Cutting out booze can be really daunting, so we asked the official Dry January 2026 doctor for some top tips on getting through a sober month. Spoiler alert – you don’t need to stop going to the pub!
WORDS: Megan Graye
Christmas is over – and if you’re anything like us – you’ve drunk and eaten a bit too much. Not only that, but the present haul has probably meant the wallet strings are feeling a little tight. So what better time to consider a sober month? It’s a way to boost your health, save some money and likely lose a bit of that Christmas bloat – what have you got to lose?
According to Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind the renowned Dry January® 2026 challenge, more than three in 10 UK drinkers have become more concerned about the long-term damage of alcohol. But despite the obvious benefits of cutting down, doing the Dry January challenge can be a daunting prospect – especially if a lot of your social calendar revolves around boozing and pubs.
“Dry January can help kickstart that relationship where you feel like you can go to a social event, a party, a bar, a pub, and not have to drink,” says 2026’s official Dry January doctor – Dr Jeevan Fernando. To help you achieve your goal, we got some top tips from him all about the best ways to sustainably approach giving up booze this month – and how best to tackle the break successfully.
Top tips to succeed at Dry January – from an expert
Download the Try Dry app:
According to the experts – the best way to make a success of your Dry January challenge is to download Alcohol Change UK’s Try Dry app. It’s completely free and helps with all the aspects of quitting booze for a month (streak tracking, savings, calories and community)- and makes anyone using it twice as likely to succeed.
Make a commitment
2026’s official Dry January Doctor, Dr Fernando, recommends deciding to do the challenge by getting the app and pledging your commitment. “It’s an agreement with yourself that you’re going to try your best and that way it becomes something serious to yourself,” he explains. “You make a deal with yourself once you download the app and it feels more real.”
Set goals
“A very important part of changing your behavior is setting goals,” says Fernando. “The app itself helps you to set a goal and customise it – so you can aim for the whole month, more than the whole month or less than the whole month.” Once you’ve set the goal, the app then tells you your streak, and your progress towards that goal. “That helps you remember in the difficult times that ‘oh I have a 10 day streak going’ which will keep you motivated because you can see how much prior work you’ve done.”
Track how much you’re saving
As well as showing your streak, the app also enables you to see how much money you’ve saved as a result of not drinking – and how many calories you’ve saved. This is a real motivator as we often don’t realise how much we’re actually accumulating in calories when it comes to booze – or how much we’re really spending on it.
Encourage others to get involved
“One of the best things you can do is encourage your friends or family to join in too,” explains Fernando. “If you’re going to the pub, you might not be the only one not drinking, for example, and that can help you feel less isolated, like you’re not alone.” Fernando also points out that the app also has a peer community feature on it. “There are people with a similar goal set who can work together and share ideas and motivate each other and keep each other accountable. That can then make it feel like it’s bigger than just you.”
Don’t avoid socialising
“Go out and spend time with your friends,” says Fernando. “Don’t hold yourself in your house trying to avoid alcohol, because the best thing you can do is go to those pubs, see that actually you can have an alcohol-free alternative, and have a decent drink,” he says. “Of course it might feel a little bit difficult at the start – you might feel a bit self-conscious, but eventually you realise that you can have just as much fun. You can still laugh while sober, you can still have a good time and can feel better the next day.”
Experiment with alcohol free alternatives
“There’s a lot more alcohol free alternatives now, 0% beers, soft drinks, there’s so many options,” says Dr Fernando. “We can talk about oh, is this perfect to drink? But we’re not trying to be perfect here, we’re trying to be better. Alcohol is a very potent chemical in your body and so even if you’re just removing just that, it affects so many different systems.”
Create new rewards
“What I recommend doing is substituting the things that give you rewards,” says Dr Fernando. “Often we can see it as ‘I’m making my life worse as a result of removing this source of joy and this source of reward’ so if you’re not going to have alcohol, you have to find those other things that help you relax or de-stress or feel good. You want to substitute behaviors rather than just taking them away, you wanna add something that makes your life feel better.”
Finally – don’t be disheartened if you break!
“We have to see ourselves as a bit of a project,” says Dr Fernando. “Things rarely happen in black and white and so if you do break one of these days, you should first find out why, (were you tired etc?) and then you can try and avoid that later,” he explains. “Of course we say with Dry January that ideally we make a streak, but if what that does is give you more alcohol-free days, then you’ve made progress that month. If you set another goal, you’ll keep moving forward.”
The Dry January® challenge, created and run by Alcohol Change UK since 2013, helps people around the UK and the world reset their relationship with alcohol over 31 days and beyond.
This year, alongside tapping into our individual motivations for taking on the challenge – such as saving money, improving our fitness or feeling happier – and the features in the Try Dry® app to track your progress every step of the way, Alcohol Change UK is bringing Funny AF to the UK: a one-night-only live dry comedy event at the Lucky Saint this January. Featuring a celebrity host and a range of comedians, the night will showcase that ditching the booze doesn’t mean losing the banter. Enter to win tickets via the Try Dry® app from 17th December.
