By Rachel Hergett EBS COLUMNIST
Like many of us, I rang in 2025 with a champagne toast, clinking my glass with friends and loved ones before downing the sweet nectar therein. One glass of champagne, I decided, was enough. I refilled my flute with a mock mimosa, replacing the bubbly booze with a non-alcoholic substitute.
Hangovers weren’t so bad in my 20s. Now, they are some rare form of hell. Body aches seem to disappear with each wave of nausea, only to reappear if the room happens to stop spinning. And did I mention the evil elves turning their toy making hammers onto the insides of my skull? Drinking, for me, is best in moderation.
Enter Dry January. For a growing number of people, this New Year’s toast tradition may be the last bit of alcohol they consume for a month or more.
Dry January’s official origins date back to 2012, when British charity Alcohol Change UK created the public health initiative to encourage people to cut back on booze for 31 days.
“Research has shown that alcohol, even in small amounts, is bad for your health. It can lower the quality of your sleep, impair sexual function and increase your risk of developing certain cancers and other diseases,” Nicole Stock wrote in a December 2024 New York Times article outlining the sobriety challenge.
By the third year of Dry January, over 2 million people participated in the official initiative, Jackie Ballard, the head of Alcohol Concern in London wrote in a British medical journal in 2015.
“To be absolutely clear; this challenge is not a detox or for those with dependency issues,” Ballard wrote. “Instead, it’s aimed at the huge numbers of people who are steadily drinking a bit too much, too often, (exceeding recommended guidelines of alcohol consumption) without realising the effect it may be having on their health.”
This week, CBS News reported that nearly a third of Americans planned to participate in Dry January this year. Whether they make it through the month is another story.
I have not completed my Dry January, serving my cooking club an entirely alcoholic black martini earlier this month. The challenge is a challenge for a reason. I’ve never been a fan of all or nothing thinking, and let’s face it, most of us like booze.
Luckily, Dry January isn’t the only option. Some people have taken to simply cutting back for the month, taking a break to reexamine their relationship with alcohol. Out of a true Dry January, this seemingly more realistic “Damp January” has emerged.
With all of this on mind this month, I’ve been on a search for new dry drinks.
Mocktails are an increasingly common sight on restaurant and bar menus. Liquor replacement options have increased at an incredible rate. Belgrade Liquor, one of the largest stores around, has shelves of non-alcoholic options, from mixers to mock spirits that emulate their alcoholic cousins. Non-alcoholic gin is a favorite, with the juniper-forward herbaceousness easily covering the lack of booze when combined with tonic.
The Cave Spirits and Gifts in Big Sky carries well over a dozen non-alcoholic beer options, plus some bubbly and Curious Elixirs’ non-alcoholic cocktails infused with adaptogens.
I wrote a trivia round about non-alcoholic mixed drinks, diving into weird soda shop favorites. There’s an old soda-fountain favorite, especially popular on the East Coast, called an egg cream. It contains neither egg nor cream, and is essentially a fizzy chocolate milk. Curious, I rounded up its ingredients and made one. Then another with slightly different ratios. One thing was certain at the end of my experimenting: I prefer my chocolate milk flat.
Egg creams out, I polled my friends and followers online. And while the replies were few, there was a general consensus. What are they drinking during Dry January? Wine.
Rachel Hergett is a foodie and cook from Montana. She is arts editor emeritus at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and has written for publications such as Food Network Magazine and Montana Quarterly. Rachel is also the host of the Magic Monday Show on KGLT-FM and teaches at Montana State University.
