High January Was Bound to Happen
Many Americans enthusiastically partake in Dry January, but it is rarely pitched as fun. After the holiday stretch of office parties and family gatherings, Americans have come to use the start of every year to abstain from alcohol in the name of health and auspicious beginnings. It’s a time of discipline, of cleansing, of embodying your mood board, even if it makes you a drag at parties. And it is also, as weed companies have learned, a marketing opportunity.
In recent years, weed companies have started to lean into the argument that taking the edge off sobriety with a low-dose gummy or THC drink still counts as dry. My social-media feeds are flooded with posts from cannabis companies pitching their products as fun and approachable tools to get through an alcohol-free month. Mary and Jane, an edibles company, makes a tantalizing proposition: “Dry January made easy.” Artet, which specializes in beverages, sells a “High & Dry January” bundle that includes a bottle of its THC-laced aperitif. Some products are conspicuously health-coded: North Canna describes its cannabis drinks as “functional,” and Feals highlights its edibles’ low calorie count. Above all, the ads emphasize how little booze you drink when you get high instead.
This push for a weed-filled January is, of course, a blatant (and somewhat silly) attempt by cannabis companies to get more customers. But as restrictions on marijuana loosen, and more Americans find themselves able and willing to fit the drug into their lives, Dry January does appear to be offering an opportunity for experimentation. In fact, cannabis sales surged in January 2024, and 21 percent of Dry January participants who responded to a 2023 survey swapped booze for weed that month.
None of the four cannabis-company founders I spoke with framed their products as replacements for alcohol per se. Still, many products marketed as Dry January aids aim to approximate the effect of having a single drink, leaving users buzzed but in control. These products tend to contain a low dose of THC, usually five milligrams or less. (One milligram of THC could give a weed newbie a pleasant buzz, and a heavy user might not feel five milligrams at all.) Wims, which sells THC-laced drink mix-ins, is designed to take effect and wear off in roughly the same amount of time as a serving of alcohol, Lauren Miller, one of the company’s co-founders, told me.
[Read: Pour one out for weed seltzer]
Even if THC can induce a similarly loose state as alcohol at those doses, weed companies still have some distance to overcome. In general, using cannabis as a substitute for social drinking is a harder sell than using it to avoid alcohol at home—not only because most bars don’t serve THC but also because the drug has a better chance of spurring you to melt into the couch than to mingle. Cannabis companies are trying to position their products to be used in the same context as alcohol. In states with looser cannabis laws, such as Minnesota and Tennessee, THC beverages from Nowadays are served at bars and hotels, Justin Tidwell, the company’s CEO and co-founder, told me. Wims can be dissolved into a drink, so “you don’t have to change your rituals or the way that you’re socializing,” Miller said.
The shaky logic of replacing one drug with another during a month dedicated to sobriety is hard to ignore. If the point of Dry January is to improve health, replacing alcohol with cannabis—which is not a benign substance—seems counterproductive. Far less is known about the long-term use of cannabis compared with alcohol, but both can be abused, cause dependence, and interfere with daily function and productivity, Ryan Vandrey, who helps run Johns Hopkins’s Cannabis Science Laboratory, told me. Some people are predisposed to react negatively to cannabis, experiencing anxiety, paranoia, or even cyclical vomiting. Over time, long-term heavy cannabis use can exacerbate mental-health conditions such as schizophrenia and depression. Plus, Vandrey said, weed hangovers are very real (if different from alcohol hangovers).
Still, for people with a more benign response to the drug, cannabis can be a genuinely useful tool for cutting back on booze, Vandrey said. If cannabis helps people drink less, it might indeed lower the health risks associated with excessive alcohol use, such as liver disease, cardiovascular problems, and cancer. Whatever the relative health benefits may be, Rachel Dillon, a co-founder of Mary and Jane, argues that cannabis is a realistic way to satisfy the all-too-familiar desire to decompress.
This month, I decided to put Dillon’s theory to the test. So far, High January, as I’ve come to call it, has mostly replaced my nightly glass of wine. Taking an evening 1.5-milligram gummy has subdued the urgency of the post-work rush—and, importantly, quieted any cravings for alcohol in that context. My mind is clearer, I’m sleeping better, and my mornings are less sluggish.
Yet cannabis has proved to be an imperfect tool for cutting down on my own alcohol consumption. The drug can’t quite re-create the intimacy of sharing a drink; during a recent late-night chat with a friend, I gave myself a free pass to enjoy a glass of Bordeaux. I’ve even experienced the all-too-real weed hangover. And I’ve felt conflicted about the need to soften my reality with any drug. Certainly, there are healthier ways to relax. Maybe I’ll discover them next January.