The New Mexico Department of Health’s Office of Alcohol Misuse Prevention is encouraging participation in Dry January, in an effort to reduce the many harms alcohol can cause. KC Counts spoke with the office’s manager, Rebecca Neudecker to learn more about the “Drink Less, Live More” campaign. Here's a transcript of their conversation:
KC Counts:
We've been hearing a lot this year about Dry January. And in fact, for the last, over the course of the last year or so, we've been hearing more about how younger people are choosing to drink less. So obviously this is gaining more and more traction. Do you find that in the state of New Mexico, which does, on a large scale, struggle with alcohol, that those trends are showing up here as well?
Rebecca Neudecker:
Behavior is a little bit harder to track. I think we do have some surveys that do that and we can get those numbers for you. But I think generally that is the perception that it's becoming much more socially acceptable not to drink. And we think that that's a very positive trend.
KC Counts:
Your office is encouraging New Mexicans to participate in Dry January. Tell us a little bit about why we should. What's going wrong in our state with alcohol?
Rebecca Neudecker:
Well, we have a long history in our state of having excessive alcohol-related harms and deaths. And for many years, we've been in the top 10 for those categories. So I think that that's one of the things that we really need to turn around. And of course, some of those long-term effects and diseases and deaths actually reflect decades and decades of excessive drinking. And in New Mexico we we do have rates, you know, that we can improve on our excess of alcohol use to find us binge drinking 5 or more drinks on one occasion, or more than 2 drinks for women. It's a little bit more for men at any one setting. So we wanna adjust those norms about drinking. And as you mentioned, some of those norms are changing now. But one of our big efforts is to say, if we're gonna have those changes in the impact of deaths and illnesses, we have to change behavior now. And it's never too late to cut back. Even people who've been drinking a long time can still see some benefits from cutting back. So Dry January gives everyone a chance to kind of sit back and take a break because even stopping for a little bit helps too. And also just reassess their relationship to alcohol and kind of experience what life can be like if they cut back just a little bit.
KC Counts:
According to a news release from your office, there were 1,756 alcohol-related deaths in 2024, and I was surprised to see that 9% of all hospitalizations in New Mexico were alcohol-related.
Rebecca Neudecker:
Yes, that is true. And that is, the alcohol-related deaths are actually down a little bit from the peak in the middle of COVID. So that's good news. But the hospitalizations are also something we're tracking, and we're fortunate that we now have epidemiologists that work closely with our office. and have a dedicated epidemiologist looking at, not at death, but morbidity, and looking at some of that hospital data. So we're getting new insights into that now.
KC Counts:
That's interesting. The campaign is called Drink Less, Live More. Let's talk about some of the tools that you offer people who really want to give it a try.
Rebecca Neudecker:
Well, we have some resources on that site, and we also link to our more formal DOH site. But there's things, there's one of the best things on there is a screener that lets people assess their own drinking behavior. That's part of an effort to get more people screened for alcohol. And the evidence supports that both electronic screeners, like the one that's on that side, and screeners that are done in a doctor's office or other setting could both help people change their behavior. We also have tools for cutting back there. We have trackers for tracking how much you're drinking. There's resources that talk about how, you know, if you have a relative or friend that you want to talk to about their alcohol use, how to approach that. We also have some links to outside organizations. Some of our state partners, the Health Care Authority has funded a program called Five Actions that really has some great resources on it for people that are ready to take a deeper dive. So we're trying to provide a lot of resources to help people kind of just get into thinking a little bit differently about alcohol. We also have some information there if we have a lot of partners throughout the state that our coalitions have been working on alcohol for a long time. And we're partnering with those organizations, but we're also, we're trying to provide good data for them and infographics related to cancer and those kinds of things too, to try to just build our overall capacity in the state as well for addressing alcohol.
KC Counts:
Let's talk about some of the benefits people might experience if they participate in Dry January.
Rebecca Neudecker:
Some of them happen right away. In one to seven days, people can experience having better sleep. They'll have more energy. They're probably going to be better hydrated because that can be a problem with alcohol. And they might find that they're in a better mood because sometimes alcohol is associated with anxiety and depression. Then, if they in the medium term, two to six weeks, they can start to find that they're able to focus better at work, at school, their digestion improves, their skin may improve, their general appearance there. And they might just find that they have more time. If they've been spending a lot of time in settings where they're drinking, maybe they're going to find that they have more time to exercise and do some other things. And longer term, there's often better relationships improve. Their families and friends, they may see some improvements there; their immunity may improve. Their liver health will definitely improve if they've been having problems with that. And one of the more surprising ones for some people is that they may notice that they have a little bit more money in their pocket. And we don't have links to this on our site, but there are some financial calculators out there. I ran one last week where I, if I was, having a $4 drink three times a week, that adds up to over $600 a year. So, there's a lot of benefits that I think we don't always think about when we think about dry January.
KC Counts:
It might be an extra caramel macchiato.
Rebecca Neudecker:
Exactly.
KC Counts:
People tend to double up on the coffee if they cut back on. That's a lot of reasons. That's a lot of good reasons. And some of them are surprising. In fact, I had read in another source that you could expect your gut health to improve. Do you happen to understand the science behind that, why that is?
Rebecca Neudecker:
We do know that alcohol is kind of just hard on our system. And we have a medical consultant who can probably give us a much better explanation of some of that. She has noted when she's presenting that a lot of the cancers that are associated with alcohol are in our tract, or mouth cancers, esophagus cancers, liver cancers. So they're in kind of our digestive tract.
KC Counts:
All right, livemorenm.org. to find all of those resources?
Rebecca Neudecker:
Yes, that's a great place to start. And people may have also seen some other promotional activities and billboards and commercials related to Live More New Mexico. All right.
KC Counts:
Well, Rebecca Neudecker, Section Manager for the Department of Health's Office of Alcohol Misuse Prevention. Thank you so much for spending this time with us.
Rebecca Neudecker:
All right. Thank you so much.
KC Counts:
Thanks for joining us.
For more information on "Drink Less, Live More", you may click right here.
