The wheels come off Dry January (and that's OK)

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🍸 Have you embarked on Dry January? Many have, buoyed by the promise of a New Year fresh start and the indulgences of the festive season. The BBC reminds us there’s been a long history of temperance, driven by moralists and mill owners, even if the modern movement was invented by an anti-alcohol charity in 2013. But it’s possible to discern a backlash out there: a spirit - no pun intended - of “to hell with it” that’s slightly more vehemently stated this year.

“Queen of wellness” Ashley Baker wrote at length in The Times (£) this week about Just Wanting A Drink: “There is only so much joy one can wring from a packet of low-sugar digestives and a new season of Slow Horses,” even if her new Oura ring was full of praise “for sleeping with the intensity and purpose of a cocker spaniel on its deathbed.”

Dean Stattmann, writing in GQ, saved lots of money and enjoyed not having hangovers during a three-month test of sobriety last summer. “Despite all that,” he writes, “it wasn’t long before I realized that my new sober life hadn’t made me any happier. In fact, it seemed to be taking a subtle, indirect toll on my mental health.” The favourite bits of his life, it turns out, were passing him by.

That’s a point frequently made by social commentator Scott Galloway, who entertainingly posits that young people need, urgently, to “drink more and make a series of bad decisions which might pay off”. Young men, in particular, are at risk of turning into “a different species of asexual, socially isolated lonely people who become shitty citizens”.

And for divine inspiration, we can turn to Melanie McDonagh in the Catholic Herald this week, who says both the weather, and the Church, are telling us: “down with Dry January”. Writes McDonagh: “I have been campaigning for years now against both Dry January and Veganuary, and it is interesting how receptive people are to the backlash.

“The proper time to give up meat and drink is, of course, Lent,” she adds. “This year it begins early, on 18 February, but that is still far more fitting than January. The days are lengthening; the darkness has lifted; things are stirring underground. And, of course, Sundays do not count.”

Amen to that?

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