Cutting out alcohol for Dry January? These apps can help

The new year is an opportunity to hit the reset button on your health, especially if you overindulged over the holidays. For many people, that means diving into Dry January by vowing to give up alcohol for the month.

Dry January has taken off since a UK-based group organized the first campaign in 2013. The idea of going sober for a limited time can be appealing — research shows even a temporary dry spell offers some health benefits, like better sleep, weight loss, and more energy. And evidence is stacking up that too much drinking has serious health harms. Some 25% of Americans over 21 participated in Dry January last year, according to research group Civic Science.

And now there are some new tools that can help, whether you want to cut out or just cut back on the booze. A range of apps can provide support for your resolutions — and there’s even research backing them up.

A Noom for drinking less

Nick Allen watched his parents struggle with alcohol during much of his childhood. His parents eventually found help in Alcoholics Anonymous and have been sober for over two decades. But, Allen started to see some of the same patterns in himself. He started drinking in his early teens and partied hard in college.

A few years ago, on a trip to Mexico City, he had an epiphany: Drinking alcohol was taking up more of his time than exploring. He wanted to change that, but he didn’t want to quit booze entirely, as AA and many other programs require. He had used interactive apps like Calm to manage stress, and Noom to lose weight, so he wondered: Where was the app to moderate his drinking?

“There’s been a pent up demand for ways to change [drinking behaviors] that aren’t so black and white,” Allen says. So Allen and partner Ian Andersen co–founded Cutback Coach in 2020, which helps people make the small changes that make habit breaking easier.

Rebranded as Sunnyside in 2021, the app’s goal is to help you drink more mindfully – not necessarily quit drinking all together. It asks you to set personal goals for the week, including adding dry days when you don’t consume alcohol. You get a text every night asking, “How’d you do?”

For support, you can participate in a reflection or join the member forum to connect privately and anonymously with others on the app. It’s adaptive to your responses, and always positive, even if you slip up.

You can even get one-on-one texting with a peer coach 16 hours a day as part of your membership. The cost is $99.99 per year, with a 15-day free trial and special challenges throughout the year, including Dry January.

Other apps that promote mindful drinking, such as Reframe and the UK-based DrinkAware, have similar platforms. Reframe offers in-depth courses on the science of behavior change and daily tasks to complete to help you stay on track. It typically costs $100 per year, although they run specials.

DrinkAware offers a variety of resources and trained advisors to answer questions, and offers free digital content and a shop where you can purchase calorie calculators and work education courses.

There are also free options including Less, which allows you to track your consumption and drink-free streaks overtime. IamSober, also free, is focused on sobriety and encourages users to connect with other friends who also want to stop consuming alcohol (or other substances).

Tapping into behavior-change science

The tech approach shows promise. An August 2024 study published in the journal Alcohol: Clinical & Experimental Research found that 46,000 self-reported moderate to heavy drinkers who used Sunnyside reduced their alcohol consumption by an average of 33% in the first 12 weeks. (Sunnyside funded the study, but was not involved in the analysis.)

Joseph Schacht, associate professor of psychiatry-substance dependence at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, studies the effects of alcohol on the brain. He was not involved in the 2024 study. He says the study suggests apps like Sunnyside can help some people who are able to reduce their alcohol intake without medical intervention – at least in the short term.

Schacht pointed out that the study data was collected between April 2020 and September 2021, when alcohol consumption increased on average, due to stressors from the COVID-19 pandemic. “So any reduction in consumption during this period is noteworthy,” he says.

But he also noted some limitations in the study, such as the lack of a control group. He also suggested that the data collected over the course of the study became less valuable over time. If the user doesn’t provide input for the day, the system counts that day’s drinks as zero.

“People were probably more likely to not report their data on days when they drank,” Schacht says. “Nonetheless, this is an interesting app that integrates principles of behavior change for substance use and could plausibly reduce consumption over at least a short interval.”

Other help for unhealthy drinking

Of course, drinking can be a tough habit to break on your own, even with support from an app. Some people will benefit from medical help, counseling or group support.

If you are concerned that you or a loved one have a problem with alcohol, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has a handy resource guide on how to get help.

Alcohol use disorder involves behavior around drinking that causes distress and harm, ranging from mild to severe. You can take this simple quiz to find out if your relationship with alcohol is unhealthy.

“You shouldn’t be ashamed to speak to someone about that,” Schacht says. “Everybody has a different relationship with alcohol.”

Struggling with alcohol and mental health? In an emergency, call or text the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988.

In his lab, Schacht works with people diagnosed with alcohol use disorder and studies the effects of drugs available to help. Medication can help with the physiological component to alcohol, physical cravings and withdrawal symptoms, he says.

Schacht recommends two drugs: naltrexone, which reduces your desire for booze by blocking opioid receptors, and acamprosate, which also reduces cravings. While they do come with side effects, these options work for many people. But they are underutilized for a variety of reasons – embarrassment on the part of patients, or primary doctors not asking the right questions.

Researchers like Schacht are also particularly excited about the possibilities for GLP-1 drugs to cut cravings. As NPR has reported, many people who are taking the new weight loss drugs like Wegovy or Mounjaro say they don’t enjoy alcohol as much as they once did. More studies are needed to understand the connection.

Embracing a step-down approach

Dry January – or “Damp” January if you’re cutting back on alcohol, helps normalize the idea that it’s OK to choose not to drink – or to choose to drink less. A 2022 editorial in EClinicalMedicine sees promise in broadening the step-down process some apps facilitate, rather than force people to pursue abstinence only.

“How many people with alcohol use disorders might have lived longer had they been supported with stepped reductions? For the future, we need to focus on making the first steps more accessible to reduce the overall burden of alcohol for good,” the editorial says.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people with depression and anxiety, and most commonly, women, increased their drinking substantially. Among women, 33% said they drank more during the pandemic versus 24% percent of men in a study published in Preventative Medicine in 2021, suggesting more needs to be done to reach this population.

More than 80% of participants in the 2024 Sunnyside survey identified as women, and the top reason participants cited for wanting to cut back on their drinking was to improve their health.

That was the case with Laura Rivera. She worked at a high-end portrait studio but found herself with little work during the pandemic. Her husband worked nights, so she started drinking to relieve the boredom and anxiety of being alone.

“Sometimes you go through life engaging in bad habits and you don’t even realize it,” she says.

Rivera is now a peer coach at the company, answering texts from members seeking advice and helping with technical issues. She also works as a personal trainer.

When she decided to try Sunnyside, it made her “more mindful and aware of what I was doing,” and now she has an occasional glass of wine on the weekends.

One tip she loves: “Cravings tend to last a half hour or less – so if at 6 p.m. you start cooking and open wine? Find a distraction to do during that time instead.”