‘Dry January’ as a kick-starter to sobriety
Holly Smith of Penn Township had always been a heavy drinker, but by January 2021 she had begun to see the negative effects alcohol had on her career and her kids. She was making mistakes at work, her three kids were commenting on her drinking and she felt terrible all the time. “On the outside we looked like the picture perfect family. People would dream of the life we had. Inside, I was slowly dying.”
She’d heard about Dry January, a popular health challenge for the “sober curious.” According to data reported by YouGov last year, 15% of all U.S. adults planned to participate in Dry January in 2021, up from 10% the previous year.
Dry January felt like a perfect opportunity to kick the habit on her own, Ms. Smith, 37, thought. She lasted about 2.5 weeks. At that point, she said, “I thought, I must not have a problem if it was that easy to stop, so why continue the challenge?”
But once she ended the challenge, she began drinking more than ever before — often an entire 24-pack of hard seltzer in a single day. By the end of February, she felt that she was on the brink of losing everything and began calling rehabilitation centers. When she contacted Rehabilitation Centers of America in Monroeville, known as RCA, they told her to show up within two hours.
She yelled for her husband, Rob, to grab her suitcase.
A growing body of research indicates that over the nearly two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans have drastically increased their alcohol intake. The American Psychological Association reported in a March 2021 study that one in four Americans are drinking more than they used to, to cope with stress.
As the pandemic enters its third year, many people are reconsidering the amount they’vebeen drinking and exploring what abstaining from alcohol looks like.
Ms. Smith spent 31 days in treatment before heading home to her kids but not her husband. The couple passed each other in the laundry room of the facility — as Ms. Smith’s inpatient treatment ended, Mr. Smith’s began. He acknowledged his own alcoholism and decided to quit along with his wife.
The two are now nine and eight months sober, respectively, and working as mentors to others in recovery. It’s a struggle every day, but they attend support meetings and seek continual reinforcement on their sobriety journey. While Dry January was just the first step on Ms. Smith’s journey to successful sobriety, it provided the impetus she needed to really begin thinking about how alcohol was affecting her life.
Michael Ogden, the chief executive of RCA, the center that helped the Smiths, has seen a sharp increase of those seeking help during the pandemic. The coronavirus, he said, exacerbated addiction.
“There’s a synergistic effect of these two isolated diseases, COVID and addiction, working at the same time.” He said that some who increased alcohol consumption during the past two years to cope will be able to rein it back in once life returns to normal. Not everyone will, though. “For the problem drinkers, now they are back in the office and can’t drink at 2:30 p.m. anymore … that is when people need professional help.”
As with many things over the past two years, treatment for alcoholism has evolved to include virtual options.
Jenn Payne is a recovery coach and sobriety expert at Tempest, an online alcohol treatment program founded by Holly Whitaker, author of “Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed With Alcohol.” She’s also been on a decade-long sobriety journey herself.
“My biggest fear was not giving up my wine. My biggest fear was being seen by our culture as an alcoholic.” For her, other mothers of young kids joking about loving wine trivialized the seriousness of her issue and made her heavy drinking seem normal or even “necessary” to survive life with children.
The culture tends to encourage drinking while cloaking alcoholism with shame and stigma, Ms. Payne said. “We are giving people an opportunity to very quietly examine their relationship with alcohol.” Tempest says it is designed for people who are mildly sober-curious as well as those with a serious addiction, and it has a variety of classes and options available.
Online addiction treatment options like Tempest can sidestep some of the typical barriers to inpatient treatment, such as managing the schedule and the cost. For those who need more support, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has a treatment navigator to help, at https://alcoholtreatment.niaaa.nih.gov/.
Stories like the Smiths’ — functioning alcoholics with jobs and kids who hide their addiction well — are not uncommon.
Alcohol use disorder runs along a spectrum ranging from mild to severe. It can be helpful for many people to examine their relationship with drinking, and Dry January is a great place to start, Ms. Payne said.
“We believe in practicing sobriety,” Ms. Payne said, even in smaller doses. Focusing on mindfulness techniques, she encourages those participating in Dry January to think about how their body feels when they are not drinking.
“Create a life you don’t want to escape from,” she said.