How to do Dry January when everyone at work drinks

There is a particular silence that falls over a table of colleagues when someone says "just a sparkling water for me, thanks". It lasts about a second and a half. Then someone asks "Are you pregnant?" or "Are you ill?" or, worst of all, "Are you doing that Dry January thing?", in the tone usually kept for people who have taken up unicycling.

Thinking of spending some or all of January away? Start with my Dry January retreat 2027 guide: the short answers, the cost, and every January guide in one place.

Want it on paper? The free Dry January 2027 planner is a printable 31-day calendar with one small prompt a day, no sign-up.

The good news: that second and a half is the hardest part, and you can plan for it. This guide covers how common work drinking pressure really is, the January work calendar, what to say to colleagues, your boss and clients, how to survive the after-work drinks (or skip them without paying for it), client dinners and work trips, and what to do if you slip. It works whether you're doing a dry month for the first time or the fifth.

Please read this first. If you drink heavily or every day, or use other drugs daily, stopping suddenly can be dangerous. Talk to a doctor before you stop. The Quiet Month is not medical, not therapy and not rehab. In a crisis, call your local emergency number or find a free helpline at findahelpline.com. More in our questions.

The short version

• Decide your line before Monday 4 January. One short, cheerful sentence. You don't owe anyone a reason, but a ready answer stops the questions.
• Order first. At the bar or the restaurant, speak before anyone orders for the table. It's the single most useful habit at work.
• Go, but on your terms. Arrive at the start, stay for the best hour, leave before the third round. Nobody remembers who left at 7.15.
• Move one meeting. Swap one drinks invitation a week for a coffee, a breakfast or a lunch. You keep the relationship and lose the bar bill.
• Plan the five Fridays. 8, 15, 22 and 29 January are the danger evenings (1 January is a holiday for most). Put something in the diary for each one.

How common is the pressure to drink at work?

More common than most people admit, and you're not imagining it. In a 2019 YouGov survey for the UK charity Drinkaware, 43% of working adults who drink said there is too much pressure to drink when socialising with work colleagues. A later Drinkaware survey of 3,021 UK employees (YouGov, October 2021) found that 15% of private-sector staff felt there was an expectation to drink at employer events, against 8% in the public sector. And 32% of the people who expected alcohol at a work social event said they had not gone to one. So some people already skip the party to avoid the pressure. You don't have to.

At the same time, fewer people drink than the noise around the bar suggests. In Gallup's 2025 survey, only 54% of US adults said they drink alcohol at all, the lowest figure in the poll's long history. In most offices, you are not the only person at the table who would quite like a lime and soda. You may just be the first to say it.

The January work calendar

January 2027 starts on a Friday, so most people's first working day is Monday 4 January. That gives you a long weekend to settle in before the office starts asking questions. Then the month looks like this:

For the weekends in between, my practical plan for Dry January 2027 gives each of the five weekends a theme and one thing to put in the diary.

What to say: lines for colleagues, your boss and clients

Short and cheerful beats long and apologetic. Say it once, smile, and change the subject to something more interesting than your drink. Here are lines people actually use:

For colleagues

• "I'm doing January off. What's everyone having to eat?"
• "I've got an early start tomorrow." (True for most people, most days.)
• "I'm driving." (Even better if you are.)
• "Not tonight, thanks. I'll have whatever is the nicest thing without alcohol."

For your boss

• "I'm taking January off alcohol. I'll be there, just on the sparkling water."
• "I'm trying a clear-headed month. Ask me in February how my January numbers look."

Most managers respect a plan. If someone senior keeps pushing, that says more about them than about you. Keep it light the first time, and firm the second: "No thanks, really. I'm good."

Would you rather tell your manager in December, once? I wrote how to tell people you're not drinking in January, with a short heads-up message for your boss.

For clients

• "Please, go ahead and choose the wine. I'm on a dry January, so I'll pick something fun from the soft drinks."
• "I'm off alcohol this month, so I'm making it up in dessert."

