My Idea of Dry January? A Dry Martini.

And hold the olive, more room for the gin.

Here we go again. Along with the dizzying merry-go-round of commercials for gym memberships, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and Wegovy, here comes Dry January. Thirty-one days of sobriety to help recover from the over-indulgent trifecta of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.

“It’s all the rage, everybody’s doing it, come on, jump on the bandwagon!” Sorry, no jumping, no bandwagon, not for me. I’m not a big fan of mass-culture trends, especially self-imposed Prohibition. Frankly, the social machinery perpetuating Dry January leaves me shaken, not stirred.

Just a splash

There is an alternative to Dry January: Damp January. It’s a more lenient interpretation where one merely cuts back on alcohol consumption without complete abstinence. A bit wishy-washy, if you ask me. Lacks boldness. It’s like half a shebang. Either stop drinking altogether or continue your wicked ways full throttle, none of this namby-pamby stuff.

As an aside, I bet somebody tried to coin the phrase “Moist January,” but in today’s cultural zeitgeist, the word “moist” has become a grammatical pariah, a linguistic outcast shunned by the masses. It’s a perfectly fine word. How else are you going to describe cake.

But wait, there’s more

The madness continues with the term “Sober Curious.” Have you heard this one? Dios mio. I’m sober 20 hours a day, I know what it’s like. Curiosity quenched.

Trendy terms aside, Dry January is the Cliffs Notes version of the year-long resolution. And we all know how “sticky” those resolutions are, right? More Post-It Note than Super Glue. Did you know that the failure rate for new year’s resolutions hovers around 80%? Some studies suggest it’s as high as 91%.

The second Friday of January is even called “Quitter’s Day.” According to Strava, the social network for athletes, most people abandon their resolutions by this time. That’s not even two weeks. Discipline, people, discipline.

Your own personal happy hour

Any of you watch “La Palma” on Netflix? It’s a well done, albeit formulaic, disaster movie. Catastrophe is about to strike and two ancillary characters have no chance of survival. One of the doomed characters breaks out a bottle of vino fino and says to the other, “People always need an occasion to drink a fine bottle of wine. But they get it all wrong. The bottle is the occasion.”

Amen, brother. That snippet of dialogue flips the script on the common thinking. It suggests a perspective shift about enjoying life. Finding value in small, everyday moments. A gentle reminder that sometimes the best moments are the ones we create ourselves, making that tiny slice of life a tad bit sweeter. Why give that up?

“How dry I’m not…”

“…everybody knows, how dry I’m not.” Apologies to Irving Berlin, but that’s the tune I’ll merrily be singing the whole month through. However, if you opt to take a ride on the no-booze cruise, I applaud your efforts.

And if you fall victim to the odds and slip up before the end of the month, don’t throw in the bar towel. Look on the bright side. There’s always February.

It only has 28 days.