111: Dry January: The Link Between Alcohol and Creativity

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Dry January is an increasingly popular event as more people become interested in taking a break from alcohol. I talk about this from my own perspective as someone who quit drinking a decade ago, and we also cover the link between drinking alcohol and creativity. 

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dry january: the link between alcohol and creativity

Hello, welcome back to another episode of your big creative life. I'm Katie Wolf, thank you for listening. It's January, January. Okay. Yes, there's a magic of a new year, a fresh slate a fresh start, if you will, which is part of what I was embracing when I decided to rebrand the podcast. This was formerly known as blank page to book now it's your big creative life. And I was thinking, you know, January's a great time to kick things off. I was on maternity leave in the fall of 2023. And then to a little bit of time, where I was just kind of figuring out working with a newborn and focusing on some client projects. So I didn't have episodes of blank page two book that came out in November in December, and decided to just wait and do the re launch of the podcast in January. Because yeah, there is just something really exciting about kicking things off in January.

But January also sucks. If you're someone like me, who suffers from seasonal depression. January's a bitch, it feels also like it's about six months long, it's ridiculous. All that being said, this January, I hope will be will be better. You know, trying to live in a place that has pretty mild winters. I'm in Charleston, South Carolina, and, you know, do my best to get outside this winter, every day, go for a walk with my daughter and my dog and just get out even if it's kind of dreary and cold. And I'm trying to make it a point to do that. And I don't know, I'll take a lot of vitamin D, do what I can to kind of keep this seasonal depression diplomacy. at bay. We'll we'll see how it goes. Anyways, I want to talk about dry January, being sober curious, because this is something that I feel like every January, it's gotten more and more popular. Like I see more and more people do this on social media where they just don't drink for the month of January.

And I know that this episode is coming out like mid January. So maybe this is something that you embrace for the second half of January, if you're not doing it. Or maybe you're already doing it. Maybe you want to do a dry February, I don't know. And the idea behind it is like we're coming off the holidays, a lot of people drink more than they normally do during the holidays with, you know, just parties and it being winter and all that. And so the idea of dry January's like, Oh, it's a little bit of a reset. It's nice to just have some time to not drink to focus on other things. And have a month off. Basically, I'm gonna come at this from a slightly different perspective, because I'm someone who is sober, I quit drinking, I quit drinking 10 years ago, my anniversary is December 6 2013. So it's been a little bit over 10 years, which is insane. It's insane to think that I haven't had a drink in a decade. Like sometimes I feel like it's been a year. And sometimes it does feel like it's been 10 years because I was such a different person.

10 years ago, when I when I quit drinking, I was 27. And life was just unrecognizable, from what it is now. So I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who quit drinking because it was just making my life unmanageable, not because I just decided like, oh, I'll just do a reset and be healthy and then just kept going with it. But I still feel like I have some tips to give you. Even though I'm not a social drinker, who's just taking a month off. This is like a big life decision that I've made, that it's no, it's not good for me to have alcohol. I don't like the person they become when I drink. It makes my life manageable. So I've just decided that I'm not I need to stay away from alcohol and all mind altering substances. But there are some tips that can give you an ways to think about this because it's a big deal, especially if you're someone who drinks well, I was gonna say a lot. And if you are someone who drinks a lot, yeah, it is a big deal. But even if you're someone who just drinks a few times a week socially, it is difficult, like you do have to change your your thinking in your behavior if you decide to not drink anymore, whether it's for good or just for a month.

Yeah, it does require some shifting of your behavior and your thoughts. So the biggest thing I would suggest, first of all, if you're going to do something like a dry January or you're sober, curious and you want to try doing, you know going for a stint a period of time without alcohol is to get clear on why you're doing it. Is it because you just came off the holidays and need a reset and need to just, you know, not be hungover and not be drinking all kinds of things and like is that while you're doing it or are you doing it because you feel like it has maybe kind of gotten to be a lot and you're spending a lot of money on alcohol and you want to try to come back and stick to a budget this month.

