Hey redshift,
Thanks for your post.
I think that when I truly accepted the fact that I am an alcoholic, it became possible to accept all of my past as the result of untreated alcoholism. Certainly the top ten, kept me up at night cringing under the covers years after they happened, events were a direct result of drinking. But it was more than just those events. The general patterns of my life, the big and small choices I made, the things I believed in and didn't believe in, were a result of living to use and using to live. My life couldn't have happened any other way.
I don't see alcoholism as an excuse, I see it as an explanation. If I want something different for myself, I have to change the thing I can: me. I can build a whole new way of living one day at a time and the farther along in the construction I get, the less the past haunts me because I am just not that person any longer. I use the 12 steps to do this. I am sure it is not the only way, but is a way which is working for me.