I am not doing Dry January this year. I didn’t do it last year, or the year before that. But I do know, down to the glass, what I drank on every single one of those January days. Two post-new year amarettos on 2 January 2021; two glasses of prosecco on 9 January 2020 (if I’d known what was coming in March, I might have stretched to three); a lone bottle of beer on a Sunday in 2019.
This isn’t some incredible feat of memory. The data is at my fingertips thanks to something I started doing just over five years ago, in late 2017. Every day – or, let’s be realistic, often a few days later – I plug the amount I’ve had to drink into an app.
I should start by saying that this wasn’t sparked by any deep concern about my drinking. (If you’re worried about your alcohol consumption, contact your doctor, or an organisation such as Action on Addiction.) Instead, I had a feeling that I suspect many of the Dry January-curious share: that I wanted slightly more of a handle on what I drank, and to drink slightly less. I thought I was probably within healthy limits, but I wasn’t certain. Not knowing felt like choosing “cash without balance” when getting money out in my twenties: a combination of avoidance and shame that I hadn’t been quite as temperate as I’d meant to be.
All other benefits of moderation aside, tracking freed me of that feeling – it helped me press the “balance please” button and confront the numbers on the screen. I didn’t start with any particular targets, but simply noting what, when and how much I drank. The app I use (which is made by the charity Drinkaware) colour-codes your calendar according to the drinking and no-drinking days, and it was useful to notice that a few green (no-drinking) days in a row left me sleeping better, while a string of blue (drinking) days would have the opposite effect.
Logging my drinks was a constant reminder that some are much stronger than others, and would make the difference between ordering a small over a large, a single over a double. Going sober for the night means later pressing a large “drink free day” button, with the accompanying dopamine kick.
A big part of making the habit stick, and of its value, lies simply in remembering: having a running counter in your head of glasses and sizes, even during an interminable wedding or a confusing series of 2am rounds. Facing down the empty app after a week-long Italian holiday was not an easy task, and I wouldn’t place much stock in the accuracy of some of my data. But forcing yourself to simply notice – not judge, not even necessarily restrict, but notice – what you’re drinking is, I think, a useful step.
I’ve been doing this so long that remembering what I’m drinking has become subconscious, rather than a fun-spongeing, night-out-ruining tallying exercise. But the tracking means that it’s far harder to rely on alcohol as a complete switch-off, an escape from reality: you are always present, quietly counting. For some, that may be a downside, but for me it’s a helpful line in the sand.
Dry January works brilliantly for lots of people, and can, of course, be combined with other forms of alcohol moderation. Where it doesn’t appeal to me – and, I’m sure, to others – is that it is something you can easily fail. I might get a little mixed up on the number of glasses of wine I had and forget to track them for a few days, but I can fix that a week later with the help of a bank statement and some guesswork.
Habits that allow you to make up for the occasional lapse are much easier to stick to than the all-or-nothing of Dry January, which also contains its own get-out clause of, “I’ve had a beer, I’ve failed – that’s the end of that.” Perhaps that’s why I’ve only completed one single Dry January, back in 2016, but have kept up my tracking habit for over 1,800 days.
I don’t blame you if, like more than one of my friends, you think this all sounds a little excessive. Tracking your life can have a dark side – counting calories, for instance, is unsupported by evidence and can lead to over-restriction and disordered eating. But I would argue that alcohol is different. We don’t need to drink it to survive, and a greater sense of control can be a helpful counterweight to a culture that encourages endless drinking around Christmas and total abstention at the beginning of the year.
Which brings me to the million-dollar question: has tracking my drinking actually reduced it? The data suggests that it has – my consumption has been falling over the years, though that could be partly a product of becoming older and more boring. In 2018, I drank 1,055 units – an average of 20 a week. By 2022, it was 770 units (14.8 a week), with around four non-drinking days every week.
What is certainly true is that in 2017, I could not have imagined facing up to those numbers myself, let alone sharing them with strangers. So the app has, without question, given me the thing I went looking for in the first place: a better relationship with alcohol.
• In the UK, Action on Addiction is available on 0300 330 0659. In the US, SAMHSA’s National Helpline is at 800-662-4357. In Australia, the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline is at 1800 250 015; families and friends can seek help at Family Drug Support Australia at 1300 368 186
Barbara Speed is a Guardian Opinion deputy editor