And so that's why you're not going to drink for a month, really get clear on why you are doing this, because coming back to you is going to make it a lot easier to continue doing it, it's going to be easier to stay motivated, if you have a clear why. for it. And also be clear, I think it's most helpful to be clear around, you know, the parameters of like, how long are you going to do this experiment is it going to be something that you do for a month, is it going to be something that you do for two months, you know, getting clear on on what that's going to look like, so that you know what to expect, and can kind of prepare yourself for that. The second thing that I think is really, really essential to do this is something that seemed to be in the beginning. Replace the drinking behavior with something else.

This means instead of you going out with your friends who are still drinking on a Friday night and doing everything the same that you would normally do, but just not drinking, do something else. So instead of okay, it's Friday night, your friends are going to I don't know bar or go, they're going to a restaurant, and then they're going for drinks afterwards. And then they're like, you know, you've got plans to go out after that somewhere else. And whatever. It's this whole, like big Friday night thing. Which it's funny that I talked about that I haven't done that and so long, I'm 37. I'm a mom, like my Friday nights and Saturday nights do not look like that anymore. But let's say that that's your Friday night. Okay? Let's say that that's what you planned. It's good to be, it might be fun for a little while to do that kind of thing to go out to dinner, or to go out with your friends to the bar to do the after party. Like all those things without drinking. Sure, you can tag along with your friends who are drinking, but being around people who are drinking and maybe drinking more than just like a glass of wine, it can not, it's not always fun. When you're not drinking.

Like, I feel like there's a point that it crosses where it's fine at first, like if you go to dinner, and people are having a glass of wine and you're not, that's totally fine. It's not a big deal. But as people start to have more and more alcohol in their system, as they start to be drinking more heavily, and you're the sober one, it gets just not fun. So I learned pretty quickly that it was not going to work for me to just do all the same thing. Same things that I was doing, which for me at that time involved, going to a lot of bars, and just not drinking, it wasn't fun, it wasn't going to it was gonna be hard for me to stick to my no drinking thing. Because I was surrounded by alcohol, I was surrounded by people that were drinking. And I didn't, I wasn't replacing it with anything. So what I started doing is, you know, going to still going to dinner because I love going out to eat, I love going to dinner. So I would definitely still do that. But then I would just do something else with friends. Going to a movie, going for a walk. A lot of this honestly was changing like nighttime activities to daytime activity. So I would meet a friend for coffee, I would go for a walk in a park or go to a workout class. Go to some like event a farmers market, just anything else that happened during the day where there wasn't likely to be a lot of alcohol involved.

That doesn't mean that you have to, you know, obviously, like sit at home on a Friday night. But it does just mean maybe okay, if your friends are all going out drinking, like maybe you just do, you know, dinner and then make plans, either by yourself or with another friend who's maybe not drinking to do something else that doesn't involve just going to bars all night. I still go to bars, like it's fine. It doesn't bother me at this point to be at a bar. But my thing is like I have to have a motivation, I have to have a reason for being there. I'm not just going to go to a bar to hang out. If like a friend or friends are there. Maybe I'll go for a little while. But again, it's just not that fun to be at a loud, crowded, noisy bar with a bunch of drunk people when you're sober. It's just not. The other tip I have is to is if you are in situation where people are drinking. Pick a fun drink that replaces the eight cocktail for the alcohol that you would be drinking. This is really important.

10 years ago, it was not as common to have fun drinks on the menu at places your options were like soda, or a club soda with lime, which those are fine. If you really liked Diet Coke. You can just get a Diet Coke and that's like a treat and it's fine. But I found that I wanted to have like a little bit of a treat so that I could hold a drink in my hand and feel like I was a part of things even if I wasn't because I wasn't drinking. So for me this could be like a club soda with lime with a splash cranberry juice or some kind of fun mocktail that they have, you know a place has on the menu. If I'm out at brunch with people, I'll often get a virgin Bloody Marys, but I can still have the Bloody Mary still have all the fun stuff that comes with it. Oh god, I love all the stuff that comes with it like if I order a Bloody Mary and there's no accompaniments it's not worth it, I'm not going to do it. I want the celery stick the pickle the olives, the sausage, the cheese, like all that stuff. But I just get a virgin Bloody Mary and I make you know, make sure that server knows I don't want alcohol and then great. So you can get the Virgin version of a drink, you can get a mocktail.

