2024-01-13 14:00:05
In a bar in Brest, January 10, 2023. FRED TANNEAU/AFP
Go thirty-one days without drinking a drop of alcohol. This is the now well-known challenge of Dry January, a prevention campaign launched in 2013 in the United Kingdom, popularized on social networks. Supported by prevention associations, the challenge is in its fifth edition in France. This period of abstinence should allow everyone to question their relationship with alcohol, and to regulate it if necessary.
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While the consumption of alcoholic beverages caused 49,000 deaths in 2023, according to figures from the Ministry of Health, the issue is public health. The January Challenge, year following year, has found its fans, and all ages play the game. “50% of people who have downloaded Try Dry, the challenge support application, are between 45 and 50 years old. A quarter are younger and the other quarter are older”argues Marie Öngün-Rombaldi, general delegate of the Addiction Federation, which is taking on the challenge.
Despite its resonance with the general public, the operation has not received official support from the government, which leaves the associations – there are around sixty of them – to carry the initiative. This way of doing things was highlighted, in December, by around fifty addictologists, in a letter revealed by The Parisian and addressed to Aurélien Rousseau, Minister of Health at the time. Mr. Rousseau, before resigning in reaction to the vote on the “immigration” law, assured that he would personally participate in Dry January, but expressed his skepticism as to the fact that the State would say “how to live for a month”.
“Between six and ten beers a day”
“This challenge makes it possible to detect excessive consumers, who do not yet have a problem with alcohol but who might eventually have one”, defends Mickaël Naassila, professor at the University of Picardie Jules-Verne and president of the French Society of Alcoholology. The challenge is not recommended for alcohol-dependent people, for whom professional support is necessary.
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Julien (the people mentioned by their first name did not wish to give their name), 46 years old, confesses to having been well over the limit for a long time, “between six and ten beers a day. I don’t consider myself an alcoholic, I don’t have a visceral need to drinkhe assures. I just can’t stick to one drink. » Since January 1, and for the third time, the former association worker has replaced beer with grapefruit Schweppes. “The first two times, I continued not drinking for five months. And then I continued as before. » This time, he intends to never reconnect. “I saw all the benefits that quitting alcohol brought me. It shows on my face. My eyes are brighter and I look better. People tell me! » The effects are not just physical. “I am much more peaceful, almost liberated. Alcohol tends to make me feel slightly depressed. Without it, I regain all my energy. I want to do a thousand different things. In the evening, I know I can take the car and go to the theater if I feel like it. Before, it was impossible. »
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