Why a Dry December might be the best way to end the year

Dry December. It doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it?

Reading time: 4 minutes

I doubt a charity or business is going to pick up that idea and run with it as a wellbeing initiative or fundraiser, and that's because it would be way too out there, too unusual, too difficult to sell as a concept, too odd, too hard to explain, and frankly, unrealistic in their eyes, I suspect. Or is it? In 2019, I decided to give myself a break from alcohol. I was planning to start on the 1st January 2020, but as the clock was counting down, I decided I could actually just start in December.

I had been waiting until the new year to start my “Sober Year” because, well, all good resolutions start in January don’t they? Well, no – not always. I don’t know about you but I have never had a resolution work out for me all the way from January 1^st to December 31^st. My new year resolutions usually last a couple of weeks, that’s for a whole host of different reasons but I was desperate for this goal to be different.

I decided to do a Dry December instead of a Dry January… why wait? I was only “wasting my own time,’ as my favourite teacher used to say. When I woke up on 8th December 2019, I didn't have a crushing hangover. I had had 2 gin and tonics the night before. We'd been to friends, had dinner, had fun, and slept over. I made myself the ‘cocktail waitress’ and made sure that easy time I topped up my drink I only put tonic in my glass. It felt good to get up the next day and know the last of my drinking had been done for a while. I was glad not to have a big rock bottom moment.

I didn't tell anyone else my plan. I decided I wouldn't drink in December as a warm up to the whole of 2020 sober. Surely, if I could do December then the start of the next year would be easier. And I think I was probably right. December could be perceived as the most difficult month to do sober because of all the socialising, but once I had set my mind to it I was actually okay. I didn't buy myself any Christmas booze. I made plans for how I would tackle my work night out, my friend's big Christmas night out, my Mom friends, and all of the rest of the activities that were in my diary.

I treated myself with nice alcohol free drinks and good food through the month. I educated myself by listening to podcasts like Drink Less; Live Better and reading books in the genre that some people call quit lit, the books that are either scientific or perhaps memoirs about people's drinking and people's choice to stop drinking. A Dry December might sound weird to you, but I enjoy a little bit of weirdness in my life. I do enjoy being an outlier now more than I ever did before when I was drinking.

A Dry December then. It's unusual. I'm unusual. Are you ready to be unusual and embrace this season?