And yeah, it's really fun to see places that are coming up with these cool creative drinks that don't have alcohol in them. Because you can feel it feels fun, and it feels kind of special. And again, you have a drink in your hand. That is gonna make people less likely to come up to you and be like, Hey, do you want to be or hey, do you want to drink you need anything for the bar, you have a drink in your hand. You're good. This is also a good way. If you order like a mocktail or something that looks like a drink. People don't have to know that you're not drinking 98% of people I have found do not make it a big deal. When they find out that I don't drink. They're just like, Oh, okay. Every once in a while, they might ask why. And I just tell them like, Oh, I just, you know, I'll say like, my body just doesn't respond well to alcohol and just decide not I almost like I'm allergic to it. And it's fine. They're the 2% of people who are concerned about it and make it a big deal. I've often found that it's because they're big drinkers, and they get uncomfortable with the fact that I'm not drinking, as if I might be judging them. Or maybe they feel like they have to watch their drinking around me.

But again, I don't care. You can be drunk, you can be pounding shots next to me, it doesn't bother me, especially at this point after 10 years. But having a drink in my hand just kind of prevents people from being like, Oh, aren't you drinking? Or do you want to drink and then I don't even have to deal with the questions, I've got a drink. So try that if you are going out to a restaurant and you're doing a dry January, and you don't want to have questions or you don't want to, you know, people to ask you why you're not drinking and make a big deal out of it. Have a drink in your hand, that looks like a cocktail. It's simple. And by the way, I this is something that I also think has changed in the last 10 years is people are really open to people not drinking. The idea of dry January has gained a lot of ground. It's a very common thing that people are aware of, in our culture. So if you just say, Oh, I'm doing dry January, and I want to just, you know, not drink for a while 99.9% of people are like, Oh, that's great. And just leave it at that. And it's not going to be a big deal.

So, I mean, I feel like you could even say that and people wouldn't bug you about it. So, but yeah, definitely. If you don't change your plans and change your behavior to replace going out to borrow something else than having a fun drink. That's your go to that you know, you can still enjoy yourself with that mocktail or that fun drink. That's a really good way to ensure that you know people aren't going to bug you about it, but also that you have fun, like it's fun to have some fancy mocktail. My brother got married a few years ago. And there wedding it was really small was basically just family. And we went to a restaurant for the reception and they had a tasting menu and there were mocktail pairings. So every two courses, it was like an eight course meal. Every two courses, we got a mocktail that paired with the food, which was so fun. It was really fun to taste these different things. And you know, they came in fun glasses, and they had really cool. What's the word? Not accompaniments garnishes, there we go. So they looked really pretty, the drinks just looked pretty. So I feel like that's become a really common thing, which is awesome.

So again, just just think about what your why is for what you want to do this. And and one thing I haven't really touched on yet is just this idea of alcohol and its effect on creativity. And that might be your why I used to be someone who thought that I would be more inclined to write, or that I would be able to access some sort of higher level of creativity if I were drinking. And this was obviously before I quit drinking, when I first started trying to write in my 20s. So what would happen is I would start drinking, I'd be by myself for a glass of wine, maybe some you know, whiskey or something. I was like channeling my inner Hemingway sitting down to write. And it never worked. It never worked because I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to write because I was already kind of fuzzy and buzzed from the alcohol. And it would just I would just drink more and more get progressively drunker and it just it never worked for me to write that way.

