As you might guess Supercrew, you're singing my song!
I too believe that what keeps an alcoholic drinking despite all the wreckage to their health and relationships is a physiological response in their brain to the thought of drinking alcohol. Why an alcoholic starts drinking to excess is different for each of us, but what keeps (kept) us drinking are the changes to the brain stem and limbic system caused by the alcohol abuse itself.
The deviousness of those changes are amazing. Exactly the same areas which allow even the 'slowest' kid in class to remember what house gave the biggest chocolate bars at Halloween two years ago, or that the sensations while having sex are kinda really nice, or are responsible for the waves of positive emotions while we are first falling in love, are the same ones that become altered to crave more and more alcohol.
People can wrap whatever else they want around the problem, but at the root of it all is this physiological drive to drink originating from an area of the brain incapable of complex problem solving, but only capable of basal instinctual drives. These drives or urges however, do have the power to change our thought processes...if we don't know what's going on.
That's what worked for me, was knowing why I was feeling the way I did, why I kept going back for more, why the urges kept coming back, why I had to make sure I had my wallet when I was only taking the dog for a walk and just happened to walk past the liquor store, again, and again, and again...
Anyways...looking at it from that angle worked for me
Murray