Gentle reader: A question for you, and just you. What is your relationship with alcohol? (I am resharing this post in early 2026, in case it might be of benefit to anyone currently attempting the Dry January challenge. If you are contemplating your relationship with alcohol and perhaps thinking about cutting down or even quitting, it can be done, when the time is right for you.)
What is your real, actual relationship with alcohol?
No need to share the answer with me. Just answer honestly to yourself about your true relationship with alcohol. Then, one more question – again just for you and you alone. If you think about your answer to that first question, how do you feel about your relationship with alcohol?
For some, their relationship with alcohol might be all roses, all the way. But over the course of a lifetime, many people find that their relationship with alcohol is a complex one. It might be a love/hate relationship. It might be a relationship that ends up feeling hard to break off, even though it’s clearly not doing any good any more.
A third and final question: How do you feel about giving up alcohol, about not drinking?
For some, the idea of giving up alcohol can stir strong negative feelings. If this is true for you, it might be worth taking the time to think through and list these feelings. If you are afraid of giving something up, it might be worth asking yourself what it is that you actually fear. If you want to give something up but cannot, it might be worth asking yourself if you have a problem with dependency.
To celebrate, to commiserate
I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject after reading a LinkedIn post from Dawn Smedley, entitled What I’ve learnt from 1,220 days without drinking…. Dawn shares what she has learnt since she stopped drinking three years ago (the 1,220 days in the title being a precise figure derived from a Dry January app). For Dawn, the impetus to stop drinking was a feeling that her relationship with alcohol had become unhealthy. She lists some of the reasons why she would crack open a bottle:
“To celebrate, to commiserate, because the sun was shining, because I had a log fire on, because I’d had a tough or good day at work, because the kids were in bed, just because…”
Dawn is open and honest on her initial apprehensions about not drinking (for example, worries about how it might affect friendships in which drink seemed a key component). But I am happy to report that she does not regret stopping drinking. She says:
“This has been the right decision for me in my life right now. Who knows if I’ll ever drink again. At this moment in time, if I read back on this, there doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to go back and from a mental health perspective, I’ve never felt better!”
These words from Dawn resonated with me, as I stopped drinking nearly six years ago. I realised I haven’t ever written about this topic on here before, so perhaps it’s time I did.
A miracle cure for shyness
I stopped drinking back in September 2018. By that time, my drinking had dwindled away over the years to almost nothing. I was drinking roughly one beer a month. So I thought I would take that final step and bring my drinking to a complete stop, and see what happened.
I was surprised to find that I could feel health benefits even in going from drinking very little to not drinking at all. After a few weeks, my quality of sleep seemed to improve, and I felt a new underlying calm.
I hadn’t always been such a light drinker. Looking back, there were many points in my early-to-mid 20s when I was binge-drinking. I realise now that binge-drinking wasn’t doing me much good at all.
At first, drinking seemed to me like a miracle cure for shyness. Well, a temporary miracle cure. As a particularly quiet and reserved introvert, I found drinking an effective way to force myself out of my shell. Drinking helped me get out and about and overcome social anxiety. I was likely also using (and sometimes overusing) alcohol as an (ultimately ineffective, perhaps even self-destructive) way to try to deal with deeper-rooted problems that I didn’t even realise I had.
Having been diagnosed in the past few years with mixed anxiety and depressive disorder*, I can see clearly now that these conditions have been present in me for much of my life. But back then, I didn’t know what I was dealing with. It is obvious to me now that I would sometimes use alcohol as a way to deal with the times when my anxiety and depression became acute. I even found some aspects of being hungover oddly agreeable, as it seemed to be the only time my mind would slow down from its usual frantic, restless and often troubled state and allow me something resembling ease. I can now see that what felt like ease when hungover was actually anxiety being quietened. But you know what happens when you attempt to shove problems out of the way. They come back stronger than ever. The hangover would lift and my mind would go back into anxiety-fuelled overdrive. It is quite possible that rather than helping with these mental health issues, binge-drinking would make them worse.
I wish I could go back to the me of my early-to-mid 20s and encourage him to be open and honest with himself about his relationship with alcohol. Looking back, it would have been better for me to drink less or stop drinking at that point in time, and instead to identify and deal with the actual problems that I was blunderingly trying to drink away. But I don’t know if the me of then would have listened to the me of now. People will only change when they are good and ready to do so. Recovery will not be rushed. Not drinking will only work when you are ready not to drink.
All the same, there can be great value in considering the question: What is your real, actual relationship with alcohol?
May you be nothing but kind today, to others and to yourself.
May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.
RESOURCES
- Alcohol change UK This is the source of the app that Dawn Smedley used for the Dry January challenge that has turned into 1,220 days (and counting) for her without a drink.
- Alcohol misuse: NHS resources
- Alcoholics Anonymous Great Britain
FOOTNOTES
* Here are all the posts so far in the ongoing series on my mental health journey: Into the infinity of thoughts; Renewal; No words?; Mental health first response; Glorify; In our darkest hours; At the heart of things; No feeling is final; Relax harder. Anxiety: Your own worst enemy; All these moments; Mental health: Six things I’ve learnt in 2022; Coping?; The sun will return; Gratitude; Mental health: Night and day; Transitions; Peace?; It’s OK to forget; Stayin’ alive; and First rays.
IMAGES
- [Detail from] Hainz, Johann Georg – Still-life with Beer – Hamburger Kunsthalle via Wikimedia Commons.
- Jan van Dalen – Bacchus with a glass of wine via Wikimedia Commons.
- A man walking with the posture of a drunkard. Drawing with w Wellcome V0009089 via Wikimedia Commons.
MJCarty 
