Declan Lynch

Declan Lynch’s tales of addiction

On Sober October and Dry November

Did you Go Sober for October?

It started last year in the UK, when about 75,000 people did indeed Go Sober for October, raising £5m for Macmillan Cancer Support. Which is obviously a very good thing. And the fact that a lot of people went off the drink for a few weeks is not entirely a bad thing, either — I wouldn’t put it any stronger than that.

Then again, you may have skipped going Sober for October in order to partake of the traditional Dry November, and are now preparing for a resumption of hostilities in December — traditionally, the drinker who has endured the sufferings of Dry November will feel morally entitled to make up for all that with a particularly ferocious Yuletide campaign.

And in some cases, the November drought has no moral aspect at all, it is an open statement that the drinker is saving all his resources

— physical, emotional and financial — for the bacchanalian orgy that is to come.

After that, there is the prospect of a period of recuperation in Dry January, another of the recent additions to these strategic withdrawals, these Lenten experiments.

So we’ve got Sober October, and Dry November, and Dry January, and there seems no reason to stop there — it is just a matter time until we’re looking at Feck It for February, Make an Effort in March, and Alcohol-Free April. But of course, not one after the other.

It’s a matter of time in every respect, because it will never go beyond a month. For the vast majority who go Sober for October, it is inconceivable that they will carry it on through Dry November. They are only trying to make a contribution here; they are not medieval martyrs.

No, it has somehow been established down through the ages, that a month is the perfect amount of time for a person to temporarily stand back from the action, as it is long enough to appear meaningful, but not long enough to actually be meaningful.

There is one undoubted benefit which flows from it — the mere fact that a person is making a decision not to drink, for whatever reason, gives them some experience at least of what this feels like, in a culture in which drinking in general is an automatic impulse. You might find that you enjoy being able to make this choice, that it might even become a habit.

But for the most part, this is a temporary thing, and it can be quite strange for those of us who have been ‘dry’ for more than a month, indeed, for many months, to read of the hardship which a few weeks off the beer can cause.

Anticipating these oceans of grief, in the UK, the Go Sober for October campaign had as its ‘headline partner’ the Appletiser company, which created delicious ‘mocktail’ recipes containing their fruit juice.

Ah yes, the ‘mocktail’ sounds to me a bit like our old friend, the non-alcoholic beer. I will be dealing in depth with the phenomenon of the alcohol-free beers and wines in a soon-to-come episode of 50 Ways, but suffice to say for now that when it comes to Bad Ideas of the 20th Century, the beer-that-isn’t-really-beer is right up there along with, say, jazz fusion.

Still, it seemed to get some of the heroes of Go Sober for October through ‘the wall’ that they would start to hit around the 20th of the month, when they would let out a cry of anguish on Twitter

— maybe they were at a restaurant, having this great meal, tormented by the absence of red, red wine. Or it might just be a howl of existential despair at the utter pointlessness of life without booze.

But I understand this too, I understand it deeply. I could never give up drink for as long as a month — like a lot of people of my disposition, I just give it up for today.

And that, I have found, is long enough.

“A month is long enough to appear meaningful, but not long enough to actually be meaningful”