Dry January Could Be Problematic For Some - ( According To Experts! )

We are nine days into Dry January, and some of us are struggling, and some of us are actually feeling better by now. Now, I got this message from YouTube, basically saying, Amber, we suggest you do a video on Dry January. And I was like, yeah, I don't know why I didn't put that in my lineup. So did a little research just to see what other people were saying. And every time I watch one of these videos, like on Good Morning America, and they had these people that talked about it, sometimes they bring on experts. Every time, they would start with, well, Dry January is not for everyone. And I was thinking to myself, I know why you're saying that. And I thought, well, you might be wondering why they're saying that too. The big reason to be honest with you while they're saying that is mostly cya, is uncover your booty and don't make yourself liable for something, because there might be. Not might be, because there are some actual drawbacks to Dry January. And I want to explain to you what those are. But for those of you who are new here, I am Amber Hollingsworth. I am a master addiction counselor. I've been working to help people and family struggling with an addiction for almost 20 years now. And this YouTube channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction to make sure that you are always five steps ahead of it. Because beating addiction means you need strategy. That's the only way to beat addiction. And Dry January is actually not a bad strategy, although there are some pitfalls in it, and I want to explain to you what those are. But as an addiction person who regularly encourages people to address substance uses, address their substance use, I feel a little wrong, a little guilty for saying anything about anybody's efforts to cut back, control, stop using. Because in general, I'm a big fan of Dry January, even if it is just a trial period for you, even if it is just a. A time where you take a break from it, I think it's great. So, overall, I'm a fan, and I am encouraging you to do it. And in my book, there is no bad reason to get sober. And if Dry January is your reason, go for it. There are many, many, many benefits to it. And the thing I really like about Dry January, the concept is it's actually a whole month, which is what makes it tough, but also what makes it good, because those first few weeks are kind of crummy. I'm just gonna be real honest with you. You're gonna feel worse for those first couple of weeks, and I'm Talking about not even if you're like alcohol dependent. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. Or you have an alcohol use disorder. I'm talking about just, you know, if you cut your carbs back for the first week, it's gonna suck you' some level of withdrawal. And so if you can stay sober for 30 days or more, you actually get past the crappy part into the good part, which I think is the key to making an a trial run or a dry January really effective. And I'm going to tell you more about how to do this in the most effective way. But a lot of you are probably watching because you're like, dry January. Maybe I shouldn't do it. Maybe it's not for me. So let me, let me explain what I mean by that. When the experts say it on these shows, and I said they're doing the cya, what they're really covering is the idea that stopping alcohol, if you're really, really alcohol dependent, cold turkey can be very dangerous. In fact, stopping alcohol cold turkey when you're have severe alcohol use disorder can be more dangerous than like stopping heroin cold turkey. And a lot of people don't know that. The reason that's dangerous is because alcohol withdrawal can cause you to have a seizure. It can cause you to hallucinate, cause you have blood pressure problems, all kind of problems. So when they're saying that on those shows, they're just covering their butt because they be like, I don't want some alcoholic listening to me. And then they stop and then they have a seizure and they say so and so and Good Morning America told me to stop drinking. They don't want that to happen, and that's for good reason. I don't blame them. But I thought I would maybe explain to you what why that is and what they mean by it. The thing of it is, is most people that are to that point with their drinking, they sort of already know it. You don't really need those kind of statements. But hey, it's always important not to get yourself sued or get yourself in big trouble. So that's why they say it, and I'm gonna say what they said. So if you're worried that you might go into a draw at the end of this video, I'm going to connect you to a video that I did a long time ago that will talk you through how to figure out, you know, are you safe to stop drinking? Most of you probably already know that, but here's one little kind of clue or hint that might help you, if you have trouble getting past day two or three, like, it's like you can be sober, but you get to day two or three and you always fall back. That might mean you need a little bit of help with the detoxing process because that day two and three is like the worst. And you might not even recognize that what's happening to you, some withdrawal. But your anxiety gets all jacked up. You, you have that come out of your skin feeling, you can't sleep, you're in a bad mood and your willpower gets ran down because you, because it's so difficult for you. And if you're having trouble and you just can't seem to get past those first few days, that's when I would probably take a look at it. And always you want to be safe. Now, beyond the issue of like medical withdraw alcohol dependent kind of stuff, there are some other kind of just general psychological tricks to the issue of dry January that I want to run across you if you have a real alcohol use disorder. Now a lot of times people have real alcohol use disorder and they don't even know they have real alcohol use disorder. So in addition to the alcohol withdrawal video at the end of this one, I'm going to link up my video that actually takes you through like the for real diagnostic criteria for what. What criteria do you have to meet to have a real alcohol use disorder? There are actually 11 of them and I take you through them one by one and you count yourself. It's kind of nice to do that way no one's