What really happens when you give up alcohol for a month

The health, money and mind benefits from taking a break

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Since it was started in 2013 by the charity Alcohol Change UK, the Dry January challenge has significantly grown in popularity, becoming a very popular new year's resolution.

In 2023, 175,000 people officially signed up to take on the challenge of going alcohol-free for the entire month of January - and it’s likely many more will have done it unofficially.

Taking a month-long break from alcohol can have many benefits. And these benefits appear pretty quickly - across various aspects of health and wellbeing.

At the biological level, one month of abstinence is associated with reductions in liver fat, blood glucose and blood cholesterol.

A month of abstaining from alcohol can also have a range of psychological benefits, as found in one study on the Dry January challenge that I conducted with Alcohol Change UK.

The study looked at 4,232 adults who had signed up to participate in Dry January. Participants were surveyed just before the start of the challenge, with followup surveys conducted in the first week of February.

One of the key benefits of doing the Dry January challenge was better sleep. Over half of participants (56%) said their sleep quality was better by the end of the month.