Some people think that the Dry January® challenge is just something you do: stop drinking alcohol in January. In reality it is a proprietary behaviour change intervention, developed and run by the independent charity Alcohol Change UK, and is one component in our wider behaviour change intervention: the Try Dry®
programme.
Of course, people can choose to try going dry on their own in January, and they may or may not benefit from that; but they are not doing the guided Dry January®
challenge and their chances of effective long-term behaviour change are significantly reduced as a result. The difference is a bit like choosing to go for a run in a park on a Saturday morning, and saying you are doing a park run. But that does not mean you have joined a parkrun®. When it comes to Dry January®, this difference between doing your own thing versus doing the real thing really matters.
By joining the Dry January® challenge, you’re given (completely free) access to three tools that make the challenge a completely different experience to trying to go dry on your own in January:
- A premium app for accountability, goal-setting, and positive nudges
- Brilliantly curated daily content to inform, educate and inspire
- A huge, warm, supportive online community for support, tips, and inspiration.
If you’re trying to go dry on your own in January, you get none of these tools or the benefits they bring, impairing the experience and undermining long-term effectiveness.
If you are seeking to benefit the health of the public when it comes to alcohol, then encouraging people to take part in the Dry January® challenge run by Alcohol Change UK will help to deliver sustainable change. We’re proud that so many Local Authorities, health teams and partners have been part of this change since launch in 2013!
It’s important to note that the Dry January® challenge is not a fundraising campaign, like Go Sober for October or Dryathlon. These two campaigns, run by cancer charities to raise funds, are completely different and have no in-built behaviour change design or expertise. Some participants do choose to also fundraise while taking on the Dry January® challenge, which can bolster their commitment and help enhance their behaviour change experience. But it is fundamentally designed as a behaviour change intervention, not an income generation campaign.
Yes. The Dry January® challenge, which is part of the wider Try Dry®
programme, is one of the most effective public health alcohol interventions, globally. It is carefully designed, highly effective, integrates with alcohol treatment, and supports wider public health efforts, especially preventing alcohol harm. It is also incredibly cost-effective.
It aims to create significant long-term behaviour change, at scale, with January as a primary recruitment moment, and with behaviour change tools and techniques that generate momentum way beyond January.
Yes. The Try Dry® app data show us that the baseline drinking of the Dry January® cohort averages 35.2 units per week. (People can and do join the Try Dry® programme all year round, but this data is based specifically on the cohort who joined 1 December to 31 January). For those who continued to use the app for six months, 85% saw a reduction in their drinking and this reduction was substantial, with this group having an average drinking level of 5.6 units per week by June.
An independent evaluation by the University of Sussex compared the wellbeing, AUDIT-C and drink refusal outcomes for three groups: those who had undertaken the Dry January® challenge, those who had tried to stay dry in January ‘on their own’, and a group from the general population who had not attempted being dry in January. Their data were taken at baseline (end December/start January), at the end of January, and in June.
Only 36% of the cohort who tried to go dry on their own managed to stay dry in January, whereas 70% of Dry January participants stayed dry. At the start of January, the Dry January® group were in a worse position (higher drinking, lower wellbeing) than both the other cohorts, but by June they were up in a better position (lower drinking, higher wellbeing) than both cohorts.
We see daily evidence of the life changing nature of the Try Dry® programme, especially through our online community, with many hundreds of messages like this a year:
“I’m beyond pleased to have reached this milestone [250 dry days]. I have now set a new goal of 115 days from tomorrow. That will get me to one year dry. My health has improved enormously, both physical and mental. I would almost say I’m a different person. This app has kept me so accountable, in a way I never was for my 30+ years drinking ‘career’ and this group is just the best! Thank you for all the warmth and support.”
In terms of scale, more than half a million UK adults have signed up to the Try Dry® app since 2018, of which 110,000 are current active UK users (last 12 months).
The average cost of supporting each person for six months is about £6.20, making the Try Dry® programme incredible value for money. And these costs are all borne by Alcohol Change UK – not by local authorities, the NHS, police forces or the users themselves.
More information on the effectiveness of the Dry January® challenge.
Not in the slightest. Our stated secondary objective for the Dry January® challenge, after behaviour change, is to drive cultural conversations about the role of alcohol in society and to engage policy-makers. This includes significant media work and our annual Dry January® Parliamentary event. While we work year-round to influence the government to introduce better policies and regulations and to secure media attention on alcohol policy, these opportunities are high during Dry January®.
