This sci-fly is dedicated to Dry January 2026: The Student Edition. In January 2026, a special student edition of Dry January will be organized by IkPas, Radboud University and Tilburg University. Students are challenged to participate in Dry January, and research will be conducted into how students experience taking a break from alcohol. For more information, visit: https://www.ru.nl/studenten/nieuws/dry-january-2026-activiteiten-op-de-campus
More and more people are venturing into Dry January: not drinking alcohol for an entire month. But does a month of abstinence really yield lasting benefits, or will you actually consume more alcohol afterwards? And can it have negative consequences if you don’t last the whole month? A British study of hundreds of participants has good news: most participants drank less after that alcohol-free month than before, even if they didn’t last the full 31 days.
KEY FINDINGS
Findings: Participants who drank alcohol less often or were drunk less often in the month before Dry January were more likely to stick to alcohol-free drinking for the entire month. Participation in Dry January also led to several positive (long-term) changes: six months after the end of the month, participants drank less often on average, drank less per occasion and felt more confident about refusing alcohol. It was striking that even participants who did not complete the entire month showed similar improvements in their drinking behaviour and self-confidence.
Key conclusions: These results suggest that participating in Dry January can contribute to healthier drinking behaviour and greater self-control, without leading to adverse compensation afterwards. The findings therefore support the idea that even short-term, voluntary breaks from alcohol consumption can have a positive and lasting effect on drinking habits.
RESEARCH METHODS
What? What changes in alcohol consumption and self-confidence occur after successfully or unsuccessfully completing Dry January?
Who? 857 adults from the United Kingdom who participated in Dry January.
How? Participants completed a questionnaire just before the start, immediately after the end, and six months after Dry January. In it, they recorded their alcohol consumption (how often they drank alcohol, how many drinks and how often they were drunk) and how difficult or easy it was for them to refuse a drink. After Dry January, they reported whether they had managed to abstain from alcohol for the entire month.
FINDINGS
Both successful and unsuccessful participants drank alcohol less often, consumed less alcohol per occasion and were drunk less often, even six months after Dry January.
Table 1. Changes in drinking behaviour after participating in Dry January
| Drinking behaviour | Dry January unsuccessful: baseline | Dry January unsuccessful: follow-up | Dry January successful: baseline | Dry January successful: follow-up |
| Drinking days per week | 5.0 | 4.1 | 4.8 | 3.7 |
| Alcoholic drinks per occasion | 4.2 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.1 |
| Drunkenness per month | 3.8 | 2.2 | 2.6 | 1.2 |
DISCUSSION
The results are encouraging: even those who do not fully stick to Dry January drink less on average afterwards and feel more confident about saying “no” to alcohol. For students and young adults, a short break from alcohol may also help them to deal with temptations in a healthier way and develop more self-control. At the same time, it is important to be cautious about drawing general conclusions: the participants in this study signed up themselves, so the group probably consisted of motivated, relatively moderate drinkers. The findings cannot therefore be easily applied to heavy drinkers. Further research could examine how such periods of abstinence work for people at higher risk of problematic use.
DETAILS
de Visser, R. O., Robinson, E., & Bond, R. (2016). Voluntary temporary abstinence from alcohol during “Dry January” and subsequent alcohol use. Health Psychology, 35(3), 281–289.
This sci-fly was written by Fenne van Oss for the course Recent Developments in Risk Behaviour, Master PWO, 2025.
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