I recently overheard a pair of sisters talking. “Why would I do Dry January when I just turned 21,” the first one laughed. “Mom always does Dry January,” the second one replied. “But I’m pretty sure she has a drink as soon as no one’s around.”
I have been a sober person for eight years now. For me, sobriety is both a necessity and a great gift. It has been hard won and paid for with whole chunks of my soul. It has taken patience, and grit, and honesty, and more humility than I thought I could ever display. Every day now, I wake up and am surprised to find myself bright-eyed and bushy tailed, face to face with the world as it is and with myself as I really am. It’s astonishing, really.
And here we come to the crux of things. Sobriety, if you engage in it long enough, is many things, but one thing it ceases to be is an exercise in virtue. The people I’ve met have come to sobriety for all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of conditions: with ankle monitors, on their knees, fresh out of a hospital, scared witless, shaken by a close call, dragged in by a relative. Other folks have a gentler entry. They do something like Dry January, decide they feel a lot better, and just keep rolling with it. Some people go to meetings every day. Some go to rehab. Others never set foot in a church basement to recite the 12 Steps. Substance abuse has a spectrum and so does not drinking.
As a sober person, I both celebrate and dread Dry January. I think it’s healthy to step away from alcohol and examine your life without it. Why do you drink when you do? Is it a habit? A need? How do you feel physically and mentally when you remove it? How does everyone around you act when you order a Diet Coke instead of a vodka?
What I don’t like about Dry January is the performative virtue trap it sometimes turns into. Being sober hasn’t made me a more worthy human being. It’s kept me out of trouble, prison, and financial ruin, but I’m still an asshole a lot of the time. Not drinking just helps me admit it and try to amend it. Not drinking has helped me to wake the fuck up—not just in the morning, but all the time to everything. That doesn’t make me any better or worthier, either, but it does grant me the great blessing of having a better chance of doing and saying kinder and worthier things, which the older I get, the more I worry about. What kind of cosmic record am I creating here? How much time do I have left to right my wrongs?
The great irony and wonder of sobriety for me is that it’s shown me to myself exactly as I am, both good and bad. I am funny in an acerbic way, loving, impatient, proud, fierce, analytical, poetic, stubborn as the day is long. In short, sobriety has allowed me to experience my full humanity, which is the exact opposite of virtue. In order to be my realest self, I’ve had to be willing to love the version of me that isn’t pretty or accomplished. In order to be good, I’ve had to accept the down and dirty of myself, and that’s a lot easier for me to do without the blur of alcohol.
Isn’t it interesting that when we talk about alcohol, we mention spirits? As if to imbibe ethanol is to ingest and commune with the voices and consciousness outside of our own skin and bones, to make ourselves larger, realer, more. But January is a dry month, indeed. It is a cold month, a dark month. The lights have come down and the holiday revelries are over. We’ve eaten too much cheese and gone to too many parties, watched too many movies on the couch, bought too much, received things we maybe didn’t want, handled family drama.
We want so badly to be good, to be new and shiny in the New Year with our resolutions, and vows, and pledges. This is the year we’ll lose weight. Or take up meditation. Or get a new job. Or pay off our credit cards. This is year. We’ll start with axing the booze. We’ll become new and improved. We’ll be a whole lot more or much less.
Maybe it is the year and maybe it isn’t. Maybe this is the year you will be virtuous, but you also run the risk of becoming a scoundrel. A better plan might be just to keep a little bit of January’s sobriety under your belt, even in the summer, even next holiday season. Spirits, I learned aren’t wet or dry. They’re in the air, but they’re also in you and in me. It turns out I didn’t need a bottle to find them—just a very clear mirror and a long quiet month.