A Dry January and Sober October tracker that survives one drink

A dry month is a simple deal: no alcohol from the 1st to the last day. The hard part is not the rule. It is remembering to keep score, and knowing what to do if you have a drink on day nine.

Dry January runs from January 1 to 31. Sober October is the same idea, October 1 to 31. Some people do both, and some pick a quiet month of their own. The tracking is the same whichever month you choose.

What to track in a dry month

• Dry nights, as a total. This is the number that matters most. It only goes up.
• Your current streak. Dry nights in a row. Satisfying, and the thing you will want to protect in week three.
• Money kept. Work out what a normal month of drinking costs you before you start, so that every dry night has a price tag. The drinking cost calculator does it in a few seconds.

You do not need to track much more. A challenge you have to journal about every evening is a second challenge.

What happens if you have a drink

This is where a dry month often ends. Not because of the drink, but because of the counter. If the only number you have is a streak and it goes back to zero, it feels as if the month is over, and plenty of people stop there.

It helps to decide in advance how you will score it. Twenty-nine dry nights out of thirty-one is still twenty-nine dry nights, and still most of a month's drinking money kept. Write the drink down, let the streak restart, and keep the total. The month still counts.

Setting up Damp for a dry month

1. Enter your usual numbers. Drinks per week and what a drink costs you, from before the challenge. That is the baseline your savings are measured against.
2. Pick the challenge reason ("Sober October / a challenge"), along with anything else that applies: sleep, money, weight.
3. Set your goal to 7 dry nights a week.
4. Choose a check-in time. The default is 9pm. Your phone asks "Dry tonight?" and you tap Dry on the notification, without opening the app.

You get a card at 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 dry nights in a row. If you have a drink, tap "I had a drink" and say how many. The streak resets; your dry-night total, your savings and your history do not. If you forget to log a night, the home screen asks about it the next morning, and a night you never log does not count for or against you.

After the month

The usual pattern is a dry month followed by a return to exactly how things were. A more useful ending is to keep some of it. On the 1st of the next month, change the goal in Settings from 7 dry nights a week to 4 or 5 and carry on tapping. Same app, same streak, same running total. That is the damp lifestyle: drink less, not never.

One caution

A dry month is a habit challenge, not a treatment. If you drink heavily every day, stopping suddenly can be dangerous for some people, so talk to a doctor before you start.

Damp is a habit tracker, not medical advice. If drinking feels out of control, please talk to a doctor. In the US, SAMHSA's National Helpline is free, confidential and open 24/7: 1-800-662-4357.