have liver disease or heart failure should not drink alcohol. Some medications also interact with alcohol, making it unwise to imbibe.

Alcohol consumption has been linked to cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, liver, esophagus, voice box, throat, mouth, and probably the pancreas, according to the American Cancer Society. Drinking in excess can also raise blood pressure, increasing risk of heart disease and stroke. Alcohol is also high in empty calories, which can lead to weight gain and obesity. In turn, those can lead to their own set of health problems, like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

And of course, no one enjoys a hangover. Headaches, nausea, fatigue, irritability and poor sleep are all part of the territory. In our family, we say that someone is “overheated” when they have a hangover, due to an adorable word jumble by one of my nephews when he was little. No one likes being overheated.

Does everyone have an occasional day where they exceed moderate drinking levels? Of course. And my own doctor has told me not to worry about two drinks a day. However, the bottom line is that we should be sticking to moderate drinking as much as possible, not drinking to levels of drunkenness and bad decisions and taking a few days a week off from drinking. If necessary, taking a break from drinking altogether to reevaluate our relationship with alcohol.

Which leads us back to Dry January. How am I going to make Dry January work for me? Well, first, by telling all of you about it. I hope that by publicly declaring my intentions, I’ll be more motivated to stick with it.

I’m also actively seeking out alternatives to alcohol. I love kombucha so I have a refrigerator full of it right now. Since kombucha is fermented, it provides a bit of that alcohol-y flavor. Kombucha can be high in sugar, so I try to stick to lower-sugar flavors like ginger. (Bootleg Bucha is my favorite.) I’m also trying out alcohol-free wine. Surely is the brand I’m using, but you can find others online or even in a well-stocked liquor store. Surely has a private Facebook group for customers doing Dry January, which provides motivation, accountability and tips for staying focused. (Coincidentally, all things you also get when working with a wellness coach.)

Lastly, I’m taking a few minutes each evening to jot down some notes about my day. Did I crave a drink? What made it hard or easy to avoid alcohol? How did I feel today (tired, stressed, energetic)? I’m hoping that this will help me to notice a pattern in my emotions and behavior that will help me better control my drinking in the future.

Stay tuned for updates as I work through Dry January! I’m only a few days in and like many people, it’s easy for me to feel motivated at the beginning of a new project. I expect things will become more difficult in the next couple of weeks. If you are trying to cut back on unhealthy habits too, let me help.

Thanks for being with me on this wellness journey,

P.S. – Go Bills!