How the first drinks after Dry January will affect your body ...Middle East

This Sunday, 1 February, will be a special day for some people.

For those who have completed Dry January, it will be the end of 31 days without any alcohol – and they may already be planning exactly how to toast their success.

But perhaps they should take it easy. After a month off the booze, their tolerance for alcohol will be markedly lower.

And, while advice on how to begin Dry January is everywhere, it is less clear how the end of the challenge will affect you – although about three quarters of people do return to drinking, according to figures from Alcohol Change UK.

“People may drink what they used to tolerate, but their body and brain no longer responds in the same way,” said Dr Naina Shah, a liver specialist at King’s College London. “The machinery resets.”

Humans have always had a complicated relationship with alcohol – some scientists think we evolved to like the taste because it is found in ripe, fermenting fruit, a key source of calories for our primate ancestors.

Today, though, people generally consume alcohol for its mind-altering effects, of making us feel relaxed, disinhibited and often more sociable. Less welcome effects include impairing our judgement, memory and reaction times.

These effects happen because alcohol affects levels of various neurotransmitters – chemical signalling molecules in the brain. They include one called dopamine, involved in feelings of pleasure, as well as various others with the net effect of slowing thought processes.

When people drink alcohol regularly, the brain responds by adjusting levels of these brain chemicals or the other molecules that interact with them, leading to greater alcohol tolerance. In other words, regular drinkers need more to get the same buzz.

That means that if regular drinkers take a month off alcohol, the brain starts returning to its original state of lower tolerance, often within weeks.

“It shifts in a very quick manner,” said Dr Shah. “In light drinkers, you would probably see an effect [change in tolerance] within a week or so. In someone who is drinking heavily, perhaps it would take three to four weeks [to see an effect].”

Because of this loss of tolerance, if someone returns immediately to their previous drinking pattern at the end of Dry January, they will initially feel drunk more quickly. “The effects of the same amount of alcohol is stronger,” said Dr Shah.

Worse hangovers

Tolerance to alcohol also builds because of enzymes within the gut and liver, that break down alcohol into chemicals that can be used for energy or excreted from the body.

As in the brain, these enzymes become more active when someone is drinking regularly over time, as well as decreasing in a period of abstinence.

One of the breakdown products, called acetaldehyde, is responsible for most of alcohol’s unwelcome after-effects, like nausea and dizziness. When the enzymes become less active, it means that people are likely to have worse hangovers if they restart drinking after Dry January.

Adding insult to injury, alcohol also causes people to fall asleep more quickly, but to have worse quality of sleep. So people who celebrate the end of Dry January with a big session may feel worse the following day than they they did during their recent Christmas carousing.

For all these reasons, people who do start up again should go slowly, said Dr Richard Piper, head of Alcohol Change UK. “If you are thinking of consuming alcohol, take it really easy and expect it to have this effect on you,” he said.

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“It will all happen quicker. Sometimes after one drink, they’ll start feeling the effects way more. Moving on to alcohol-free drinks after that can be a way to keep that buzz going without it going over the top.”

About 13 per cent of people who completed Dry January with help from Alcohol Change UK continued abstaining after the end of the month, according to a survey by the charity last year. Another 10 per cent realised they had a drinking problem and sought help from professionals to deal with it.

Dr Shah noted that anyone who believes they have an alcohol use disorder should not suddenly stop drinking without medical help.

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