“Dry January” or dry whatever is a good idea.

I only recently found out about “dry January”. From social media, I think and one of my colleagues joked about it on a conference call.

I never aimed to make my January dry and it wasn’t. However, at the end of last year, I tried breaking my decades-long habit of having a few drinks in the evening. To clarify — every night for decades I’d have a drink in the evening. Say a small beer after my run and then a couple of glasses of wine.

There wasn’t any deep thinking behind my experiment. My habit wasn’t causing me any problems, at least not that I know of at this point. I mention with pride how I love running. I run every day too. I run eighty miles a week. My nutrition is healthy.

Too often though I’d come across stories and publications praising sobriety (and obviously criticizing alcohol consumption). There was one story in particular that really caught my attention. It went something like this: you know you have a problem with alcohol if you are doing this. The title was inviting. The story then hits you in the balls: you have a problem with alcohol if you’re reading this story. The premise was that if you’re investigating, then it’s because you already have a problem. I was annoyed. On any given day I read dozens of stories. Yes, some are related to my life, to some extent. That doesn’t give anyone the right to come up with these sweeping generalizations.

Anyway, I stopped drinking. Overnight. I don’t even like calling it “drinking”. I stopped having my…