watching. You don't have to tell me, you don't have to anyone. It's just you listening to them. You count them yourself, you diagnose yourself and decide where you're at. And actually what's good about it is it's not just like yes or no, it's like a little bit kind of medium or like, dude, you're in trouble, like a lot. It'll give you a range in there, which I think is also kind of helpful. So if you have a real alcohol use disorder, there's a couple of pitfalls with the dry January thing. In addition to the be careful and don't put yourself like in medical jeopardy. One of the criteria for alcohol use disorder when you read them in the real like clinical diagnostic manual is there's a fancy way they say it, but essentially it's the person has tried to cut back, stop or control their alcohol use in the past more than once has not been successful. And so what a lot of times People that have alcohol problems do is they can kind of feel that the alcohol problem is building up, or maybe their spouse is getting on them or something like that, and they take these breaks from drinking, which I think is a really good idea. Although I think you should always do more than two weeks because the first two weeks suck. You got to get past two weeks to get the good part. But what ends. What can end up happening is you can trick yourself into saying, see, I don't have any problem with alcohol because, like, what kind of alcoholic could go like a month without drinking? Like, I got it, I'm fine now, I've reset. And that is not exactly accurate because alcohol use disorder doesn't necessarily mean that you can't not drink. A better definition of it is more like, have trouble stopping once I start. One of the biggest issues I see in the whole, like, addiction recovery, alcoholism landscape is this idea that you're the alcohol colic or you're not. And it's not like that. It's like most other illnesses. It's on a continuum. And long before you're waking up drinking in the morning and you've lost everything and you're under the bridge with your brown paperback way before that. There are many stages that happen. Problem is, is most people don't recognize alcohol use disorder until they're like, way down there in stage four, like terminal alcoholism, like, you done burn so many bridges, you can't even come back at this point. You can't stop. You can't do a dry January if you want to. The problem is people don't realize that maybe they need to stop before they get to that stage four, because there's a lot of signs and symptoms that you may be developing a problem long before you may use the term like alcoholic for yourself. If you use the word term heavy drinker or problematic drinker, those may be times to really consider it, because those are times when you can stop. Most people just don't stop. So I strongly advise you to take a. If you're worried about this, take a serious look at those criteria for what is alcohol user. Let me give you a little hint. Doesn't have none of the criteria. It doesn't have it in there anywhere. Does it say what or how much you drink? It's all about how much problems is it causing in your life because you could drink. You could maybe only drink on the weekends and still be alcoholic. You could maybe only drink once a month and still be alcoholic. When you look at the criteria, I think it's going to help you to start thinking about it differently now. Another reason why the dry January thing can be sort of tricky for someone who has an alcohol use disorder is because you can trick yourself into thinking you've got it under control and that maybe you can manage your drinking now. And that gets a lot of people way off track because it's not so much that you can't ever manage it, but once you open the gate to it, it like it unleashes it. So for most people have an alcohol disorder, it ends up being easier to not drink at all than to manage it. But people will convince themselves if they've gotten a week, two weeks, 30 days sober, that they got it, it's under control, and that the story is going to end differently next time. If you have a real alcohol disorder, once you open the door to it, it's going to start causing problems. Even if you're not back drinking every day, you will be back drinking to what you, let's say in December you were drinking five times a week, a gallon of vodka, whatever it is. I don't know. You can stop for all of January. Although if you're drinking a gallon of vodka five times a week, like, you probably should stop. But you, you get what I'm saying? Whatever you were drinking before, you were going to stop. Even if you stopped for the whole month. If you go back in February and you have an alcohol disorder, you're probably going to be back to drinking whatever that amount was. The highest amount, your, your largest tolerance within a week. You'll probably do okay for a little while, but it's going to bounce back quickly. So you've got to be careful. This is where the psychology of addiction comes in. And you can kind of trick yourself. And that on and off, on and off, on and off is actually symptomatic of alcohol use. Sorter. Most people think it means you don't have an alcohol user because you can stop. But if when you go back, it eventually always slides into problems. The fact that you're trying to stop and start, stop and start so many times means that there's an issue there. Because people that don't really have problems with alcohol, they don't even think about needing to stop. So the idea of I need to stop, maybe I should check a trial period, which is a good idea. I strongly advise you to do that is actually symptomatic of a problem. So those are just some things to think about. Now, I also want to tell you, if you are doing this, whether you think you have an alcohol problem or not, here are a few tips to make it actually much better for you. This is going to make it much more effective. What is helpful is if you will keep some kind of journal log notes in your phone, whatever you want to call it, about how you're feeling in that journey when, what are the changes that you're going to notice? Because even if you don't have alcohol use disorder, but you drink regularly and you stop, you are going to notice some really positive changes after the first week or two. Don't forget first week is really hard. If you're on day