Booze

Dry January is over. What now?

Pop Bottles by Wayne Thiebaud, 2023

by Claire

I didn’t do dry January, I couldn’t face it. Christmas had felt like extremely hard work: we’d all got sick for one thing, and my boss had sent me deeply ominous cryptic message on my first day off, which I of course obsessed about gloomily the whole time. My nerves were jangled, and I didn’t feel able to give up my fuzzy wuzzy winey security blanket at the end of the day. I feel a bit embarrassed telling you that! It seems like everyone is quitting drink, that it’s a bit…naff somehow? I’m paranoid that the way people are talking about it, there seems to be no middle ground between teetotaller and raging alcoholic. I am not talking about real alcohol dependency, and yet, I’m not not talking about it. We’re in an age where we are pathologising so much of what used to be just put down to personality or choice (i.e. You’re not scatty anymore, you have ADHD). And I can see that it helps, to have a name for the thing that you feel in a very real way, I do! But I don’t feel like an alcoholic and I don’t really want to give it up and I struggle to drink moderately because I really like being a bit pissed. That’s the crass truth. I am going through a season of life where enormous pressure bears down on me from the moment I wake up: pressures that I verily chose! The small children, the full time job that can be very hard and boring, the housework, the cooking. And these are just regular life things, not the things that then go wrong and need to be fixed like my low boiler pressure or my tactless boss or my child hitting other children and having to have a deeply awkward meeting about it. SO once the kids are in bed and the dishes are done and the bags packed and the clothes folded, a very large glass of cold white wine or two is me pushing past the fur coats in the wardrobe to the land of relaxation and adulthood.

These sound like excuses because they are, and we all know it’s bad for us and it’s a slippery slope. It makes my face and belly puff up, my skin looks a bit grey and my sleep even worse than it naturally is with two children who are, how shall I put it, bedtime terrorists.

Spoiler: I definitely don’t have an answer to this yet. Whether I drink depends mostly on my mood, but I’d like to have a firmer stance and to look a bit better. What I do when I’m mulling something over is ready what other people have written.

India knight wrote about not drinking in a way that made it sound effortless and chic and pleasurable.

How I stopped drinking

Esther wrote this piece about Naltrexone, the drug that stops the alcohol you drink from giving you any buzz. I don’t really understand why you can’t just buy a packet of naltrexone in the same bit of the chemist you might get nicotine gum.

The cure for your 6pm wine habit

The unexpected joy of being sober, by Catherine Gray is also great. Catherine is a proper blackout-drunk-terrible-consequences-alcoholic who talks about her recovery in a compelling way full of humour and practical advice. Of all the sober memoirs I looked at this was by far the best written and most warm. The Guardian review of her book tells you more.

I love How to Drink by Victoria Moore, which is a joyous love letter to drinks both alcoholic and soft. It’s organised by season and is all about the pleasure and context of drinking. Includes tips on tea and coffee, and a whole chapter on G&Ts. It is annoyingly out of print but you can buy it second hand in places like this.

Fellow wine critic (is critic the word I want? More like wise recommender) Fiona Beckett has a great book of alcohol free drinks that feel fun and luxe, as well as a very useful substack.

I loved this by Anna Eleri Hart about, amongst other things, how to pick wine, it’s very good advice.

things I find chic

I’m also thinking about how I can trick my monkey brain into not wanting to drink so much, not dashing straight to the fastest route to relaxation ville. If I use the diversion tactic of a nice non alcoholic drink like the ginger lemon switchel I wrote about making last time, I might not reach for alcohol afterwards. This has about a 40% success rate, but that’s not nothing I guess.

Another thing that helps me is to choose to do something that I can’t do if I’ve had a drink. It might involve driving somewhere for instance, but the best for me has been to choose an evening of reading. I absolutely cannot read and drink wine at the same time, I get distracted and forget what I’ve just read instantly and it’s a waste of time. I bought this reading lamp from Amazon that has turned my cosy, dark living room into a place I can read, and it’s been a game changer that I’m annoyed I didn’t get earlier.

I’m also looking at ways I can give my skin a much needed moisture boost, so I can look like I did dry January even if I didn’t.

I will pick a day when I’m working from home and basically layer up moisture all day. In the morning I’ll double cleanse, then use an exfoliating toner (like maybe the Paula’s Choice BHA one). Then I’ll use a hydrating spray/essence several times a day, layering it with Hyaluronic Acid serum and a really lardy moisturiser, topping up as soon as it feels like the product has sunk into my face.

I love this mist by Omorovizca, which smells of roses and herbs in a salon I couldn’t afford to set foot in.

I have also been slathering on this amazing greasy cold cream by Weleda - if you like their famous Skin Food you will really like this I think. Similar texture but more floral and powdery smelling - the deeply herbal Skin Food smell is a bit intense on the face I find.

I have rediscovered the Ordinary’s HA and Peptide serum (previously known as ‘Buffet’ - baffling) and I think you could do a lot worse frankly! I am also happy to use it very liberally where I might not with something more expensive from Medik8 or wherever (don’t mention Drunk Elephants).

A day of just slapping on this combo of hydrating and occlusive moisturisers repeatedly saves my skin at this time of year, which can just go a bit ashen and flaky.

I am deeply hoping that you will find time to comment about your thoughts on all this. Are you a teetoller? Do you feel like you should be? Did you do Dry January and will you be falling off the wagon again come the stroke of midnight tonight? Or have you emerged glowing and sober and want to stay that way? Please leave us a comment, p’raps a ‘like’ and treat yourself to this collection of Ab Fab drunken behaviour clips, which are as funny as the day they were originally aired.