In November & December of 2023, I had a few too many Friday/Saturday nights and happy hours that led to slow-recovery hangover days. Not anything close to “drinking every night”, but I figured it was a good year to jump on the hype train and give Dry January a shot.

Impact on drinking

Going into the month, I knew I had a Friday-Sunday long weekend golf trip where it would be tough to avoid alcohol…so I just decided to skip dry January for those days. Besides that, I consumed two alcoholic drinks. The first was out at dinner at Semma a few days into January. My GF Annie and I were so focused on all the food options that when the waiter asked “Anything to drink?”, by force of habit I frantically flipped the menu to the cocktails and ordered the first tequila drink I saw. I realized my mistake when the the drink arrived a few minutes later, & Annie was quick to point out “You’re doing Dry January, right 👀?”. But I wasn’t going to let an $18 cocktail go to waste, so I just drank it.

The other time was watching the CFB championship at a bar. The friend I was watching with encouraged me to drink with him, and I felt weird sitting at a bar for 3h without ordering a drink (we did eat dinner), so I drank one light beer.

The central alcohol-specific takeaways I had were:

  1. It’s easy for me not to drink in most situations. Working a bit late at the office or eating a standard weekday dinner, I had 0 desire to drink anything (aside from wine Annie occasionally cooks Italian food with).
  2. You hear stories about “I stopped drinking and instantly felt 10x better!”. That was not me. I didn’t notice a physical difference at all aside from less time hungover.
  3. It’s hard for me not to drink in certain social situations like bars/clubs/sit down dinners.
  4. I already knew this, but Damp January really nailed it home: the NYC social scene (or at least my slice of it) is heavily alcohol based. Whether with coworkers/friends at a bar, or Annie and me figuring out an activity after a dinner out, not drinking felt like a damper on doing stuff.
  5. I don’t really feel like I need to drink less - going out 1-3x a week doesn’t seem to impact my physical health much, and not doing it just makes things less fun for the most part.

Cold turkey experiments

The other recent experiment I’ve done similar to this was quitting Instagram Reels. Unlike alcohol, I was heavily addicted Reels for a month or two in 2023. I found myself coming home after work and spending hours just sitting on the couch scrolling through endless fast-food-content videos. After trying and failing to use screen time to limit usage, I decided to just uninstall Instagram. I was sad to miss Stories and the occasional DMs with friends, but it didn’t feel like the end of the world. After a month and a half or so, I redownloaded Instagram to see the stuff I missed aside from Reels, and interestingly also feel like I’ve cured the Reels addiction. I no longer find myself compulsively opening Instagram, and can easily pull myself away after looking at a Reel or two.

While the alcohol experiment wasn’t quite as 100% positive as when I quit reels, there was a parallel between the two experiences. I enjoyed testing my willpower to cold-turkey quit a habit with some unhealthy aspects, even if the habit isn’t all bad. So I’m gonna keep trying cold-turkey months for at least the next two of 2024:

February: No sweets. I’d gotten into a pretty bad habit of having some kind of sweet 2x/day, with my afternoon coffee and then at night after dinner, which is definitely too often to be healthy. But wow, sugar addiction is a real thing. So far this has been the hardest one to kick yet.

March: Ambitious, but I’m going to see if I can do no caffeine. I like caffeine, and frankly I think it’s almost surely a net positive for me, but I just want to see what life is like without it.