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I was an alcoholic for all my 20s. Wasn't until my 30s when I started getting hospitalised and going through bad detoxes on the regular that my family put up the money to get me into a really nice rehab for 28 days. It only took that to get me sober and its been years now. It wasn't the therapy that did it, it was just knowing my family had put up that money even though it was a lot for them. If I ever think about picking up a drink I imagine how shit it would be to ruin that gesture from them and that's enough to keep me from relapsing - I don't even go to meetings.
Nobody really knows what causes addiction, not even the "experts" and all the therapists. Not even addicts really know. It hits different people for different reasons, it's all a mystery really.
But fundamentally it is all about willpower and the want to stay sober. It's why I can't deal with the AA shit where they give themselves over to a higher power. It's why SMART (self management and recovery training) is the fastest growing recovery program in the world because it does away with the spirituality and focuses on willpower and how to handle triggers as they come on a daily basis.
Only advice I can give is that you just have to learn to accept that life can be really boring and that some days you will feel like shit. It's normal, everybody does. It's tempting to fill the days with an addiction because the drugs really do help, but do a cost-benefit analysis and remind yourself of where the drugs will always inevitably take you because it's never worth the payoff when you're an addict.
Accept you aren't like normies who can have some drinks on the weekend and call it a day. For the rest of your life you can just never touch a drink again, and that's fine. Remind yourself that alcohol is poison after all, and BTW watch the weight drop off you when you stop drinking and feel your mind and body recover and enjoy that each day. Also watch your savings go up.
One day at a time.
