How to ditch Dry January and survive the great February retox

Back on the booze: Dry January is dead and gone
Ivan Cortez

January is introspective and interminable. It is a time of excoriating self-criticism; the gentle vices with which you normally happily co-exist become, temporarily, things to “overcome”.

Alcohol is the nation’s favourite vice; ergo, the invention of Dry January, during which time people pledge not to drink a drop. Veganuary is less explicable — unless you buy into its environmental ethos — but still had the capital in its clutches: it’s estimated that it was a record year for those abstaining from all animal products for 31 days.

Mercifully, while the real clouds remain stubbornly installed, we have emerged from the figurative ones: the Febretox has begun. No offence to those with iron-clad willpower but the fun hiatus has been sucking the soul out of the capital.

Tonight, it’s time to get back on it. Remember that Thursdays, before you became really boring, used to be your favourite night out of the week: it’s a schoolnight, so there’s a frisson of naughtiness, but you only need to get through a single working day tomorrow, which you can basically do with your eyes shut and a reverberating white wine headache.

But as always you must exercise caution. Your liver has been refuelling but it has not been reborn; similarly, you might feel lean and clean but realistically you have been observing militant herbivorism for a month and you’re not as tough as you were when it was brandy for breakfast in December. This is a survival guide.

Alamy Stock Photo

DO…

Make the first night one to remember

This means eating a meal with carbohydrates and ideally drinking a pint of water before bed. You’re channelling you on your best form, not you in freshers’ week, heaving over a loo while a Samaritan mops your clammy brow. You’re aiming to catch the last Tube, not the first; you’re aiming to spend a reasonable amount on drinks, not an amount that will make you break out in another sweat, this time cold, when you remember tapping your debit card. Top line: you are aiming not to be sweaty.

DON’T...

Talk about your hangover

December nights were a laugh but the mornings were like an especially pedestrian recurring nightmare: the same people talking about the same self-inflicted symptoms, ad nauseum — occasionally literally, for those of a delicate constitution— until it was time to go to the pub again. Your hangover is not interesting. If you’re feeling like you’ve hollowed out your skull, have a coffee and a private cry.

One of Pitt Cue's beers

DO…

Go to new places

A month is a long-time in London — even in a down month. Whole hotspots may have had their 15 minutes by now; meanwhile, the centre could have been reconfigured around a new restaurant or bar. In other words, you need to make sure you go to the right places. Quick recap: Indian Accent, on Mayfair’s Albemarle Street, is buzzing; Peckham Levels is packing street food, music and club nights; SW9 newbie Stockwell Continental is serving up sourdough pizzas and homemade salami. See and be seen there.

DON’T...

Forget everything you learned

Artisan burger, yes, with gusto; box of fried chicken, no.

Shutterstock

DON’T...

Talk about everything you’ve learned

Firstly, because talking earnestly about what you learned about giving up alcohol while clutching the stem of a glass of sauvignon blanc, knuckles whitening, will make you seem certifiedly mad; the same goes for extolling veganism while sawing, violently, through a steak.

Secondly, because, like hangovers, talking about sobriety is maddening. Chalk January up to a fugue state: a period of somnambulent, semi-consciousness, memories you cannot trust and don’t bear revisiting. Long live Febretox.

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