Dry January Is for 'Dumb Sheep' and 'Mouthbreathers'

Dry January—occasionally known as Sober January—is a month of self-imposed sobriety following the holidays. But might it be objectively terrible? "It’s a comically insipid, awareness-lacking, mouthbreather’s celebration of our most inane obsessions, with euphemistic five-cent pseudohealth buzzwords-as-ideas like #wellness and #mindfulness," Foster Kamer writes for First We Feast. But tell us how you really feel, Kamer. Firstly, he says Dry January is a slap in the face to people who actually are sober because they're recovering alcoholics. Secondly, he's not exactly comfortable that Dry January stems from the old religious ideal of purity. "You know who did a great job spreading ideas about purity through history?" Kamer asks. "Religious zealots. You know what else religious zealots are responsible for? The Spanish Inquisition."

Kamer also isn't thrilled with the sanctimonious attitudes and flaky behavior of Dry January participants, who he calls "hilariously dumb sheep." "You bailed on plans you had for three months not because the sight of a merlot will make you crumble, but because you’re on episode six of Making a Murder," he writes. And after all that, Dry January is "wildly ineffective" at actually improving long-term health, with the more difficult but less Instagram-worthy choice of year-round moderation being the better option. Plus it appears Dry January started in the UK. "Of course it comes from the British, who regularly produce some of the greatest, most vulgar, completely uninhibited drunks in the world," Kamer writes. Read the full piece here. (More drinking stories.)