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Comment by shakabrah | Hacker News Reader

As someone who cannot manage alcohol (sober four years) id like to ask those of you who get something out of a 30 day abstinence, or find it appealing, what’s the appeal? If you don’t have a problem with drinking, why do you think a 30 day refrain will improve something in your life. If there is benefit, doesn’t this indicate a problem? Or do you think taking 30 days away will fix the problem?

Not trying to be judge mental. This is more like an alien wanting to know how earthlings live kinda thing.

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Here’s my take on it. I am a pretty light drinker. I think it’s nice, but not amazing. Half of my enjoyment is just culinary, trying different tastes.

But anything can become a habit, from leaving dirty dishes in the sink to buying too many cookies. A great way to reset a habit is just to stop doing it for awhile.

So for me, taking a break now and then helps to keep the calories in check and the overall consumption light.

I also take regular breaks from social media and caffeine.

> I also take regular breaks from social media and caffeine.

Hm… Last time I did that, was to get off my coffee/caffeine addiction, some 15 years ago. I think now that I do cold showers, it might actually be easier. I’ll give it a 2-week try in January ;)

Regarding the cold showers, do you do this anywhere you are, year round?

Where I live the water out of the pipes is < 4c and the air temperature in our shower area probably colder.

I like the idea of cold showers but I'm not really sure it would work in these conditions, I actually think it might send someone into shock.

I doubt our water reaches 4C, and if the air temperature were that low, there would be some serious issue.

That said, the /r/becomingtheiceman (WimHof) subreddit regularly has people taking a bath in a tub with ice, snow, or ice cubes to cool it down (or take a bath in a partially frozen lake). Never did that myself, though.

I guess that was the point of my question though, would you have cold showers in that type of environment, I'm really curious if that's part of the deal, you have cold showers even near 0?

I can’t tell, because I never had those, so I don’t know how it would feel. But as I said, people bath in close to zero degrees, I guess a shower wouldn’t be worse.

A lot of people start drinking more excessively around the end of the year, and it becomes a habit. Take a month off, no drinking, then start drinking in moderation. The short break does fix the problem.

> If you don’t have a problem with drinking

TFA:

> people who were moderate to heavy drinkers, drinking on average about 2.5 drinks a day.

And a lot of people in this thread report similar sounding values. To me, that does sound like having a problem with drinking.

Also, congrats!

As others have said it's a festive time of year and for me personally, drinking ruins my constitution for things like weight training, studying etc. It makes me more tired and from what I've read, dehydrates the body making injury more likely.

So having a "dry january" helps me reset everything and get back on track, which in turns motivates me to be more healthy into the new year.

I also think drinking is a useful social lubricant, but I do see myself quitting nearly all together as I get older. It might sound strange but dry January is "practice" for me.

People like challenges. It seems to be part of our human nature. Be it growing a mustache in November, running up a hill once a day in February, or not drinking in January.

Other people look at us and wonder why we bother uploading open source code to Github (doing work in our spare time).

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