Dry January is a campaign launched in Britain by the Alcohol Concern group. It is aimed at "social rather than alcohol dependent drinkers", encouraging them with the aid of sponsorship from family and friends, to go off the drink for January.
It has received the support of Alastair Campbell, once described as the second most powerful man in Britain; in truth, the most powerful. It seems on the whole like a pretty good idea. But, of course, it is not.
It is a desperately bad idea.
So bad, indeed, that it seems inevitable that it will be taken up by similar groups in this country, where we have always fancied a month off in January or maybe November, essentially for tactical reasons – to prepare ourselves for another onslaught.
Indeed, I have always found that these months of abstinence are most favoured, not by "social drinkers", whatever they are, but by people with terrible drink problems – it helps to maintain the delusion that they can "give it up whenever they want", whereas of course they have no intention of giving it up, and if anything they are preparing to escalate their drinking to new levels once they have languished for this brief time in purgatory.
Source: Declan Lynch, Irish Independent, 06/01/2013
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