I Did Dry January Without Realising

I really don't think I could make that title any more straightforward: I did Dry January without even realising I was doing it. It certainly wasn't my plan to drink every single night of the month (then again, it's January, no-one would've blamed me), but it also wasn't my plan to not touch alcohol the whole time.

And yet, that's exactly what ended up happening. During those typical first couple of weeks of January where your mind and body work at top-speed to get the first-semester assignments done, I didn't even think about having a drink. I can tell you for a fact this wasn't the case two years ago - the assessment week in January during my first year consisted of a full day in the library, followed by going straight to Luther's for a couple of drinks to wind down. Not this year. Whenever my mind wasn't desperately trying to make coherent points in my essays or doing the chore that is footnoting, I was either eating or sleeping.

I also noticed towards the end of the month that I was eating healthier than I had been before. To be fair, it's not hard to eat healthier in January than you were over Christmas, but I was using ready meals less often and having far fewer takeaways, instead doing more cooking. It's a running joke with my parents that I barely do any cooking while up at university, but it struck me that making meals from scratch was not something I was doing consciously. I hadn't necessarily stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, I should make more food for myself rather than going to Spoons - I was just doing it.

Not only was this an eye-opening realisation to a decision I must have made before, but I have definitely felt the benefit of making this little switch. I've found that I can get through more work without burning out, my attention span feels sharper, and I generally seem to have more energy. How much of this was down to me unknowingly cutting alcohol out I don't know, but something seemed to work.

Getting a sickness bug towards the end of January certainly helped to keep up the lack of alcohol in my diet, as I dread to think how bad I would’ve felt had I tried. But before I knew it, I’d got through an entire month of a calendar year without drinking - I’d completed Dry January. 

Before anyone gets the wrong end of the stick here, this does not mean I’ve decided to completely cut out alcohol - I will go back to drinking on social occasions and I will still treat myself when I fancy it. But throughout the month of January, I unknowingly ended up proving to myself that, actually, I can live a little more healthily, and it can actually do me a lot of good.