People in Teesside urged to take caution when returning to alcohol after dry January
An alcohol support charity has been looking at the impacts on habits
Last updated 1st May 2025
People in Teesside are being urged to take caution when having a drink now that dry January is over.
With You, a drug and alcohol support charity, say they have been looking at the impacts on habits and misuse that a month off can have.
Scott Rowell, a young person's recovery worker in Redcar & Cleveland, said: "Have very strong awareness of what their tolerance is. If they're making the choice to go back to drinking obviously potentially what they were drinking a month ago may have been at a higher quantity, and that tolerance would have dropped when they haven't been drinking, so definitely be aware of what you're drinking, try to keep yourself within guidelines and keep yourself as safe as possible."
He has this message to people who are wanting to continue to be sober: "It's remembering why you decided to stop in the first place. You've shown yourself that you've been able to do this. You've got over quite a hard step as most substances over the first 28 days is where your body's fully detoxed and has started to go back to that baseline. You're at the baseline now."
He has this message for people who are continuing to drink: "Obviously staying with guidelines of what's safer drinking is; so the unit consumption is 14 units over a week, no more than three days consecutive drinking, trying to put days off in-between and no more than eight units in any one day, so understanding what we've got going into our body. We only have one liver so we need to look after it."
He tells us what some people's motivations were to try and stop drinking: "Mental health or physical health, trying to become heathier, fitter and lose some weight because obviously alcohol has a lot of calories in it depending on how people are drinking it. A pint of lager has a more calories than a Mars bar and people don't think of that when they have 10 pints or maybe it could be about their family relationships.
"Not every family likes to see loved ones get drunk and potentially disrupt that relationship. Have their relationship started to reform and rebuild? Is that a reason someone would want to continue to stop. As many drinks as there are, there are reasons to drink it and there's reasons to not drink it as well."