Dry January and the art of wanting something you’re not allowed to want

I am six days away from the end of Dry January, and I have never been more emotionally available to a biscuit in my entire life.

Six days left of January.

Six days is nothing — unless you are living without sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, or any other socially sanctioned way of saying, “I am a human being who would like a small chemical hug.”

Then six days is an odyssey.

I don’t drink in the way people imagine when they hear “Dry January.” I don’t have a problem. I have a Shabbos. A glass of bubbly on Erev Shabbat. Sometimes a whiskey. Not to forget my life, just to gently file off the edges of the week and put it somewhere it can’t stab me anymore.

This month, even that was taken away.

This whole lunacy began, by the way, because a dear friend of mine in Cape Town, South Africa, and her entire circle of disciplined, well-intentioned girlfriends decided to do Dry January together, and I, from Israel, impulsively joined their WhatsApp vow like some sort of long-distance nun. I have no idea why I do this to myself, except that once I commit to something, I become unreasonably obedient to it. So far, the only breach of contract has been five Jelly Tots eaten furtively, like contraband, which I am choosing to regard as a moral grey area rather than a relapse.

Which means what I actually gave up wasn’t alcohol. It was closure.

I also gave up sugar. All of it. No chocolate. No biscuits. No cake. No ice cream. No emergency spoonful of Nutella eaten straight from the jar while standing in the kitchen pretending you’re just checking something.

And because I quit smoking back in August 2024, there is now literally nothing left in my life that can be lit, sipped, bitten, or inhaled to briefly distract me from the fact that consciousness is loud.

I am six days from freedom, and I am challishing.

Not craving. Challishing. The Yiddish word for when your entire nervous system sends out a group chat saying, “We require pastry.”

I am not hungry. I am emotionally under-buttered.

What nobody tells you about being “healthy” is that it is deeply antisocial. You are suddenly expected to experience every feeling in its full, unfiltered HD. There is no sugar to take the edge off disappointment. No glass of something to mark the end of the effort. No cigarette to give your hands something to do while your thoughts are having a coup.

You just… feel things. Like some sort of amateur.

So yes, the fantasy creeps in.

Not smoking again. I am not an idiot. But of having one thing. One slightly bad, slightly indulgent, slightly self-destructive comfort that says, “You don’t have to be a paragon of virtue tonight. You are allowed to be a flawed mammal.”

This is not addiction talking. This is fatigue negotiating.

There is something profoundly exhausting about being well-regulated all the time. About eating clean, sleeping right, hydrating, exercising, and processing your emotions like a Scandinavian.

Sometimes you want to feel like a French person.

What I miss about sugar isn’t sweetness. It’s instant relief. The way a biscuit can temporarily convince your brain that everything is manageable. What I miss about my Friday drink isn’t alcohol. It’s the way it draws a line under the week and says, “Stop now. You did enough.”

Dry January removed all the punctuation from my life. I am one long, unbroken sentence.

Six days left.

Six days until I am allowed to eat something that does not come with a nutritional TED Talk and drink something that says, “Shabbos is here, and you may unclench.”

And if that sounds ridiculous, that’s because you have never tried to live without small rituals of mercy.

And frankly, that should come in a better flavour than celery.

I am not craving sugar. I am craving mercy.

And if a glass of bubbly on Erev Shabbos or a square of chocolate is what it takes to remind me that I am a human being and not a productivity app, then I refuse to apologise for wanting it.

Because the most dangerous thing in the world is not indulgence. It is a life with no soft places left to land.