Is it time for Dry January?

[First in series of five stories]

By the time 2024 closed out, it felt like my body was asking for a break from alcohol.

Like most people you see, I enjoyed my drinks during the holidays. I would have a bottle or a glass every day, and drink more than that when there's a party.

I didn't necessarily get drunk through December, but I was constantly enjoying a tipple. On December 31, after having several glasses of white wine at lunch, my head began to throb the way it does during hangovers. And my stomach began to feel acidic, like an acid reflux was on its way.

It's not uncommon. According to a 2019 Oxford Academic Review, "the increase in alcohol consumption frequency showed a stronger association with GERD."

On New Year's Eve, I couldn't eat dinner and I could hardly enjoy our media noche. I barely even made it to midnight.

Perhaps it's time to join the Dry January movement, a public health initiative by Alcohol Change UK that started in 2012. 

Three years later, by 2015, more than 2 million people in the UK alone have participated in Dry January.

It's not a detox program, just a challenge to help people like me "who are steadily drinking a bit too much, too often, without realizing the effect it may have having" on my health.

I'd like to think I'm a fairly healthy person. I'm a woman in my mid-40s, weighing about 128 lbs. I work out three times a week, eat brown rice instead of white, and I have more fish (and chicken) than red meat. But boy do I love my drink.   

I drink when there's something to celebrate, when I need to wash the stressful day away, and in 2024, when life became a little too much, I drank to enjoy a beautiful day. But don't get me wrong. I'm not alcoholic. I just think allowing myself what I enjoy (in moderation) is a healthier way of living. And it's been working for me until this holiday season, until December 31 actually, when alcohol felt like it got in the way of enjoying life.

The benefits of a Dry January are plenty — from better skin to healthier liver, from improved sleep to weight loss. I want it all.

And so I welcomed 2025 thinking I'll give Dry January a go. I had no strategy in tackling Dry January. I just thought to rely on my will power to get my through.

I woke up early on January 1 and went to the gym to pay for yesterday's sins. By noon, I was feeling super. Our family was going to have a New Year's dinner party and I was more than ready to say no to wine. What I wasn't prepared for was the most irresistible end to our feast. We had strawberries and champagne. 

Surprisingly, and thankfully, I learned my brother was participating in Dry January too. The first lesson in this exercise? It's good to have a solid support system.

According to Harvard Medical School, having a support group is important in pursuing a Dry January. "Let friends and family know about your intentions and encourage them to keep you accountable. Better yet, enlist someone to do the challenge with you," it said.

Avoiding temptations, like not having a ready stash of alcohol at home is important, as finding substitutes and enrolling in apps, Harvard advised.

We ended up eating a lot of chips and mixed nuts, but perhaps not as much as we would have had we been drinking.

Still, I'm not gonna lie. The night stretched to what felt like forever, and by the time the dinner party ended at 11 p.m., I was more than ready to go to bed.

Dry January is going to be a long one. Join me?

— GMA Integrated News