I’ve been thinking about Dry
January a lot recently. Well, it is
January. And like every year, there’s
been lots of views aired by journalists and professionals.
As usual on this issue, the person who comes closest to representing
my views is Ian Hamilton. He’s
argued that while Dry January undoubtedly delivers some real positive
change for many drinkers, it’s less clear whether it’s effective for the people
who genuinely need to change their drinking behaviour, and it certainly isn’t
designed for dependent drinkers. He even
worries that it could benefit the alcohol industry, as it distracts from those
with more serious problems – who provide the bulk of the industry’s revenue.
I should start with a caveat I don’t think we make explicit
often enough in discussions about alcohol policy. People come with a personal agenda. I like drinking, and I like getting
drunk. As far as I am aware (and that’s
a very important point), this has very rarely had any impact on my professional
or personal life, and certainly not in a very long time. I like to think I’m pretty self-aware regarding
alcohol, and so I’m pretty good at planning any drinking occasion so it doesn’t
impact on other obligations.
I don’t have any problem admitting this enjoyment of
drinking and drunkenness, and I certainly don’t see it as any kind of weakness
or moral failing.
This fact that I enjoy drinking, and specifically the
feeling of intoxication, is important. Often,
those who advocate abstinence either don’t understand the attraction of
drunkenness, or, when they do acknowledge this, see it as
somehow a less respectable or worthwhile pleasure than, say, reading a book or
doing yoga. I just can’t sign up to
that idea of higher and lower pleasures, and would emphasise that a
case can be made that drug-induced pleasure is in fact the ‘purest’ kind of
pleasure possible in a Kantian sense (modified by Bourdieu), as it’s not instrumental
or tied to pretentiousness; it’s a pleasure (for some people) simply in itself.
But sometimes it’s not just about pleasure; it’s part of
some ‘deferred pleasure’ or idea of self-control that’s inevitably tied to
respectability. (There’s loads of work
on class and drinking apart from my own
– Emily Nicholls is
particularly on how
this intersects with gender.) Drinking
less to protect one’s health is a moral action in the sense that it says something
about the moral schema you use to weigh up different pleasures. For a range of reasons, at the moment I’m not
in a place to feel I want to drink less.
So I’m not doing Dry January. Conflict of interest declaration over.
If you want a clear summary of the issues with Dry January, Ian’s
piece on the BMJ website is good, and I don’t want to re-hash that
here. The main weakness is that, even
excluding dependent drinkers, the evidence suggests
that the people who would benefit most from modifying their drinking are exactly
the people least likely to start (and finish) Dry January. Of course, like attempts at recovery, this
doesn’t mean the effort was worthless. Several
unsuccessful attempts may have a cumulative impact and lead to success in the
end, but it’s still not exactly a ringing endorsement, given that we’re not
talking about anything approaching ‘addiction’.
And I always feel a bit sorry for the people I bump into who
discuss doing Dry January and reveal they were only drinking about 10 units a
week to start with. The benefits won’t
be significant, and the risks weren’t that high to start with – in fact you
could argue they’re forgoing pleasure for no clear reason. But then we’re back to the performance of
respectability and the fact that some people get a positive feeling from
self-denial. (The
Daily Mash is particularly good on this.)
But going back to Ian’s analysis, there’s just one point I’d
take issue with, or modify slightly.
Resources aren’t particularly being found for Dry January, as far as I
know. The beauty of it (and actually the
danger) is that it doesn’t require any resource or major policy change.
Locally, we’re just using
social media to encourage people to consider taking a break from alcohol, and
signposting them to the behaviour change support we already have in place. Ideally it might lead to more people
accessing that support, but that’s not exactly us putting additional resources
towards Dry January.
The great value of the campaign, as
I’ve said before, is that even for those of us not doing Dry January, it prompts
us to consider whether we might want to review our own relationship with alcohol. Perhaps the reason I have alcohol-free days
and keep alcohol-free beer in the house has something to do with Dry January? (Though personally I doubt it as I’ve been
trying to keep 2 days a week alcohol free for well over 10 years now – since I
started working on these issues and reading the health and policy guidance.)
This is why I’m so positive about the name and strategy of Alcohol Change UK. I’m totally on-board with any organisation
that aims to get people to reflect on their choices.
And, as I say, this is the beauty of the campaign: it’s not
requiring anything of producers, retailers, regulators or drinkers. It just prompts drinkers to think and maybe
modify their own drinking.
But this is also why it’s so problematic for me. We know that behaviour change isn’t simply
about education and people making free choices.
Choices
are never made in a vacuum; there’s social and economic context which makes
some choices more likely based on the time and place you find yourself in –
both on specific occasions and throughout your life. The more we present drinking and the
associated health and social issues as being the result of choices made by the
drinker, the less appetite there will be for other approaches, based on price
and availability and so forth. I’m not
saying more restrictive licensing, or minimum unit pricing should be introduced,
but, as
I’ve written before, it’s important that all potential approaches are considered
and fully assessed.
So I’m not doing Dry January, but I can see that many people
report positive effects. If you feel you
could be persuaded, read this
excellent, insightful piece by CJ
Flood.
My only question is whether all this attention on individual
choices in early January is actually useful in reducing alcohol-related harm at
a population level. As Ian suggests, the jury’s still out on that one.
