Please note that I am not talking about the weather here. I am talking about that unnatural phenomenon that some people voluntarily embrace this time of the year: abstaining from alcohol for the month of January. Thus "Dry January."
One must think that the person who started this alarming trend had a really bad Holiday Season. No doubt from Thanksgiving until New Years Day this person was tipsy, drunk or hung over every day. I mean: Every. Single. Day. Then on January 1st this person thought "Oh my god, this must stop. For the next thirty days I am not drinking. My liver and kidneys will die otherwise." And that person stopped drinking, at least for a week.
Fast forward several years: "Dry January" becomes a cultural thing. People feel righteous about their commitment to a month of sobriety, like it's going to do them a world of good. They will lose weight! Their skin tone will improve! Their children and friends will like them once again! Their boss will give them a raise or they will win the lottery! Anything is possible with this self-imposed sort of flagellation. Come February 3rd, all that lost weight has been found back on their body, no one likes them any better than they did a month ago, no raise is forthcoming and the lottery..... well, let's just say that dream was like melting ice in a shot glass. Gone and done.
Listen: January is a tough month. Why stop drinking in a month that gives us so much pain: cold, gray, wet days (which I love, by the way), credit card bills from all the crap we bought for Christmas gifts, more Covid variants and a chance to get very sick, ten extra pounds because of the pound of See's Candy consumed on December 28th, resolutions that didn't even last a week, gifts that need to be returned to stores that are cesspools of germs and so many more negative factors. This is when we need a drink! This month fortification is necessary just to survive. If you want to stop drinking for a month, pick a happy month, like April or October. Those months have flare and promise and new seasons. January has nothing except depression, debt and over-indulged dietary concerns.
Of course, since I have almost zero social life, I don't have that Thanksgiving-to-New Year's problem of too many parties, too many cocktails with friends. I have zero parties and zero cocktails with friends during the jovial Holiday Season. (I do have a lot of cocktails, but they are with myself.) Come January, I have not been hung over, nor have I over-indulged (well, except for that pound of See's Candy) in anything except toasted, salted, spicy nuts and hummus. And let me tell you that overindulging in hummus will never get you in trouble. No DUI for hummus, that's for sure!
So my January is not dry. It is not a monsoon, either, just so you know. I am not upending bottles of alcohol at a rapid pace but I do continue to have my cocktail(s) at 5:15 every evening. And then some wine, and then some more and maybe a nightcap and a sleep aid in the form of another nightcap. I sleep well and peacefully, secure in the knowledge that my Dry Month will come sometime in the next ten years, when my social life has picked up and I am out drinking, dancing and dining with friends and my liver needs a break so I will willfully stop drinking for a month week few days.
Yeah. Sure.
Here's looking at you, kid. Cheers!
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