Dry January in Dubai – renew, reset and resist temptation

Unsplash/Zan Lazarevic

Ten days into Dry January and I feel like a million dollars – sleeping like a log, waking up full of energy, savouring food with renewed appetite and putting in the exercise kilometres on my bike.

As the Irish songster Van Morrison said: “Wouldn’t it be great if it was like this all the time?”

I try to go the first month of every year without an alcoholic tipple, and usually make it to near the start of February. This time, after a punishing festive schedule, I found myself actually looking forward to giving up.

The run-up to the holiday season was full of the usual “meet for drinks” gatherings during the week, in addition to special events – festive dinner with work colleagues, the annual “Hacks and Flacks” bash of journalists and PR people in the wonderful Bahri Bar, and the splendid Christmas Eve party thrown by my good friend Sean Evers in Arabian Ranches.

Christmas Day itself was – as has become customary – enjoyed at the Kempinski hotel on the Palm Jumeirah in the company of old friends and our families. This ritual has taken place for at least the past seven years, and is a real annual highlight.

New Year’s Eve was spent in the same company. We all live in the Marina, so it was an easy walk to their apartment for dinner to watch the fireworks from Emirates Golf Club simultaneously with the Atlantis extravaganza on the other side.

Dubai seems to outdo itself each year with the firework spectacle, and for a few minutes just after midnight it sounded as though we were in the middle of a battlefield. My poor dog was terrified.

Dubai is a great place to go teetotal in the first month of the year. The weather is fantastic

But it was a great way to see in the New Year, though inevitably it went on too long – mainly because my daughter had forbidden us from returning home until her teenage party in our apartment was over.

So, it was nearly 4am by the time we staggered back (relieved at the lack of damage in our place) and we all had imbibed too much by then.

After all the excess involved, waking on January 1 with the prospect of Dry January ahead was a positive treat, outweighing the accumulated seismic hangover raging in my body.

Dubai is a great place to go teetotal in the first month of the year. The weather is fantastic – sunny days and cool evenings – so you can be active and busy all the time, with no temptation to call into a bar or pub to escape the heat, and the temptation that involves.

Nearly all my friends seem to be on the wagon this year. It is a bizarre experience to be among these alcohophiles as we all order the zero option, or experiment with exotic mocktails, while having an unusually sensible and restrained conversation.

The two drinks which are seeing me through are Asahi Zero, a beautifully crisp bottled version of the Japanese beer that is just as good as the real thing, and the Virgin Mary as prepared by the Capital Club bartender in DIFC.

In the course of the month, I’m looking forward to dry drinks at the alcohol-free bar in trendy Al Serkal Avenue, TVM @ The Fridge, as well as healthy sundowners at the 3 Fils bar/restaurant in Jumeirah Fishing Harbour. The shikuwasa cocktail is to die for, according to my daughter.

Temptation has only reared its head twice, so far. Once when I found myself subliminally reaching for a non-existent glass of red wine to go with kleftiko lamb at Taverna restaurant in Souk Madinat. Old habits die hard.

The other occasion was in the company of visiting Russo-American friends at a new Russian fun-complex, District 8, in Marina.

We had an excellent dinner at the Rodina restaurant and the waiter’s suggestion of a matching vodka to accompany borsch soup and pelmeny was, for a split second, under serious consideration.

But I quickly recovered with a “Nyet, spacebo bolshoi”. The waiter seemed impressed by my will-power, if not my Russian.

I have no doubt I’ll see it through to at least January 24, when I’m going to London for a family celebration.

But once outside the restraining environment of Dry January-friendly Dubai, I can make no promise I’ll see it all the way through to February 1.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia