Hi Thrifty,
TU will come along with a much better answer than I can give, but I'll give you my take on it.
Syntactically, "I will never now drink" is immensely irritating to me. However, the gist is that this sentence removes the "future intent" from the stated intention not to drink, because it is always "NOW" when we are making that crucial decision.
The same principle applies to "collapsing the big plan for endless abstinence into the never-ending now". Many of us came into this with "future intentions" to quit drinking. It is always easier to make plans than it is to actually DO them.
"Never" and "always" are abstract time concepts, and the Beast loves them as a tender spot for attack. The idea is to forget about those abstracts and just make your decision not to drink NOW. Future and "always" events are just a repeated series of "NOW's" if you think about it.
I think you've got it. I have a tendency to overthink and to abstract things out too much. For me, it was just a lot easier to identify myself as a "non-drinker". As a non-drinker, all drinking decisions are non-decisions. I do what other non-drinkers do. I just don't drink. Period. No thinking or argument required.
FT