MARTEL MAXWELL: Pickled December was fun but I’m ready for Dry January

Happy New Year. How was it for you? And how do you feel now we’re in 2023?

Pensive, excited, melancholy, optimistic, worried, happy, fulfilled?

Pickled?

As December comes to an end, I always feel as if I’ve been marinated in a vat of booze, until I reach the point when my body shouts ENOUGH.

Take Christmas day: the one day of the year when it’s perfectly acceptable to have a glass of fizz at 6.30am while opening presents with the kids.

There are strong coffees next. Otherwise the roasties and sprouts would never get done.

But there’s also a constant flow of drinks, with so much food that drunkeness never sets in.

Add in all those nights out, when inhibitions are thrown to the wind in a whirl of sequins and popping corks, and the feeling you’re left with?

I’m sticking with pickled.

With every up must come a down and now I really do want – need – a rest.

It’s why I’ve done Dry January – taking the month off booze – for the past three years.

Not because everyone else seems to be doing it (though they do) but because I want and need to restore some equilibrium.

And to prove I can.

Is Dry January necessary now we all drink at home?

The over-doing of drinks might be more extreme but for a lot of us, it is not limited to December.

Over dinner with pals, someone asked how much we all drank.

Of the six – three couples – all admitted to at least sometimes going over the recommended weekly limit of 14 units a week.

One person called that “a good night out”. Another laughed: “It’s a good start.”

One friend is a doctor who also admitted to not always sticking to the recommended limit.

He always tries his best though, telling us: “There is a correlation between regular over-drinking – not even to the point of drunkeness but the half or whole bottle on random weekdays in front of the telly – and problems later in life.”

We fell silent until his wife told him to stop killing Christmas and using big words.

Alcohol is a risk factor in more than 60 conditions.

Including, seven types of cancer, heart disease and depression – Try Dry this Jan with Dry January's official app: https://t.co/YYPiXyB9hg #DryJanuary pic.twitter.com/tR35BuvaWu

— Dry January (@dryjanuary) January 2, 2023

Over-drinking might be a societal norm but it’s not new.

I remember waving my grandad off to the pub – the clubbie perhaps or The Rowan Tree.

It’s what people (men particularly) did after a hard day’s graft.

He was a plasterer by day, bar-propper-upper, dominos champ and “good laugh Davie” by night.

But would he ever open a can of beer in his house alone?

Not a chance.

His drinking was only ever done in the pub or if he had company at home.

I wonder if that’s the difference now.

The taboo of having a wee drink at home for no particular reason is gone and the nights and units can fair mount up.

I’m ready for Dry January, who’s with me?

Four of the six friends at our table were going to attempt Dry January, although one wasn’t sure she’d manage, given she only lasted until the 9th last year.

The other two were intending to cut their drinking down to weekends only.

I loved our honesty.

Thinking about #DryJanuary? It's not too late!

Here are 10 reasons to give Dry January a go https://t.co/UPOFEaz0sI pic.twitter.com/XfyW40YGnX

— Alcohol Change UK (@AlcoholChangeUK) January 2, 2023

It’s only by talking about it that you realise how widespread the habit is.

And we’re lucky that’s all it is with us: a habit we can keep or break.

A glass of wine or a cold beer is the thing we use to draw the line under a hard day at work, to chill out when the kids are asleep, to commiserate, celebrate, unwind…

It feels like a treat, an adult way to help a chaotic day melt away.

But while other nations like a drink too, we have a reputation in Britain for binge drinking and in Scotland for loving alcohol so much we could fill a book with names for how it makes us feel.

Stocious, sloshed, trolleyed, buckled, awa wi it, steamboats, steaming, oot the game, aff yer head, rubbered…

The list goes on.

And all to the tune of slainte mhath, or good health.

Except as the doctors point out, it’s probably not doing much good for our health.

And so Dry January calls.

Thirty-one whole days with not so much as a bottle of chilled fizz winking at me from the fridge at the end of the day.

But it’s a call I have to answer, and good luck if you’re attempting it too.

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