To ask how to give up drink?

[malificent7]

Went to a wonderful wedding yesterday but drank too much. I wasn't a compkete state but i feel rough today.
Booze is a bit of a crux for me sometimes. I started drinking wine again to help me cope with a stressful house move.
I have given up before ....i want to loose weight and save money so how do i give up with so many looming social occassions such as the music festival i am going to next week?
Should i just give up after the festival and have 1 last blow out?

Don’t have it in the house, don’t buy it when shopping and if out gi with non alcoholic versions or a favourite soft drink.

Rather than go cold turkey, start drinking less. So, next event you go to, make every other drink a soft drink, which means you drink less alcohol and more water, stay better hydrated and don’t feel as bad the next day. Works for me.

That may be a long term solution; although you can gradually make more of your drinks soft drinks and fewer alcoholic ones over time, until you barely drink alcoholic drinks at all or have none.

I found I had to just stop.
Moderating didn't work, it actually made it harder. Then I'd feel I "deserved" a drink after abstaining for so long. Then massive binge, massive hangover.. back to square one.

“One last blow out” is a bad idea. There will always be “one more”, and it just compounds the habit.

@malificent7 Try reading This Naked Mind by Annie Grace, it is an absolute game changer for drinking. I went from heavy drinking to teetotal without too much difficulty at all and that was just before Christmas last year.

I had an 'ahh ha' light bulb moment and I just stopped.
I had a horrendous break up with my kids dad, I turned to vodka and while I wasn't drunk I was drinking more than I should, I woke up one morning and instead of making a cup of tea I poured a glass of vodka, I looked at and I thought to myself 'what the heck are you doing! You're going to be an alcoholic' and so I poured it down the sink. I scared myself that badly that I haven't drunk anything alcoholic since.

Now if only I could do the same with chocolate/cream cakes/chips 😂

Maybe you just need an 'Ahh ha' moment too, good luck in whatever you try to try to do

Thing is, you've already framed the festival as a "one last blow out." Is it not possible for you to have a couple of drinks and leave it at that or once you start can you just not stop? Reminds me sort of when people start a diet at the end of the month or next Monday or whatever thus spend the interim period eating like food is going out of fashion.

If you're worried about falling into problematic drinking then the time to address it is now.

Like PPs, efforts I took to moderate never worked and in the end I just stopped. Cold turkey with a view that this would be a complete end. That decision was exceptionally hard but implementing it was much easier than expected. I’ll be 4 years sober at the end of the year.

Everyone has a different journey but I found these books useful:

• Kick the booze easily by Jason Vale
• the unexpected joy of being sober by Catherine Gray
• the sober diaries by Clare pooley

You could try One Year No Beer. Their adverts pop up on my Fb page regularly. I went cold turkey for 4 months last year after a really bad hangover. I’ve found switching to alcohol free beer has helped me cut down drastically (I no longer drink at home, only on an occasional night out.)