Already ‘failed’ Dry January? There’s another way, and I’ve been doing it for years | Barbara Speed

Like other sober-curious people, I wanted slightly more of a handle on what I drank. So I started logging every drink in an app. And, reader: it helped

I am not doing Dry January this year. I didn't do it last year, or the year before that. But I do know, down to the glass, what I drank on every single one of those January days. Two post-new year amarettos on 2 January 2021; two glasses of prosecco on 9 January 2020 (if I'd known what was coming in March, I might have stretched to three); a lone bottle of beer on a Sunday in 2019.

This isn't some incredible feat of memory. The data is at my fingertips thanks to something I started doing just over five years ago, in late 2017. Every day - or, let's be realistic, often a few days later - I plug the amount I've had to drink into an app.

Barbara Speed is a Guardian Opinion deputy editor