Choose your dates
If you are following Dry January, use January 1 through January 31. That is a calendar month with 31 dates. A personal 30-day period is different: starting on January 12 takes you through February 10 when you include the first day.
Write down which range you mean before looking at a total. If you join partway through January, mark the dates you can honestly account for and leave the others open. There is no need to fill in a whole month just to make the calendar look complete.
Dry January® is a campaign from Alcohol Change UK. Its official campaign page has details and official resources, including Try Dry. SoberTrail is not affiliated with the campaign.
Give each day a clear meaning
For a paper or browser worksheet, use three states: alcohol-free, drank, and unrecorded. Keep future dates separate. The point is to know what happened on a date, without treating an empty square as an answer.
- Alcohol-free: you recorded that the day was alcohol-free.
- Drank: you recorded that you drank on that date.
- Unrecorded: you have not added an answer for the date.
Try our printable alcohol-free calendar to mark those states. It counts only days you explicitly mark alcohol-free. It does not calculate a streak or assume that a missing entry counted.
Keep gaps visible
Suppose you are looking at ten dates: seven are marked alcohol-free, one is marked drank, and two are blank. Your record shows seven alcohol-free days, one drank day, and two unrecorded days. It does not tell you that nine days were alcohol-free.
If you remember a blank date later, add it then. If you marked the wrong date, correct it. A record that can be corrected is more useful than a total you feel you have to protect.
Apps can handle missing days differently. In SoberTrail, Daily confirmation counts explicit check-ins, while Automatic can count eligible days as assumed until you record otherwise. Read the counting rules before comparing a worksheet total with an app total.
Look back before starting the next month
At the end of the month, look at the dates as well as the number. Is the record complete? Is there a day you want to add context to? Would the same way of recording fit another month?
A short note can help you remember something a total leaves out. For example, “I brought my own drink to dinner, so I did not have to decide when I arrived.” Our journal prompts offer a few starting points without asking for a long entry.
Print your worksheet before leaving the page; it is temporary. If you want a continuing record on iPhone, SoberTrail’s Calendar keeps saved dates, private notes, and earlier trails together. The browser worksheet does not transfer to the app.