I spent a lot of my drinking career wishing that I could live without it, but believing that I couldn't. I never wanted to drink like my peers - most of them were 'amateurs'. Then I had a sort of nervous breakdown, realised that I was mortal and finite, and had a doctor tell me that any possibility of happiness in life would be increased drastically by abstaining from drugs/alcohol. Nowadays when people ask me why I don't drink, I explain that I exhausted the possibilities of profit and enjoyment from the stuff. I don't tell too many people how far I went beyond that point.
I don't know where the obsession went, or for that matter the compulsion. A combination of things - the right state of mind, people around me who wanted me to get better - I don't know. It might even be sheer chance, a possibility which, in my experience, makes gratitude all the more joyful. Just keep walking. Don't need to know why (but I'm finding out along the way), just need to know how, and to do it.
And yes, life *is* more straightforward this way, AND more exciting AND funnier AND very psychedelic indeed. And yes I regularly need some fairly strong convincing of the fact that I am not alone.
Thanks all.