nine, you're about to, you're about to come over the curve here. And so you're about to get to the good part. So congrats. But keep, keep some tabs on how you feel and pay particular attention to your focus, your sleep, your energy level, your anxiety levels, your ability to be present and focused in your relationships. You're going to see improvement in all of those areas. I'm not even talking about the health stuff like you know, when you hear the health experts talking about and the digestion, we're not even talking about that in the liver. I'm just talking about like the, the immediate, like feel better stuff that you're going to notice just in your general mental health, your alertness, your focus, your overall happiness is actually going to improve. So many people think that if to make the decision to not drink alcohol means you have to be alcoholic. And that's not true. That's silly. I think that's the dumbest thing ever is to wait till something is that extreme to do something about it. If you think it causes you problems, then do an experiment. Do a 30 days if you want to, but pay attention to how much better you feel because it's really hard to tell how much the alcohol is affecting you until you get on the outside of it. And you got to be on the outside of it long enough to get to that part where you actually can tell and you'll forget if you don't make some notes about it and write it down, you'll convince yourself of something else because be February, you'll start to rationalize and justify and you'll forget all those really good benefits. So write them down so you're paying attention to them. Write down if your problem solving gets different. Write down if you notice any different things about your personality and your motivation levels and all that kind of stuff. Because I think that you are going to notice them if you, if you do it. Another thing I want to tell you is maybe you're watching this and you started out doing dry January, but you've already fell off the wagon. Or you thought about doing it, but you didn't start dry January. There's nothing special about January. Okay? You can start anytime you want. You could start right now, today. You could have drank every day. You could have drank every day, including today. And you can decide, okay, you know what? I really have been thinking about it. I want to make that change. I have a friend in recovery and he used to say, he had the saying, he'd say, you can start your day over at any time. Because what that means is, is like we can convince ourselves, like, maybe you wake up and you have a really bad morning and, you know, you spill your coffee and all this crap happens and you say, oh, my days ruined. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Or, you know, I'm having a crappy day. And what you do is maybe it's 10 o' clock in the morning and you've already decided that you've already written off the whole day. Well, that's ridiculous. You can contain that by saying, yeah, I kind of had a wacky morning, but this afternoon is going to be better. You don't have to have these magical star and stop times. It doesn't have to start on Monday. It does not have to start on January 1st. It can start on January 9th at 10pm there's nothing magic. If you are wanting to make that change, don't put it off. Don't wait until the first of the month, don't wait until January, don't wait until you know you can get in with your counselor. Start making those changes now when you're in the right mindset. And another piece of advice, when I watched some of the other commentary on it, they did give some good advice. They said, you know, have an accountability partner and think about what you, how you're gonna handle it in social situations where there is drinking, like, like social functions and stuff. That is good advice. Another piece of advice that I can give you, just stay motivated is put, purposely put in your life things that are going to keep you motivated, like podcasts, YouTube, books, movies, having a friend who's doing it with you. If you will keep that in front of you, it will actually keep your brain focused on that and keep you motivated to get through to your 30 days. For those of you who are joining me live, thank you. This was a total impromptu live because I realized that I needed to cover this topic. But I usually record my stuff ahead and I did not have it in the January lineup, which was total mistake on my part. It's also a good reason if you are interested in this topic. Whether you're a person who thinks that you may want to stop any kind of substance use, alcohol or otherwise, or you have a family member who maybe has a problem, then you may want to consider subscribing. And make sure you hit the bell because that's how you get notified when I do these impromptu things because I'm pretty add and sometimes my side oh, this is really important. I need to say it. I just come on here and say it before I forget it and get and I'll lose my all motivation and focus on it. So make sure you're subscribed and you hit that bell. I want to say hello to those of you who join me late at night on a random. You guys are the true believers. Love you guys. You're awesome. Hey, Ashley. Ashley says dry January is intimidating. And Nick pie in the sky. Ash Ash Disney, you helped me so much. I've learned so much from your videos. Discovered you last year. Tried to help my addicted loved one. Unfortunately had to leave him on this day. I need to love me again. Oh, I'm sorry, Ashley, but I'm glad you're making a healthy choice for yourself. Hey, tc, I see some of these names that I that I see all the time. Tc, you're saying never go in dry. What do you mean by that? I'm not sure what you're saying there. Thank you. For those of you who join me, I am release new videos every Tuesday. So there's a new one coming out in the morning and we go live every Thursday at 1 Eastern. And then you get these random impromptu. I put in the description, the links to the criteria for alcohol use disorder and the link to the video for figuring out if it's even safe for you to stop drinking cold turkey. Because that's. That's important. And that's what those experts are saying when they say it's not for everybody. They don't elaborate, but that's what they're saying. All right, everybody. See you next time. Thanks for hanging out.