Pigtails,
I love that you feel well enough to start the I can handle it self delusion, and smart enough to post about it here. I have a perhaps similar to soberlicious' way I have dealt with it the whole time. I too didn't have the cravings that others did at any time in my recent year plus of sobriety. I didn't do any AVRT or other book to get this but I can explain it.
I was just so tired of being sick and tired and committed to never drinking or smoking again, as they were killing me and I felt it coming, that the alcohol little niggle thoughts I would just shrug off. I probably had the same little starts to what others called cravings but I internally was never going to drink again. I had no hope of doing it again, no desire. I was so far down for me, regardless of others calling me functional and OK, I was a slave to alcohol and tobacco. Maybe my bottom was different than another's, but my bottom nevertheless. I honestly believed I had no hope, and could not break free. I somehow found that second chance and took it. Now that I have it, sobriety, I won't, can't, throw it away.
It took me a year to get those random thoughts that maybe I could drink again and handle it but I won't. Then I would do as you have just done, read some of my early posts and realize that it isn't won't but can't.
I am so much more afraid of being ensnared again that I will never drink again ever. From reading the trials of others who have relapsed here I have learned that I don't want to go through an even harder time coming back when I am already here and sober, calm, relaxed. I lack nothing. And you just described the same feeling, lacking nothing, comfortable again in your skin.
THEN WHY IN THE HECK WOULD I EVEN HAVE A THOUGHT LIKE THAT, OR YOU HAVE ONE, WHEN WE AREN'T IN CRISIS?
The beauty of it now is that it is only a fleeting thought for me now because I will it away as absurd, insane, ridiculous.
But many said I was overconfident early on. I know why now. I wasn't overconfident, just had no yet begun suffering from selective memory. That is what SR is here for. My little jolt of reality. When I had those thoughts at over a year sober, I didn't fret over them or believe them, I just laughed at them. So I learned not to relapse here too.
A passing thought that I needed to get sober could not make it so, I had to make it happen. Same with that thought. Likely? No.