I’m a week away from completing my first Dry January. And it has been insightful. I’ve learned a few things about myself along the way and a few things that were extremely helpful should I choose to continue this “winning” streak or do a Sober Spring – Observant October, Woke Winter, Judge-Free June, whathaves you. I won’t keep this long (as I’m not done yet) so I’ll narrow it down to 5:

1. I really am an anxious and up-tight person. I will literally get my panties in a wad over anything. And I mean any-he-thang. Paper straw wrapper in the driveway… the linoleum in the kitchen, the amazing amount of mismatched socks in my house. These are all symptoms of my epic failure at LIFE. I did not realize how much I needed to chill until I took my method of chill away.
2. I like the taste of beer. This is the one time I’m envious of my wine and cosmo loving counter parts. When they do Dry January they post photos of fancy mock-tails with ginger beer and sours, etc. I don’t like the sweet stuff and it doesn’t replicate the blue collar satisfaction of that psssst from popping the cap off a cold one. NA beers have the bottle down and that’s basically it. There is this phantom aftertaste that haunts almost every NA beer I’ve tried that I’ve never wanted to ever encounter. I think it’s the culmination of torturing a brew to death and what you are left with is the failure of producing a natural tasting hop beverage. How do you get just the hops without losing the hope? 
3. I have so many feelings. I didn’t realize how anesthetized I have been and for how long. I have been holding on to some crazy emotions from sadness, to pride, to elation, paralyzing fear, hope, and then back to sadness again. I’m not sure how I feel about my feelings. I’m not sure I love this new found depth of emotion. I’m uncomfortable with it. It’s felt like I’ve been wearing sweatpants and then switched to spanxs all of the sudden and I. Can’t. Breath.
4. I’m so much more productive. Not to brag, but somehow I can sleep in, watch a weeks worth of 90 day fi·an·cé and still have time to do the dishes and make my bed. I manage to avoid the things I really don’t want to do (like vacuuming, scrubbing the toilets, etc.) but in theory I have time to do them. It’s like I’ve gained an extra three hours in a day to do stuff I hate!
5. OMG beer makes you bloated? No Sh*t Sherlock. Coasting out of the last part of the winter break, the Christmas Lagers, fudge and eggnog, had added a sleek 5 lbs to my already svelte figure. I’m not saying I’ve turned into Jane Fonda, but with little effort I dropped the 5 lbs back to baseline and can now fit into my original fat pants. Yay me!

So there is your recap. Thus far – it’s been a pretty cool experience and I haven’t really missed the shame-overs, hangovers, and extra caloric bloat. I would say that I’m experiencing more clarity – caveat is I’m 40+ and always in a mental fog (so hard to gauge baseline there).

My intention is to keep going. I want to see if I can make it 90 days and maybe get my K1 visa for my (mostly) sober self to live here permanently.