Some people I know will have glass of wine, and it helps them relax, it helps quiet the voice of their inner critic so that they can write, so that they can create. That is awesome if that works for you. I love that. Some people find, though, like me that alcohol can be a bit of a barrier for you accessing words and sentences and being able to put your thoughts onto the page. So if you're someone who has maybe a complicated relationship with alcohol, and you're really wanting, you really want to do a dry January, to see how it goes and see if your life your quality of life really changes. See if it has an impact on your creativity. See if it has an impact on your writing. If you're someone who is used to kind of, you know, having a glass of wine or a couple glasses of wine or beer or a cocktail, when you write, see if see if there's a difference. I also think physically, for me, if I was hungover, you know, there's no way I was going to be able to write, not that I even tried back then. But just knowing what I know now, there's no way I would have been able to write if I if I were hungover. So I think that has an impact on and as well, if you don't feel good physically, you're not going to be able to create your best stuff, or create period in general. So that's something to think about. Maybe that's a why for you thinking about, you know, taking some time away from alcohol, and just seeing if it has an impact on the kinds of things that you create, and the kinds of things that you put out into the world, whether it's your writing or creating content, or whatever it might be. Because I think there's a definite link there.

Again, it it's so funny, we have this romanticized view, or I certainly did have a real writers who were tortured and had no glass of whiskey with them at all times. And they could only write when they were just creatively tortured and drunken. I know without a shadow of a doubt, if I were still drinking, I would not be able to write. It's just not, it's just not possible for me. So. And I didn't start writing until I got sober. That was that was something that was important for me. So if you're doing a dry January, I hope it's going well for you. If this is something that you're thinking about, if you're kind of sober, curious, I encourage you to just try it again, doesn't have to be a really long committed thing. You're not saying you're not going to drink for the rest of the time. Just try it for a month and see what happens.

I think you know, one thing that I've heard from from well, I heard this from a friend of mine who was she's, she's not she doesn't have any problem at all with alcohol. She can. She's a social drinker. It's fine. She drinks a few times a week, probably. But she was saying that she was noticing like how her drinking was kind of slowly increasing. Like she would all of her social things that she was going to revolve around alcohol, happy hours, wine tastings going to breweries like everything that she was doing revolved around alcohol. And she started noticing that when she got home from work, she would automatically reach for a beer or a glass of wine or something, it just became this. It's like, the way that she was talking about it, it was as if she she didn't even notice it until she woke up one day and was like, Wait a second, I'm drinking a lot, this has become a much bigger part of my life than I realized.

So for her doing something like a dry January and taking a break from it was really eye opening for her to see how much of her life sort of revolved around alcohol. And look, if you're not, if you don't have a problem with drinking, there's nothing wrong with drinking a lot. Like I'm not, I don't, I don't care, I think it's fine. If you want to drink four or five times a week, like I'm not saying that it's just, I think it can be an invitation to look at the role that it plays in your life and how often you're doing it, and make sure that you're okay with that, and you feel like it's serving you. And my friends case, she discovered that, you know, it really was taking over her life. And so she made some deliberate changes to that she didn't stop drinking, but just to make sure that it wasn't becoming even more of a big part of our life than it was. So that can be a good purpose, or good reason to do something like a dry January as well just assess the role that it plays in your life.

So it's, um How do I want to say this? I don't share a lot about my journey of what it was like when I was actively drinking and my recovery and all of that. Not because I'm ashamed or embarrassed of it. I wasn't the beginning and that's why I never talked about it. But at this point, it's been long enough that I feel like I can be of service to people and talk about this. I've had a lot of comments from people saying that I don't look like someone who would be an alcoholic or, you know, problem drinker, which is always funny to me because addiction doesn't discriminate. I mean, anyone can have a problem. But and also it makes me laugh because again, my life is so radically different than it was 10 years ago. And so, yeah, like, of course, I don't look like something like that now.

But anyways, what I want to say is, you know, please send me a DM if you want, if this is something that you're really struggling with, or questioning, and I'm happy to share more about my story. You know, it was a long road for me to get here and I was in denial for a lot of years about this, but my life has gotten so much better because of writing and being able to write when I quit drinking, but also just in every like, literally every area of my life has gotten better since I quit drinking. It's not an exaggeration, and I would not be here putting out this content having the business that I have writing I would not be doing any of that if I were still drinking so it really is the most powerful decision that I have made in my life. So anyways, yeah, if you're if you're struggling or you're questioning or you just want to hear more about my story, like I'm happy to talk about it, you can just send me a DM and yeah, and also you know, if you do want another podcast episode talking more about this and like my story, just let me know too. Happy to have you do that. Alright, thank you for listening or watching and I will see you next week.