Dry December: I’ve given up drinking this party season and this is what you should know

“Why don’t I try doing Christmas party season sober?”

I regret these words the instant they leave my mouth. I’m not even sure where they came from, as surprising as they are spontaneous. Surely this isn’t something I’m seriously considering? Dry December?? What a horrifying prospect!

And yet those words did come out of my mouth, at a pitch meeting no less. Though unplanned, the notion must have been bubbling somewhere at the back of my brain before forcing its way out. The fact that I have said it out loud – have suggested, unasked, that I commit to writing about a booze-free festive period – means that I must want accountability. Some part of me, however small or subconscious, wants a reason to try.

It might have something to do with last December, a month in which I drank daily for at least 31 consecutive days. This wasn’t intentional, more a natural byproduct of the non-stop carousel of Christmas soirees. Lurching between being tipsy and groggily hungover was inevitably accompanied by appalling sleep and further excess, resulting in the kind of nutritional choices whose natural endpoint was surely gout (deep-fried cheese, anyone?). By the time I reached the New Year, I felt so rancid that I embarked upon the most spartan health kick of my life, adopting a whole foods diet and cutting all sugar and alcohol for the next 10 weeks.

Looking down the barrel of another December, I just wasn’t sure I could handle putting my body – and, more specifically, liver – through all that again. I didn’t want to feel controlled by alcohol either, to experience the uneasy sense that booze, rather than me, was the one in the driving seat. And yet the idea of spending party season completely off the sauce was mildly terrifying.

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Like great swathes of Britons, I have a, shall we say… complex relationship with alcohol. The number of British binge drinkers went up by 13 per cent between 2016 and 2019, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report; more specifically, British women are now the biggest female binge drinkers in the world, OECD data revealed.

Very few people I know, myself included, would be classed as “moderate” drinkers by NHS standards, and yet no one I know would admit to having any kind of issue or dependency. In fact, a binge-drinking session is defined as consuming six (for women) or eight (for men) units of alcohol in one sitting, equating to just three pints or two large glasses of wine. By this definition, pretty much everyone I know is binge drinking several times a week.

“It’s such a part of the fabric of our society; we use alcohol to celebrate, commiserate, to drown our feelings, to build relationships,” points out Rosamund Dean, author of Mindful Drinking: How to Break Up with Alcohol. “Lots of us have grown up in a world in which we’ve never socialised sober, apart from when we were children.”

Whether child-free and heading out for bottomless brunch of a weekend or winding down every evening after the kids have gone to bed with a G&T, we have silently imbibed the message that alcohol is the correct response to any and all situations.

And the holiday season is, undoubtedly, a much harder time to abstain than the rest of the year. The number of social engagements goes up alongside stress levels, as the pressure to have the “perfect” Christmas is coupled with the stark reality that many of us actually have very tricky relationships with our nearest and dearest. Drinking through the passive-aggressive comments or casual slights peppered throughout a festive meal with family can often feel like the only sane solution.

As Catherine Gray, the author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and the upcoming Little Addictions: Freedom from Our Tiny But Mighty Compulsions, puts it: opting to go teetotal at this time of year “is like the bushtucker challenge of no drinking. It’s like skipping the 10km race and going straight to running a marathon”.

And yet December can actually be a good time to go on the wagon, counterintuitive as that may seem. After all, doing Dry January proves nothing other than that you’re able to resist “temptation” when spending a month indoors, skint and with little human contact. The real test lies in socialising minus the Dutch courage.

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“There’s always going to be an excuse: there’s always going to be a wedding, or a birthday party, or a work party,” says Kayla Lyons, the author of Soberish: The Science-Based Guide to Taking Your Power Back from Alcohol and founder of the Join Soberish and 1,000 Hours Dry online communities. “If you start now, then you are going to prove to yourself you can get through a really hard time, which is going to be a real confidence booster.”

So how can I up my chances of staying the course with temptation at every turn?

The experts recommend interrogating the reasons for taking a break. Maybe it’s to swerve the crippling hangxiety that always follows an evening out; maybe it’s to ensure you feel sharp instead of fuzzy-headed at work; maybe it’s for health reasons or to improve your sleep. “Keeping that thing really, really clear in your mind – the reason why you want to drink less alcohol – is a powerful motivator,” says Dean.

This is a clever technique to convince your brain that you’ve got this. Lyons recommends writing from the perspective of your future self. She says: “I’ll write, ‘Hey, Kayla, it’s Kayla 30 days from now – you just crushed it. I’m so proud of you. Who knew you could deal with Uncle Earl’s talk about how great Trump is for 30 minutes without downing the tequila?’” When you get to read that letter in a month, and it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy, “you build self-love, self-discipline and self-control,” she adds. “It’s such a good feeling to make yourself proud.”

