Taking a dry week

Welcome to the new year

So this is the new Year,

And I have no resolutions

It’s self-assigned penance

For problems with easy solutions.

— Death Cab for Cutie, “The New Year”

In early 2012, one of the most remarkable, unexpected, feel-good sports stories of my lifetime sprung from the hardwood at Madison Square Garden. Only through a freak confluence of injuries and desperation from a bad NBA team, the New York Knicks almost haphazardly plugged in a journeyman point guard. He became an overnight sensation, averaging 24 points per game during an 11-game stretch in which the Knicks — who had been 7-15 — went 9-2. He played with joy and reckless abandon. You may remember him. His name is Jeremy Lin.

Linsanity, as the ensuing stretch of time became known, only lasted, at its most generous edges, until March 24, when a meniscus tear led Lin to season-ending surgery. But its essence was really just in those 11 games, beginning with his revelatory breakthrough, dropping 25 in a win over the Nets Feb. 4, and finishing with a 17-point home win over the Atlanta Hawks on Feb. 22. The purest form of Linsanity was just 19 days.

Linsanity in a can.

Time has a way of dilating during certain events. This is more than just an illusion — it’s actually connected to the way our dopamine and serotonin levels impact our brains during certain events. The more dopamine released during an exciting event, like a memorable basketball game, the more our brains increase our perceptual frame rate, overclocking time, allowing us to recall lots of minutiae. This is why fun events feel like they happen quickly within the moment, even if we can remember them “slowly,” or in great detail.

Conversely, boring events feel on a chemical level like they happen more slowly, even if we barely remember them in retrospect.

Guess what else releases dopamine? Alcohol, even in small doses. For people with a family history of alcoholism, this dopamine release can be even more powerful. Understanding that our brains chemically encourage us to drink (and use other drugs) helps reframe addiction as something we have less inherent control over.

(Fascinatingly, even the taste of non-alcoholic beer can trigger the same release of dopamine in the brain. I’ll leave the question of whether it’s any better to still be chasing that “natural” high, rather than one provided by alcohol itself, to others for now.)

If we’re used to regular dopamine releases connected to alcohol, and we suddenly remove that habit from our lives, we alter the way we perceive our evenings. Not having a glass of wine with dinner suddenly becomes about more than just a drink — it impacts our brain’s reward system and our temporal experience of the hours that follow. Removing that can feel very much like depriving ourselves of joy, because we are, on a hormonal level, doing exactly that.

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Welcome to the first official edition of Pretty Good. As will be the case moving forward from here, the opening post of the month will focus on a practical component of adulthood. And since it’s January, there’s no better time to talk about our deeply-rooted, Puritanical impulses to deprive ourselves of joy and comfort to open the new year. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so below.

Our January wellness culture is also, of course, a reaction to the excess that American holidays insist on us, encouraging us to make drastic changes to our diets, exercise routines, and alcohol intake. Even if we know that dramatic shifts to our existing lifestyles are unsustainable and often result in even more destructive rebounds in our habits, many of us set unrealistic goals anyway. These ambitions are reinforced by a culture that overfeeds us, then castigates us for being fat as soon as the calendar flips. Anyway, that’s not what we’re here to do.

For those of you who drink, perhaps you’ve decided to take a dry month in January. If so, don’t let me dissuade you. But whether you have done so in the past or not, let me offer a softer, more easily repeatable option: a dry week.

(If you don’t drink, this same approach can easily be applied to other habits of your life that you may feel are unhealthy and that you’d like to moderate.)

January tends to be a good month for this, as the weather and the holiday calendar are at their least hospitable. Still, there may be reasons you don’t want to try this immediately. Maybe you’ve already made a fancy dinner reservation and are really looking forward to a nice glass of wine or a craft cocktail. Maybe you have a football team headed to the playoffs and are looking forward to your gameday beer bong and table-smashing tradition. I’m not here to judge.

But I am here to encourage you to pick a week and stick to it. As someone who has taken periodic dry weeks in the past, here are my suggestions to making it fruitful and repeatable, if you’re so inclined:

Consider what you’re drinking instead

If you don’t have a good variety of non-alcoholic options around the house, you may find yourself looking disgustedly at your water pitcher. And grabbing a high-sugar soda with dinner instead is hardly a great substitute. Two easy ways to give yourself some options are to make sure you purchase some citrus and some sparkling water for your dry week, and to make a flavored syrup or two to have on hand (I’ll leave one recipe below and get into some others in later editions of this newsletter). But, yes, it’s also a chance to drink more water, something most of us could probably use in our lives.

Really think about how your life is the same or different, and if you’re missing anything

As you replace drinks, consider how they impact your meals and how you feel afterward. Is there any difference in your mood or stress level? Are any perceived changes dramatic, or are they generally not noticeable?

Crucially, according to various scientific studies, it can take everywhere from a few weeks to many months to set a habit. That’s not what we’re doing here. But four or five days is enough time for your body to react to a sudden absence of alcohol, even for a casual drinker.

I do want to emphasize that if you are a heavy drinker, going completely dry can cause serious withdrawals, and that you should speak to a medical professional before doing so. Please reach out to them for help, if you need it.

Track your sleep to see if it improves

Each morning when you wake up, take a moment to catalog how you feel. Did you wake up fewer times in the night? Do you feel more rested? Are you less groggy? There are plenty of other, external factors that can impact this, of course. But alcohol works as a diuretic, generally dehydrating you. If you don’t balance that out with more water intake in the evening, it can make for restless nights with less restorative, REM sleep. So it’s worth taking stock of whether you see tangible changes. (Also, if you’re drinking more water, it helps to do that earlier in the evening, giving your body time to process it before you go to bed.)

Set yourself up for success

The last one is key. Don’t pick a week where you already know you’ll be moping about not being able to enjoy something because of a pre-planned event. The whole point of this effort is to not make it feel like an exercise in deprivation. It’s to turn it into something potentially helpful not just now, but as you get older and try to set better habits.

I generally drink no more than a drink or maybe two on any given night, but I often enjoy a homemade cocktail, glass of wine, or occasional beer with dinner. I personally have started taking sporadic dry weeks throughout the year, usually in the lead up to a bike race. It helps me balance out my system, sleep better, and often shed a temporary pound or two. I want to stress, though, that last part isn’t about being viable as a long-term weight loss strategy — it’s just a bonus when you have to pedal yourself up a big old hill.

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I’ve started my year with a dry week, as it was good timing for me ahead of an international trip that I leave for Friday evening. Here’s what I’ve been drinking this week:

• Lots of water

• Not-too-sweet blueberry cardamom syrup soda: I made this for our New Year’s party and had some left over. Syrups are great, because you can just put a splash in to make something tasty without it being a sugar bomb.

  • Recipe: Mix one cup water and half a cup of white sugar in a small saucepan. Stir to combine. Add one cup blueberries and one tablespoon whole cardamom. Set burner to medium until liquid reaches a boil, then cut heat and let steep until cool, about 45 minutes. Strain into bottle and keep refrigerated.

• Blood orange rosemary mixer: My wife made this for the same party. 

• Apple cider soda

• The Asian pear-flavored Linsanity sparkling water, pictured at the top of this post

Do you have a dry week planned? Have any other tips to share? Other questions about the best way to pull one off? Let me know in the comments below, share this with anyone you think might enjoy it, and I’ll see you back here next week.