Dry January? Cheers, but I’d much rather have a glass of good pinot noir whenever the fancy takes me!

LAST weekend found me celebrating my son’s 30th birthday at a private drinks party in the upstairs room of a well-known Dublin pub. The atmosphere was terrific and the wine was flowing as I mingled with a few family members and chatted to my son’s friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen for far longer than a decade.

As I joked with one of them that the last time we’d talked was when I’d taken him to the pantomime when he was about ten, he suddenly noticed that my glass was empty and asked if he could fetch me another drink.

‘Yes, please,’ I replied. ‘I’ll have a sparkling water.’

‘Water?’ he shrieked. ‘Why are you drinking water? Don’t tell me you’re doing that Dry January thing!’

I assured him that I most definitely was not doing that Dry January thing, that I had never in my adult life done that Dry January thing and that I certainly wasn’t starting now.

It was just that, for all kinds of reasons on the night in question, I had opted to drive. I’d had a glass of wine when I arrived and now I was on the water. Simple as that.

For many people, however, the challenge of eschewing alcohol for the first 31 days of the year has become part and parcel of their lives.

And it’s a challenge that they choose to rise to, some every single year, others on only occasional Januarys. And fair play to them for rising to that challenge. But it’s not for me.

Denial

Not because I think I couldn’t do it, but rather because I don’t want to do it. It’s a completely personal opinion but I simply don’t see the point in it, to be honest. Denial for the sake of denial is never, in my book, a good idea.

Maybe it’s also because I’m not much of a joiner. I’m just not great at the whole collective thing, that all-in-it-together syndrome.

Everybody is different, so why do loads of very different people try to behave in the same way at the same time?

I’m not a big drinker. Oh, I’ve had my moments, of course, but as I get older I’m finding that I like to savour rather than slurp. And nowadays I’d prefer one glass of ‘good’ wine with my dinner over two or three glasses of plonk.

I’m also somewhat restricted when it comes to alcohol choices. I’ve never drunk beer of any kind and I don’t like spirits – apart from an occasional gin and tonic in the summer. The problem there, however, is that because I don’t generally indulge in that direction and because it’s such a refreshing drink, I tend to gulp it down as if it’s lemonade.

Because I never took to beer, I drank cider all the time when I was young – in my student days and beyond – but I really don’t like it anymore.

And anyway, someone of my age drinking cider is, frankly, just ridiculous.

So, wine it is. Red or white. New world or old. I’m happy to indulge in any of those directions although I’m particularly partial to a good-quality pinot noir.

I have no hard-and-fast rules about my drinking. Such thinking simply goes against the grain.

But generally I find that I rarely drink wine during the week anymore, but almost always have a few glasses on weekend nights – either out with friends or home alone and plugged into Netflix.

Given a particular set of circumstances, however, I could just as easily drink two glasses of wine on a Tuesday evening and not touch a drop on a Saturday.

It’s the proscription thing that I object to. Which is one of the reasons why Dry January isn’t for me.

Torture

There are other reasons too, however. Like the fact that once January is over, most New-Year teetotallers head straight back to their old routine, with many actually drinking more in the first couple of weeks of February than would be their norm.

But they feel better, I hear you say (including a few friends of mine who are currently on the January denial torture wheel). And yes, perhaps they do.

But for anyone who is a heavy drinker, the medical evidence shows that a month off alcohol does not repair an alreadyshot liver.

And if your health isn’t in trouble any- way, then why avoid a few pleasurable glasses of wine, or the occasional Jameson, if that’s how the mood takes you? What’s the point in trying to prove a point? Particularly to yourself.

Dry January is a fad. And, for some people, it’s an excuse to feel just that little bit smug and self-righteous.

I couldn’t believe my ears last year when, out socialising one night in January, I heard one woman in the gathering sanctimoniously refuse a drink in a manner that suggested that she was even offended to be asked such a thing.

I had seen the same woman, just a few weeks earlier, so inebriated that she practically fell over on the pavement outside a restaurant in town.

I know it’s a cliché, but that old ‘everything in moderation’ adage isn’t such a bad guideline. Including moderation, of course, for there’s no fun to be had in permanent rigidity.

Escapist

Have I ever gone for a long period of time without a glass of wine? Yes, I have. Sometimes I just haven’t got around to it and days and days have gone by without any alcohol passing my lips.

After my husband died, I didn’t drink for weeks and weeks when I was on my own.

Why not? Because I was scared that, in my grief, and without anyone there to call a halt, I wouldn’t stop.

And while there were times I craved, absolutely yearned for that kind of escapist, shadowland alcohol-induced head-space, I knew in my heart that it would do me more harm than good.

And that it wouldn’t solve the problem. That I’d wake up the next day and he still wouldn’t be there.

So I stopped until I felt that I could sit down at home, on my own, and have a glass of wine without emptying the bottle.

Did I miss it? Yes, I did. Just as most people doing Dry January miss being able to have the odd, or the frequent, drink, depending on their normal alcohol pattern.

Dry January does help with the postChristmas finances, of course, and people who generally drink to some degree every day will also probably find that they lose some weight.

Both of which are undeniable upsides of the month-long denial. But there are lots of ways to skin the same cat – if you like a glass of wine but also exercise regularly, for example, your weight tends to remain stable.

It is, of course, horses for courses. But at this stage in my life, if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that the Dry January ride simply isn’t for me.