On the cusp of something but not quite sure I can/how

[BearFacedCheekGrylls]

I drink too much, I can go without for days and sometimes weeks but the days I can stop at just a few seem very few and far between. Drinking for me means overeating, lack of sleep, anxiety attacks. I worry about my children and I’m related to people who’ve lost the battle with alcohol. Plus the waste of money.

My worries about starting this are the loss of my drinking buddies, some of whom are best friends, though I do have a partner who rarely drinks and friends where the relationship is not based around drinking.
I also doubt my will power.
I’m about to go to a festival: am I unrealistic to expect to last the whole thing without a drink? I thought I’d tell myself not to drink on day 1, then take it from there. Or should it be cold Turkey?

I'm personally of the option that you have to ready and want to stop. I think there are people who say that you can come up with a million excuses as to why you can't stop until you get through x or y. But personally, I think if you want to stop successfully then you need to be in a place - physically and emotionally - that is going to support you not drinking. For me, that wouldn't be at a festival.

Only you know what will be best for you. But I had a period of time when dh was away and I knew I'd be home on my own with the dc. While in retrospect, being home with your dc alone for a week seems like exactly the sort of situation that you shouldn't drink in, I knew myself well enough that I wouldn't be able to get through those first few days/week sober while in sole charge of my children and being run ragged with all the parenting/house/pet related duties. It just wasn't the environment I needed to focus on me and my healing and my health. So I made the decision to stop the day after dh came back home, and I did. And that worked really well and I'm 4 months sober and never looked back.

Whether you can safely stop cold turkey depends on how long you have been drinking heavily and how much. I think with the quantity I was drinking, the advice would have been to have support to stop. I went cold turkey and I had no issues. How that is possible, I have no idea! But in all honesty, if stopping was contingent on me going to my GP and asking for help with my drinking, I would, in the place I was at at the time, just kept on drinking. Now that I'm sober, I'd have no problems talking with my GP about my drinking, but I couldn't have done it then. I'm personally glad that I did things the way I did. But only you know what's right for you.