Take 31 days without drinking a drop of alcohol. This is the now well-known challenge of Dry January, a prevention campaign launched in the United Kingdom in 2013 and popular on social networks. The competition, supported by prevention associations, is taking place in France for the fifth time. This period of abstinence should enable everyone to question their relationship to alcohol and, if necessary, regulate it.
While the consumption of alcoholic beverages caused 49,000 deaths in 2023, According to the Ministry of Health, this is a matter of public health. The January Challenge has found its fans year after year and all age groups play the game. “50% of people who have downloaded Try Dry, the challenge support application, are between 45 and 50 years old. A quarter is younger and the other quarter is older.”argues Marie Öngün-Rombaldi, general delegate of the Addiction Federation, who takes up the challenge.
Although the campaign was well received by the general public, it received no official support from the government, so the initiative is supported by around sixty associations. This approach was highlighted in December by around fifty addictionologists in a letter published by THE Parisian and addressed to Aurélien Rousseau, the then Minister of Health. Mr Rousseau, before resigning in response to the vote on the “immigration” billhad pledged that he would personally attend Dry January, but expressed skepticism that the state would say so “How do you live for a month?”.
“Between six and ten beers a day”
“This challenge makes it possible to identify excessive users who do not yet have a drinking problem but may eventually have one.”, defends Mickaël Naassila, professor at the University of Picardy Jules-Verne and president of the French Society of Alcoholology. The challenge is not recommended for alcohol-dependent people who need professional support.
Julien (the people mentioned by their first names did not want to give their name), 46 years old, admits that he was well over the limit for a long time, “Between six and ten beers a day. I don’t consider myself an alcoholic, I don’t have an instinctive need to drinkhe assures. I just can’t limit myself to one drink. » Since this 1stum January, and for the third time the former club employee replaced the beer with grapefruit Schweppes. “The first two times I didn’t drink alcohol for five months. And then I continued as before. » This time he intends never to reconnect. “I have seen all the benefits that giving up alcohol has brought me. It shows on my face. My eyes are brighter and I look better. People tell me! » The effects are not just physical. “I am much more peaceful, almost liberated. Alcohol tends to give me mild depression. Without it, I regain all my energy. I want to do a thousand different things. In the evening I know that I can drive to the theater if I feel like it. Before it was impossible. »
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