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Your Healthy Family: If your resolution is to have a "Dry January"

Posted at 8:54 AM, Dec 29, 2022
and last updated 2022-12-29 08:58:20-05

Many people make the New Year's resolution to have a "Dry January," in which you cut out alcohol for the month. Others take it even further, and get completely sober. One man says sobriety changed his life and improved his health.

John Papp said his battle with alcohol started at a young age.

"I started drinking pretty early with friends, schoolmates, maybe fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade," he said. "I was never sloppy, you know? I looked presentable, but it was a façade. I didn't realize it until I got sober. Looking back on it, it was a problem."

Alcohol use has shot up since the start of the pandemic. And women are exceeding the recommended amounts more than men.

"For people that may not have been regular drinkers before COVID, more people may be drinking now. More regularly and more frequently," Dr. Roy Buchinksy, the Wellness Director at University Hospitals, said.

If you're thinking about hitting the reset button to start out the new year, and giving dry January a try, there are a lot of health benefits: clearer skin, better sleep, lower blood pressure, improved relationships and better performance at work. And after doing a dry January, most people then tend to drink less.

"The idea of dry January is a good idea to sort of help our bodies sort of recover from some of the overindulging," Dr. Buchinksy said.

But he said if you've been drinking more over the last few months, you need to be careful.

"Some people that do overindulge will do so on a daily basis, and don't really know how their body is functioning without the effects of alcohol in their system," Dr. Buchinksy said. "We have to be very cautious when we recommend to go towards dry January that we understand that not everybody should or could go cold turkey from alcohol. Because there is that risk of withdrawal."

If you drink heavily, you could have serious symptoms from abruptly quitting drinking, like tremors, sweating, high blood pressure, and seizures, so it's important to make sure going cold turkey is the right move for you.

For Papp, getting sober was the best decision of his life. And he says every day, he works to make sure his life stays on the right track.

"I just love it — so this is my new lifestyle. I wish I would have learned it 30 years ago, but it is what it is, and now is now. You just live a nice life and just be a nice person and good things happen to you," Papp said.

If you do decide to give dry January a try, doctors say it's important to ease back into drinking again come February.