The trick with clients is to make it clear that they are still welcome to drink. People don't mind your choice; they mind feeling judged for theirs. The US government's NIAAA calls this "knowing your no", and recommends deciding it in advance, before you're tired, hungry and standing at the bar. For more lines for friends rather than colleagues, see how to not drink when your friends do.

After-work drinks: go, but on your terms

Skipping every after-work drink can cost you more than it saves. It's where the gossip, the ideas and sometimes the promotions happen. So go, but change the shape of the evening:

1. Eat before you go. Hunger at 6pm sounds a lot like "I need a drink". A sandwich at 5 is a quiet superpower.
2. Get to the bar first and order your own drink. Drinkaware's after-work advice is to stay out of rounds, because rounds set the pace for everyone. Buying your own also stops someone "accidentally" bringing you a gin.
3. Hold something. A tall glass of soda, lime and ice looks like a drink, keeps your hands busy, and ends the questions.
4. Stay for the best hour. The first hour is the good one: real conversation, people still making sense. By the third round, it's the same four stories, louder.
5. Have an exit line ready. "Right, I'm off. Great to see you all." Said with a coat already on. No speeches.

A small tip from people who have done this many times: be the one who asks the questions. If you're curious about other people, nobody notices what's in your glass. More ideas for the drink itself in what to drink instead of alcohol.

Client dinners and work trips

These are harder than office drinks, because you're on someone else's evening and often in someone else's city. A few things help:

• Call the restaurant ahead. Ask what they have without alcohol. Many places now have real alcohol-free wines, beers and mixed drinks, but they don't always list them.
• Choose the place yourself when you can. A good lunch spot or a steak house with great food takes the focus off the wine list.
• Suggest breakfast or lunch for at least one client meeting. You get the same relationship and none of the bar.
• On work trips, empty the minibar. Ask the hotel when you check in. It's a normal request, and it removes a decision every evening.
• Plan the hotel evening. A swim, a walk, a film, a call home. Hotel rooms after 8pm are where good plans go to get lonely.
• Conferences: go to the morning sessions sharp, and leave the evening party after the first hour. You'll be the one making the good connections at breakfast.

If you travel a lot, my guide to dry tripping: travelling without alcohol has more.

Ask Rowan: How do I do Dry January when work is full of drinks? Rowan is our AI assistant. Please keep health details for the video call.

Your colleagues matter less than you think

Here's a comforting finding. Researchers followed more than 12,000 people in the long-running Framingham Heart Study in the United States, over three decades, to see how drinking spreads through social networks. Drinking habits did seem to pass between people: through friends and relatives. But coworkers' drinking did not have a statistically significant effect on people's own drinking over time (Rosenquist and colleagues, Annals of Internal Medicine, 2010). It's one observational study, not the last word. But it fits what many people notice: the office is loud in the moment, and quieter over the years than you'd expect.

In other words, the people at the work bar will forget your sparkling water by Tuesday. The people at home and your close friends are the ones whose habits rub off on you, and yours on them. Spend your energy there.

Your four weeks at work, week by week

1. Week 1: tell, don't explain. Mention your January plan casually, early, to the two or three colleagues you see most. Once it's known, it's boring, and boring is what you want.
2. Week 2: change one habit. Swap one drinks invitation for a coffee or lunch. Notice how often the "drink" was really about the talk.
3. Week 3: use your mornings. Many people sleep better after the first week or so without alcohol. Put the extra morning energy into the work that matters most. (More in sleep without alcohol.)
4. Week 4: celebrate the right way. Go to the end-of-month drinks, toast the team with a good alcohol-free drink, and plan what February looks like.

If you're the boss or the one organising

You have more power than anyone to change January for your team. Small changes go a long way:

• Make the alcohol-free drinks as good as the wine. Not a jug of orange squash next to the champagne. A proper alcohol-free sparkling wine, good beers without alcohol, and something interesting with ice and citrus.
• Hold one team event that isn't in a bar. A lunch, a breakfast, a cooking class, a walk, a quiz, a bowling night.
• Never ask why someone isn't drinking. Reasons include pregnancy, faith, medicine, health, driving or simply not wanting to. None of them are a team-meeting topic.
• Stop subsidising only the bar. If the company pays for drinks, it pays for the alcohol-free ones too.

