Dry January is the perfect opportunity to start 2025 on a high. The annual campaign, run by Alcohol Change UK, sees thousands of people each year quit alcohol for an entire month, often in the hopes of reaping some health benefits.
Yet, Dr Alasdair Scott at Selph, has now warned Brits against making one crucial error. It’s especially relevant if you’re guilty of glugging one too many beers during the festive season.
“When it comes to Dry January, there is a perception that this is an opportunity to give your liver a ‘break’, to make up for the excesses of December and the New Year,” he said. “But the reality is, you can’t simply reset or detox the impacts of alcohol on your health in a month. It’s a bit like a crash diet, in that you do it for a short period of time and you lose some weight, but it’s difficult to keep up so you just end up going back to what you did before and the weight goes back on.
“Whilst cutting out alcohol for one month will leave you feeling much more energised and will help you to sleep better, there is very little benefit if you then continue to drink heavily once January is over.” NHS England is among various health bodies to warn of alcohol’s long-term dangers, including high blood pressure, liver disease, strokes and various cancers.
Current guidelines urge Brits to drink no more than 14 alcoholic ‘units’ over the course of three or more days – equivalent to six medium (175ml) glasses of wine, or six pints of 4% beer. Rather than going ‘cold turkey’ for Dry January in 2025, Dr Scott believes it could be more sustainable to cut your alcohol intake by a small amount each week.
In turn, this could help to stave off cravings for your drink of choice, while making a significant impact to your health. He explained: “For example, for someone who drinks at the upper limit of UK guidelines (14 units or 7 drinks a week) will drink 728 units a year.
“If they stop drinking entirely in January, but resume average drinking behaviour afterwards, they’ll be down to 672 units for the year. In contrast, if they just cut down to 10 units a week, their consumption for the year will be 520 units – a far better outcome.
“Dry January could be the start of a new lifestyle in which less alcohol is consumed. If those new behaviours are maintained, it doesn’t even need to be ‘dry’. Life is for living, and low-level alcohol use, particularly in social settings, can absolutely be compatible with a healthy lifestyle.”
Beyond this, Dr Scott also encouraged drinkers to follow the ’20-minute rule’ when going out for drinks this festive season. As the name suggests, this simply involves taking a 20-minute break after finishing one drink, allowing you to process whether or not you truly want another.
He said: “Having this time to pause in between drinks will allow you to process whether you are, in fact, craving more, or if you actually feel tired and as though you’ve had enough. It also just slows down your drinking generally, so over the course of a night, you will automatically drink less this way.”
In light of Dr Scott’s views, Dr Richard Piper, CEO at Alcohol Change UK, asserted that The Dry January challenge isn’t ‘about stopping drinking forever or just giving your liver a break so you can crack back on as usual afterwards’. Instead, he claimed that it is ‘carefully designed by behaviour change experts to help you break habits and make long-term changes’.
Speaking to Reach, he said: “The Dry January challenge is designed by behaviour change experts at Alcohol Change UK precisely to help people cut down and get back to controlled, moderate, low risk drinking over the long-term. It’s the circuit breaker that many people need to reset their relationship with alcohol. Just trying to cut back, without first having a proper break of a month, is much harder.
“We know this is what a huge proportion of people are keen to achieve, as not only are 15.5 million people in the UK planning to have an alcohol-free month this January, one in five want to drink less throughout 2025. When it comes to seeing more of the benefits and achieving lasting changes to our drinking habits, there is a very big difference between attempting to avoid alcohol for 31-days on our own (a sort of DIY approach) compared with taking part in the Dry January® challenge by Alcohol Change UK.
“The independent research is clear, that those who participate in the Dry January® challenge using our free tools including our Try Dry app, daily coaching emails and active online community, not only double their chances of having a completely alcohol-free 31 days but have a better, more successful experience during and after January itself. That’s why it’s so important for people to take part in the Dry January challenge by Alcohol Change UK using the Try Dry app or our other tools and resources than just trying to go dry on their own.”
Independent studies also suggest that ‘70% of Dry January participants’ who used the campaign’s free tools ‘are still drinking less alcohol’ and experiencing ‘lower alcohol health risks’, according to Dr Piper. He added: “Also, while the Dry January challenge is 31 days alcohol-free during the month of January, it isn’t about stopping drinking forever or just giving your liver a break so you can crack back on as usual afterwards.
“Nor does it end on 1 February. It’s carefully designed by behaviour change experts to help you break habits and make long-term changes.
“…Many people that have participated in the Dry January challenge with Alcohol Change UK tell us that after this reset, armed with all the positive impacts they’ve experienced, they’ve successfully returned to a low level of drinking or not drinking at all – 13% decide to stay alcohol free for a bit longer, and 86% decide to cut back for the rest of the year.”