Alcohol / Dry January

Yep, Dry January is apparently a thing. So is Sober October.

Back in the day you would just decide to cut out alcohol for a month and that’s it. Nowadays you need to give your challenge a funny name that rhymes with the month when you do the challenge. Alright, fine by me if it helps people.

I actually had my last alcoholic beverage on the 19th of October 2015.

On the 20th of October 2015 I wrote to my friend with whom I had drinks the day before:

I’m a vegan, anti-alcohol gym-goer as of tomorrow

Uwe Dreissigacker, 20/10/2015

Little did I know that more than four years later I still wouldn’t touch any alcohol. Not because I’m still hungover and not because I’m disgusted by the taste or smell of it. Simply because it made “click” in my head.

There are a ton of reasons why I currently don’t drink alcohol. (Maybe enough reason another blog post some day…) And yes, not even a little sip. Not even on New Year’s Eve or on my birthday or when there’s a special occasion.

The amount of people who assume not drinking alcohol still includes a few drinks here and there is astonishing!

And that’s one of the big problems in our society.

A few years ago the UK revised their alcohol guidelines and slashed their recommended upper consumption per week in about half. The UK “now has one of the one of the lowest recommended upper limits for alcohol consumption by men in the world”.

In comparison Spain seems to be a country of drunkards with upper limits more than twice that of UK men.

I liked that change in suggested upper limits by the UK medical board. It’s a step in the right direction and it basically puts a majority of people into the category of being alcoholics as far as I’m concerned.

And that’s actually what I think of a lot of people. If someone can’t stop drinking alcohol for at least 3 months at a time they’ve got a problem.

I actually don’t have a problem with alcohol. I might drink alcoholic beverages at some point in my life again. However, if you can’t completely abstain from alcohol for an extended period of time, then that’s a problem in my opinion.

So why not challenge yourself to a sober Q1 2020?