For party season, see the Christmas party without drinking, which has a section for organisers. If your company wants to give a senior person a real month off, there's a page for employers.

If you slip at a work event

It happens: a long dinner, a client who insisted, a Friday that got away. Here's what to do:

1. Don't restart from day 1. Carry on the next day. Twenty-nine dry days out of thirty-one is still a very good January.
2. Write two lines: who was there, what time it was, and how you felt just before. That's your plan for next time, not a confession.
3. Change one thing. Eat first. Order first. Leave earlier. Sit next to the person who isn't drinking.

If you find you keep slipping, or can't stop when you want to, that is worth knowing and worth talking about with your doctor. Asking for help is a strong move, not a weak one.

Free help for January 2027

The charity behind Dry January, Alcohol Change UK, has a free Try Dry app that tracks your dry days and the money you save. The charity says research from the University of Sussex found that people who used the app with the daily emails were twice as likely to have a completely alcohol-free month. My free 31-day planner is a printable grid with small daily habits to tick off, good for a desk drawer.

And if you'd like company on the way, 30 Quiet Days is our free January programme, 1 to 31 January 2027: one short email each morning with one small thing to try, and an optional daily check-in with Rowan, our AI assistant (an AI, and he says so). You don't have to be sober to join. For the five Friday nights, keep my list of 40 things to do instead of drinking on a Friday night handy.

"Dry January" is a registered trademark of Alcohol Change UK. The Quiet Month is not linked to the charity.

Or take January away from the office

Some people know themselves. Same desk, same bar, same Friday, same result. For them, a month away removes most of the small decisions at once. My guide to switching off from work on holiday covers the out-of-office side, and the wellness sabbatical covers how to ask for a month.

And if you'd rather not build it all yourself, that's what I do. The first Quiet Month starts on 1 January 2027. Up to four guests, each in their own flat about ten minutes' walk from me, shared low-carb meals, daily exercise at your pace, 10 to 20 minutes of meditation (optional), outings and long talks in the evening. One free day a week. No alcohol, no smoking, no drugs for the month; prescribed medicine is always fine.

Honestly: I'm self-taught, not a doctor or counsellor. The Quiet Month is not medical, not therapy and not rehab. Every guest is 21 or over and brings a doctor's fit-to-join letter. I don't publish where I am; after a free video call, if we both want to go ahead, you learn the country and city before you sign. The fee is US$10,000 for the month, plus your own flat and flights. See the January 2027 month and the price page.

Would your company pay? How a company can send one leader for a month; the company never sees health details. For HR teams: for employers.

Questions people ask

Sources

1. Drinkaware Monitor 2019: Drinking behaviour and peer pressure (PDF) (YouGov; 43% of working adults who drink say there is too much pressure to drink with colleagues)
2. Drinkaware (Feb 2022): Alcohol in the workplace (YouGov, 3,021 UK employees, Oct 2021; 15% vs 8% expectation to drink at employer events; 32% had not attended)
3. Drinkaware: After work drinks survival guide (eat first, avoid rounds, plan your exit)
4. Gallup (August 2025): U.S. drinking rate at new low as alcohol concerns surge (54% of US adults say they drink)
5. Rosenquist JN, Murabito J, Fowler JH, Christakis NA (2010), Annals of Internal Medicine: The spread of alcohol consumption behavior in a large social network (Framingham, 12,067 people, 1971 to 2003; coworkers not a significant influence; observational)
6. NIAAA, Rethinking Drinking: Tips to try ("Know your no"; plan ahead)
7. Alcohol Change UK: Dry January and the Try Dry app (includes the safety note for people who are dependent)
8. Find A Helpline: free helplines in many countries

Prices and facts were checked on 24 October 2026. Prices change; always check the source before you book anything.