“Dry January allows us to question our consumption and our relationship with alcohol,” assures Amandine Luquiens, addiction specialist at the CHU

Amandine Luquiens, psychiatre addictologue au CHU.

Never drink alcohol again to be healthier ? Let's start with Dry January, explains Amandine Luquiens, an addiction psychiatrist at the Grau-du-Roi hospital center.

Imagined in the United Kingdom, arrived in France in 2020, is Dry January, a challenge of a full month without alcohol, useful or is it just PR? ?

This alcohol-free month has a real interest on two levels and 60% of French people know about it (last year, 4.5 million people tried it according to the Dry January operation website, Editor's note). Firstly, from a public health point of view, it promotes abstinence efforts contrary to cultural habits, it changes the way people look at and destigmatizes those who don't drink or try the Druy January. While those who don't drink are still often seen as the killjoy on duty! There is a real preventive effect there.

Individually, among those who follow the Dry January, many say that they have a complicated relationship with alcohol. A month without a drop is a test, it's long and it allows you to start deconditioning. And the effects last. Six to eight months later, people continue to maintain a reduced consumption. After a month of stopping, markers of good health are already regulating, such as the quality of sleep, or the level of fat and sugar in the blood.

Do the French drink a lot ?

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In France, alcohol consumption has dropped significantly over the past fifty years, but we are still at 10 liters of pure alcohol per year per person. A 12 cl glass of wine, for example, contains 10 grams of alcohol. What has dropped the most is daily alcohol consumption and binge drinking among young people.

But in Occitanie, we are bad students: 11% of the population drinks alcohol daily compared to 8% in the rest of the country.

What is the recommended consumption threshold ?

Since 2017, Santé Publique France has recommended two drinks per day per person and not every day. The thresholds should be different for women (generally smaller and lighter) but to make the message simpler and clearer, the threshold, in France, is the same for everyone. It is the threshold below which the increased risk of cancer attributable to alcohol is negligible.

Psychedelics in alcohol withdrawal ?

Last year, the addiction department of the Nîmes University Hospital launched a pilot study on the effectiveness psilocybin, a molecule found in hallucinogenic mushrooms, in alcohol withdrawal and persistent depression. “Thirty people were included in this clinical trial, which went really well. We now have a lot of work on the data. The results will be known in early April,”“The psychiatrist Amandine Luquiens is pleased to say that she has already revealed: “Some patients have seen massive improvements, while for others there have been no effects.” Next step: a large-scale study on 280 patients for which we have asked funding”.

What are the risks of excessive alcohol consumption ?

There are 41,000 deaths each year, 16,000 of which are directly attributed to alcohol. The risks are cardiovascular diseases, ENT cancers (mouth, larynx, esophagus, etc.) but also breast, bladder, liver, and colon cancers. And there are indirect deaths, suicides, accidents. Alcohol is involved in 25% of fatal accidents.

When should alcohol consumption be a cause for concern?

You need to question your relationship with alcohol: have I lost the freedom not to consume? Do I set myself limits that I don't keep? Do I organize my week around times of consumption? Do I think about it all the time, is it intrusive in my personal life, at work? Do I have urges to drink? These are the criteria for addiction. But we can get help to get out of it.

Is it an insidious, socially accepted addiction??

Tobacco and heroin have very significant addictive potential. For alcohol, cannabis or cocaine, addiction comes with repetition. And we are more or less at risk. We can transmit a genetic and environmental vulnerability. For example, a child subjected to chronic stress with an alcoholic parent or who drinks alcohol from the age of 12, will present a vulnerability factor to addictions. Ideally, we should not drink a drop of alcohol before the age of 25, the age of complete brain maturation. But there are sometimes compromises with what is socially and culturally acceptable. The later you start drinking alcohol, the better!