Got an event? Picture yourself going out and the challenges that may arise. “If you’re put in a triggering situation, how are you going to handle it?” asks Lyons. “Because a lot of times when people end up taking a drink when they don’t mean to, it’s because they’re caught off guard and they feel obligated or anxious. Prepare yourself – visualise yourself saying no.” And picture yourself saying “yes”, too, followed by the poor decisions that will likely follow. “I call it the apology tour that you’ll be taking,” says Lyons. “All those little bad decisions that knock at your insecurities and your confidence.”

Having allies is key; tell your inner circle of trusted friends in advance that you’re going dry so that they can cheerlead and support, plus help deflect people trying to push alcohol on you. “If you talk about it in advance, you can be in it together,” advises Dean.

When we’re at a party or in a bar, we’re used to having a drink constantly in hand – and we’re used to sipping it frequently, because physiologically we feel thirsty when we’re nervous (a common side-effect of throwing ourselves into a new social setting). Gray refers to “incentive salience”, a process by which certain cues are associated with reward: “A big reason why we walk into a social setting and crave alcohol is that we’re surrounded by cues,” she explains. “There are wine glasses on tables, we can see the bar, hear the pour of drinks and pop of corks; it all triggers dopamine, which is the ‘wanting’ hormone.”

Having a glass permanently in your grasp is incredibly useful for avoiding temptation – plus it can avoid awkward conversations about why you’re not drinking. “You can order an alcohol-free gin and tonic, a lime and soda or a kombucha and have it in a wine glass, or an alcohol-free beer like a Lucky Saint,” says Dean. “You can do stealthy non-drinking.” When going to someone’s house, it’s all about preparation – buy your own booze-free drinks beforehand and take them along.

The initial half hour to 45 minutes at a social event is usually when the temptation to take the edge off is highest. Steel yourself for that part to be hard, knowing that if you can get through that, “the easier it becomes”, says Dean. Gray recommends stepping outside or going to the toilet and taking some deep breaths if you feel overwhelmed. “Parties are confronting when [you] don’t have a disinhibitor,” she advises. “Plan circuit breaks.”

Many of our friends and acquaintances may end up being more of a hindrance than a help when we go dry, responding antagonistically and piling on the judgement or peer pressure. In which case, there’s no harm in a little fib. “If you need to lie, then lie,” says Lyons. “Say, ‘I’m on antibiotics,’ or ‘I’m driving tonight,’ or ‘I’m getting over a virus.’ Whatever you need to do to protect your peace.”

If you’re still at the party when you don’t want to be there any more, that’s a “danger point”, says Gray. Don’t rely on someone else to take you home and have a plan in place. Oh, and don’t feel the need to say goodbye when you want to leave, either. “Do a French exit,” she adds. “No one will notice.”

This is a term used in addiction circles, referring to behaviour that (hopefully) means you can’t drink. A good example is driving yourself to an event – you need to stay sober to get yourself home. You can also take steps that, while not quite “binding”, are certainly incentivising. Lyons recommends booking an early gym class or similar the morning after the night before. “Commit to it, sign up for that 7am class, and you’re probably going to go, because nobody wants to get charged,” she says.

Falling off the wagon doesn’t mean you should scrap the whole project – advice that comes in handy when I end up reneging on my pledge at the work Christmas party (it simply feels too daunting to spend five hours awkwardly dancing in front of colleagues without a drop of prosecco in my bloodstream).

But it’s not the failure that matters, says Lyons – it’s what you do next. “Give yourself grace,” she says wisely. “Remind yourself, I’m committing to this, I’m putting a brick in the wall every day to make a new foundation. You don’t need to sledgehammer the whole thing over one brick. You don’t get to put the brick in the wall that day; you get to sit and intentionally think, ‘Why did I drink? What did I learn?’ And then tomorrow, when you don’t drink, you get to put the brick in again.”

Remind yourself of all the upsides to not drinking – and write them down if helpful. “You have your wits about you in a social situation when you’re not drinking,” says Dean. “You can remember people’s names, what’s going on in their lives. You can have more meaningful conversations, rather than just drunkenly talking over them or not really listening. It makes you a better friend and a better party goer.”

Then there’s skipping the next day, nausea, headaches and anxiety. And a whole new world opens up when one realises that, though initially challenging, socialising is totally doable while stone-cold sober. “Honestly, you will eventually feel like this is way better,” says Dean. “Knowing that you can enjoy yourself without drinking is such an empowering feeling.”