Crucially, our Try Dry® programme including the Dry January® challenge also brings hundreds of thousands of campaigners to Alcohol Change UK. As people take control of their drinking, and receive our content, they also become sensitised to the UK’s weak alcohol marketing regulations, the problems of super-cheap alcohol, the alcohol labelling loophole, the undue influence of the alcohol industry, and the need for less availability. The Dry January®
cohort moves, over time, from being a set of individuals changing their behaviour to a collective movement. This shifts public attitudes slowly but surely, building public support for better alcohol policies.
Finally, the idea that we must choose between supporting people in need and advancing effective alcohol policy is misguided. It's important to recognise in public health that population-level alcohol policies and specialist alcohol treatment for people who need it are equally essential. What's more, if we value specialist alcohol treatment, it is only logical to also support earlier, effective behaviour change interventions that can prevent people needing specialist treatment in future. Behaviour change is the ‘missing middle’ between population-wide policy change and specialist alcohol treatment for a small sub-set of the population. That is why local authorities and many others across the UK proudly support the Dry January® challenge and our year-round Try Dry® programme.
The Try Dry®
programme exists to prevent people deteriorating to the point where their alcohol dependence means that they need specialist alcohol treatment. Alcohol Change UK is hugely supportive of the alcohol treatment system in all its diversity. We spend considerable resources:
- helping people understand what is available and encouraging them to access that help
- campaigning for sustainable funding for the alcohol treatment system
While the vast majority of people using the Try Dry® programme are hazardous and harmful drinkers, some people fit the criteria for alcohol dependence and, for whatever reason, are not accessing alcohol treatment services. Rather than refuse them, we take a 'no wrong door' approach which recognises the complex and diverse needs of some drinkers. This ensures that people who need more support and choose to take part in the Try Dry® programme, despite drinking at high levels, are actively signposted through the app, emails and group moderation to alcohol treatment services.
The Try Dry®
app also actively signposts people to alcohol treatment, both through its embedded AUDIT-C quiz results for those receiving relevant scores; and through its extensive ‘more’ section which contains in-app content on accessing further support. We are currently developing a new feature, being piloted with Medway local authority, for the app to signpost to the specific local service.
With 110,000 active UK Try Dry® app users in just the last 12 months, the programme produces outstanding anonymised data down to postcode level (and mappable onto LSOAs and local authority areas) of:
- the number of sign-ups
- age and gender
- engagement (app usage)
- baseline alcohol consumption (units per week) and AUDIT-C scores
and four types of impact data:
- changes in alcohol consumption
- changes in AUDIT-C scores
- changes in wellbeing (mood, energy, sleep and cravings)
- their goal-setting and goal-achieving activity.
We make this rich dataset available to local authorities and others, to improve the targeting of public health messaging and to assess the impact of local campaigns and interventions.
We use this dataset ourselves to keep developing and improving our behaviour change programme and also to assess, and tackle, any health inequalities. We have recently undertaken a project mapping Try Dry® app users against a range of indicators including race, deprivation, educational level, and digital inclusion. Our media work for the past two Januarys has focused on reaching men aged 35+ who are hazardous or harmful drinkers, to address their under-representation in the data.
We have recently launched the Cut Back challenge, which challenges people to halve their baseline weekly drinking in units, for four weeks. So, if you’re typically drinking 60 units per week, your Cut Back challenge is to cut back your consumption to 30 units a week or less, for four consecutive weeks. This challenge is targeted at those who currently find the idea of an alcohol-free month intimidating or unattractive, engaging this group through an achievable challenge. Over time, their goals may change; and they have reduced their risk of alcohol harm in the meantime. At the end of the challenge we encourage them to:
- sustain this reduction for even longer
- reduce again by half
- consider graduating to our Moderator goal (14 or fewer units per week)
- try a fully alcohol-free week or month (if appropriate given their consumption level and risk of withdrawal)
Actively and enthusiastically promoting the Try Dry® programme year-round, and the Dry January® challenge every year, is an excellent use of resources for those who care about public health – and we’re proud to work with hundreds of partners across the UK who are creating change in their communities through the Dry January® challenge. The programme and the challenge are effective, cost-effective, popular with the public, based on in-depth expertise, and continually improving.
It reduces demand for alcohol treatment in your area, while building public support for effective population-level alcohol policies. Alcohol Change UK takes on all the costs of delivering the programme. And we can provide you with free ready-to-go promotional materials; and outstanding localised engagement and impact data for your area (a small charge applies).
