Does anyone else feel like Dry January was especially personified this year? Thanks to the omnipresence of meme culture, she took the form of this villainous giant to whom your friends were devoted—like the second coming of Jim Jones but this time, the kool-aid’s forbidden. There was something hypnotic about the promise of solved problems and pounds shed at the 31-day finish line. I hopped on board and made all my friends hate me!
I’ll begin by stating that it wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The reading-writing-cooking-exercising hermit in me was quietly relieved to have an excuse to miss nights out in favor of those activities. However, you don’t realize how central casual drinking is to your life until you cut it out. Work days feel longer without a single happy hour on the horizon. Brunch loses its champagne-tinted luster. It’s less cool watching sports that you don’t understand when you aren’t buzzed enough to pretend you do. You keep, “haha yeah I’ll go, but I can’t drink!” as an easy copy/paste text message response. You follow that with, “nevermind, I’m not feeling well,” because when you think about attending said function without a little booze, you suddenly really don’t feel well.
My darkest moment of Dry January was Philly Restaurant Week. I had a reservation at Mercato, an Italian BYOB in the Gayborhood, with four of my girlfriends. I watched glasses of Pinot Noir pour as I twirled my spicy squid ink bucatini around my fork. Everything turns sullen and gray when you can’t have your red. It was in this moment I became hyper-aware that I am my mother’s child. I didn’t cave that night, but I surrendered to the knowledge that wine is in my blood. The days to follow sparked some eerily invasive vino cravings. And come January 21st, I cracked on a shitty $9 glass of Cab.
I quit Dry January early because it was oppressive.
I initially partook in this commitment to sobriety because I felt ashamed of my relationship with alcohol. I wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t need it to have fun (and that I could stick something out for a month). What I learned was I have a sacred relationship with beverages that I was done denying for bragging rights. Call me crazy (I totally am), but I feel deeply connected to my higher self when regularly drinking my “big four”: water, coffee, kombucha, and wine. They work in tandem as the nectar that keeps my vessel moving through the universe. Sprinkle in a pressed juice every now and then and I’m nearly transcendent. Did I just use some wookery to defend my inability to not drink for a month? Perhaps, but I feel it’s all true. And I’m learning that speaking my truth is the most important thing I can do, no matter how batshit it may be.
Alcohol means more to me than getting drunk. Quite frankly, I don’t even enjoy getting fully drunk anymore. But I LOVE rituals. I love the essence of unwinding with a drink and the shared experience between people. I’m the kind of person who derives infinite meaning from the simplest acts.
Now that we’re one week into February, how did I celebrate the end of Dry January when I quit on the 21st? Y’already know. Cheers to never doing that again.