SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
January 1 often feels like a clean slate, and for many people that means cutting out alcohol for the month. It's known as Dry January. NPR's Jaclyn Diaz looked into where this global phenomenon began.
JACLYN DIAZ, BYLINE: This time about nine years ago, Amanda Kuda says she had her last drink of alcohol. She had gone out on December 30, and it turned into a long night.
AMANDA KUDA: So I woke up on New Year's Eve with this ferocious hangover, and I said to myself, this is not the life that I want to live.
DIAZ: So the next day, she committed to not drinking alcohol for the entire month. And when that month was up, Kuda says she felt some big health benefits.
KUDA: Because I wasn't dragging myself down with hangovers and alcohol, I was able to all of a sudden work out every day, and then I was recovering so much more quickly because my body was in its most vibrant state.
DIAZ: And research bears that out. Studies have shown that abstaining from alcohol for even moderate drinkers can contribute to better sleep, weight loss and clearer skin.
KUDA: And then when you're using that energy to take care of your body, you just feel better.
DIAZ: People often use the term Dry January to describe their own DIY effort to cut out alcohol for the month, but it's actually a trademarked phrase and began in 2011 with the group Alcohol Change UK. Their mission is to reduce the harm caused by alcohol.
RICHARD PIPER: We never tell people how much or how little to drink. We want to empower people to make that choice themselves. We do that by our behavior-change programs like the Dry January program.
DIAZ: Richard Piper is the group's CEO. He says Dry January started with the group's former deputy CEO Emily Robinson. At the time, she was reading more about the harms of alcohol consumption.
PIPER: And she was also training for a half-marathon. And she wondered what would happen if she had a whole month not drinking.
DIAZ: The goal was to see how it would benefit her running.
PIPER: Spoiler alert - it really improved her running performance, but she gained other benefits as well.
DIAZ: So in 2013, Alcohol Change UK made their Dry January challenge official and trademarked. It's now in its 13th year and has grown.
PIPER: We've now had over 1 million downloads on the app.
DIAZ: This official challenge includes a daily email and online peer support groups. The unofficial Dry January trend has exploded as well.
PIPER: One of the things I love about the Dry January phenomenon is that cultural feeling of, hey, we're in this together.
DIAZ: Piper says he's seen how beneficial taking just one month off of drinking can be.
PIPER: We think of it sometimes as like a firebreak - like you have a gap between the trees in a forest in order that the fire can't spread. It stops your alcohol getting worse and worse over time.
DIAZ: But sometimes this 31 days off from alcohol can be the starting point to life-altering change, like for Kuda.
KUDA: And so I decided to keep going, and that kind of just snowballed into three months, into six months and a year. I was living a pretty miraculous life and I didn't want to go back.
DIAZ: Kuda is now an author and sober coach - work that started with one Dry January nine years ago.
Jaclyn Diaz, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SINY'S "ORANGE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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