Is Stoptober for Smoking or Drinking?
Quick answer: Smoking. Stoptober is England's stop-smoking campaign, run each October by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. The October campaign about alcohol is a separate one called Sober October, run by a different organisation. If you meant the drinking month, you want that one.
The confusion is completely reasonable. Two national abstinence campaigns run in the same month, in the same country, with names built the same way, both asking for roughly four weeks off something. People mix them up every year.
Here is what each one is.
Stoptober: Smoking
Stoptober asks smokers in England to stop smoking for the month of October. It has run every year since 2012 and is government-run, under the Department of Health and Social Care. Alcohol is not part of it.
Full detail on the dates, the support and the 28-day framing is in our guide to Stoptober. If you want the rules themselves — what counts, what does not, and what happens if you slip — that is the rules of Stoptober, and the Stoptober page has an October grid to hold the month on.
Sober October: Alcohol
Sober October is the drinking one. It runs across the same month and asks people to go without alcohol for the 31 days, usually as a sponsored fundraiser rather than as a health campaign — which is the other real difference between the two. Stoptober is a government public health programme; Sober October is charity fundraising.
We do not cover alcohol here. Our sister site Rebuild owns that side and has the Sober October tracker, the rules and the day-by-day content to go with it.
Dry January: Alcohol, Different Month
Dry January is the other alcohol one, and it runs in January rather than October. Same idea, colder month, and it is the larger of the two. That is also Rebuild's, not ours.
Movember: Neither
Movember is not an abstinence campaign at all. It runs in November, it is about men's health — prostate cancer, testicular cancer, men's mental health and suicide prevention — and taking part means growing a moustache and raising money, not giving anything up.
It gets bundled with the other two in searches because the three fall in consecutive autumn months and share the same word-blend naming. That is the only thing they have in common.
The Great American Smokeout: Smoking, in the US
If you are reading this from the United States, the campaign you probably want is neither of the October ones. The Great American Smokeout is the American stop-smoking date, run by the American Cancer Society on the third Thursday of November — one day rather than a month, and a charity rather than a government programme.
The Quick Table
| Campaign | What you stop | When | What kind of campaign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stoptober | Smoking | 1–31 October | Government public health — Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (DHSC) |
| Sober October | Alcohol | 1–31 October | Charity fundraising |
| Dry January | Alcohol | 1–31 January | Charity campaign — Alcohol Change UK |
| Movember | Nothing — it is a fundraiser | November | Charity fundraising — Movember |
| Great American Smokeout | Smoking | Third Thursday of November | Charity — American Cancer Society (US) |
Can You Do Stoptober and Sober October Together?
You can, and there is a real argument for it rather than just twice the difficulty.
Alcohol is the most commonly identified relapse trigger in smoking cessation research. It lowers behavioural inhibition, and for most smokers who drink it is a directly conditioned smoking cue — the two behaviours were learned together. Our page on quit smoking tips that actually work treats cutting alcohol back during the first few weeks as one of the higher-value moves available, independently of any campaign.
The honest counterweight: two simultaneous changes is more load than one, and the first month of stopping smoking is already the hardest stretch — irritability, poor sleep and worse concentration are all part of nicotine withdrawal. If doing both means doing neither properly, do the smoking one. If you were going to drink less anyway, doing them together removes your single largest relapse trigger at exactly the moment it matters most.
The Dutch Stoptober
One more source of confusion, and it accounts for a lot of the search traffic on the name. The Netherlands runs its own Stoptober, adopted after England's, with its own dates, its own organisers and its own app. If you have landed on Dutch-language pages about Stoptober, that is why — it is a genuinely different campaign that shares the name. This site covers the English-language one.
References
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. "Stoptober launches to give smokers the confidence to quit." GOV.UK, 24 September 2022. [Campaign ownership and scope]
- Kuipers MAG, West R, Beard EV, Brown J. "Impact of the 'Stoptober' smoking cessation campaign in England from 2012 to 2017: a quasi-experimental repeat cross-sectional study." Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2020;22(9):1453–1459. [Confirms the 2012 launch and the adoption of the format in the Netherlands]
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Stoptober for smoking or drinking?
Smoking. Stoptober is England's national stop-smoking campaign and runs through October. The October campaign about alcohol is Sober October, which is a separate campaign run by a different organisation.
What is the drinking version of Stoptober?
Sober October, which runs across the same month and asks people to go without alcohol, most often as a sponsored fundraiser. Dry January is the other alcohol campaign and runs in January instead.
Is Stoptober the same as Movember?
No. Movember runs in November, is about men's health, and involves growing a moustache and fundraising rather than giving anything up. Stoptober runs in October and is about stopping smoking.
Can you do Stoptober and Sober October at the same time?
Yes, and cutting alcohol has a specific benefit while stopping smoking, because alcohol is the most commonly identified relapse trigger in cessation research. The trade-off is that two changes at once is more demanding than one, during the month when stopping smoking is already hardest.
Does Stoptober include vaping?
The campaign treats vaping as one of the aids for stopping smoking rather than as a habit to stop. If your aim is to stop vaping, October still works as a start date, but the campaign is not built around that goal.