Have you have a wet January? That Doesn't Mean Your Sobriety Journey Is Complete

We were in one of my favourite restaurants in Soho, London. Our beloved friend was visiting from Paris after a long Covid separation, and she knew her wine very well.

The conversation was electrifying and the food was divine. I resisted one glass, but when the main course came, a juicy lamb rump with Jerusalem artichoke, I just knew this would pair so well with the Argentinian red ordered.

So, on 14 January 2022, the so-called ‘Quitters’ Day’ (being the second Friday of January), I broke the streak and drank a glass.

Am I telling you a story about my failures? No, I am telling you a story about empowerment.

If you have a high reliance on alcohol, maybe this article will help you to regain some power within yourself.

We should always expect to fail

It sounds pessimistic but it’s not, it’s realistic and stoic.

I have been drinking since I was 14 years old, and over the years in finance, my liver was accustomed to alcohol five days a week. So failure should be expected when I tried to drink less.

If I expected to quit successfully straight away, not only was it illogical, I would have also got my hopes too high and the fall too painful.

Society sees failure as a bad thing, but it’s not. We shouldn’t see failure as a setback, it’s nothing but a necessary step to see how we have tried and progressed.

If it is naturally part of the journey, then the logical next step is to continue to progress and make occasional failures. What we actually want to see, is how the gaps between two points of ‘failures’ have become further and further apart, i.e. how there are more and more sober days in between the two times we drink.

Now that’s empowerment.

About our drinking habits

When we first started drinking, the time we become quite heavily reliant on it, and when we became totally controlled by it, our drinking habits look different.

If you want to reduce your intake today, I think it’s worth taking a harder look at where we’re at today, without judgement and be totally honest:

Do you like the taste of alcohol? What’s your favourite drink(s)?

When do you particularly crave a drink? Stressful times, annoying times, good food, all the time?

Do you prefer to drink with others or on your own?

If you have to pick one occasion to resist a drink, would you feel it’s easy to resist that in front of your friends (and make them keep you accountable), or do you think when you’re alone at home you can resist opening that bottle?

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Drinking alcohol, same as emotional eating, gambling, smoking and compulsive shopping, are all highly emotional events. From my personal experience, knowing my triggering points for drinking are important. We need to know ourselves better to manage ourselves better.

I answered the above questions before I kickstarted my dry January, and 30 days later, I made five important discoveries.

Five things I’ve learned from Dry January

These are not things I’ve learned about myself, but about how to choose not to drink each time I wanted to drink:

Going cold turkey doesn’t work: We don’t need to see alcohol as our enemy, we should see it as a rarity. Something special for celebration or consolation. If an event calls for a glass of champagne, don’t substitute it with kombucha; if there are no events, drink kombucha. That’s my general rule (why kombucha? I discovered this during un-calorific fizzy goodness drinking the 30 days, watch my story here).

Bad and cheap alcohol is damaging: Low-quality alcohol gives us hangovers, bad moods and self-hatred. The whole experience from the start to the next few days are terrible. Drink expensive and well, so that we drink less and become more in the present moment when we taste the drink.

Alcohol substitution: I have made a whole video about substituting alcohol with non-alcoholic drinks. They are actually tasty, I promise.

Activity substitution: But reflecting on my experience, alcohol can be substituted by a whole lot of other activities. This ranges from shouting to a pillow, a hot bath, to exercise, therapy and running to a desert place and screaming (No, I am not joking and I did all of them). My friend is trying to lose weight and I’m trying not to drink, so instead of meeting at a pub, we go for a walk or join a spin class. We swap negronis with protein shakes.

Make new friends and new hobbies: If you’ve been drinking on your own because of any form of sadness or loneliness within you, it might be time to find a new group of friends. The easiest thing to do is join a community sharing the same interest. Choir, tango, tennis, cooking glass, whatever suits you. Loneliness is a big issue and perhaps the no.1 cause of many of our mental illnesses. These new lifestyles also draw you a bit further away from friends you tend to drink with.

If you think your reliance on alcohol is getting quite critical, please seek help.

But knowing this and taking voluntary steps to make a change is already a 100% improvement. We will have to expect failures to come along the way when we accidentally allow ourselves a drink. But instead of seeing it as bad, see it as an empowering moment, you choose to drink this particular drink, but you know you can always refuse the next day or even the next drink.

You must believe in this power within you.

Sobriety might be your main goal now for quitting alcohol, but in fact, it almost always comes alongside other benefits such as getting to know yourself better and developing a healthier lifestyle that is life-changing in the long run.

P.S. subscribe to my newsletter about how to create your dream life through moderation. Headlines are always so extreme and clickbaity. Moderation is my cult and my belief, and it has led me to create the life at 30 years old, not when I retire at 70, where most people thought they’d living their dream life. Check out the free, latest newsletter here, where I question why we have to make life choices, taking inspiration from my failed dry January.